Property Manager "Different"

Discussion in 'Property Management' started by diksy, 31st Jan, 2019.

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  1. qak

    qak Well-Known Member

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    I'm curious why you haven't changed PMs if you aren't happy with them? Are you tied to Different in the agreement?
     
  2. Scott No Mates

    Scott No Mates Well-Known Member

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    No, he's inDifferent :D
     
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  3. browntiges

    browntiges Member

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    @qak - no we aren't tied to Different, that is actually the one good thing about their agency agreement, you only have to provide 48 hours notice to terminate it.

    We have only been with them 6 months and things have really come to a head in the last 2 weeks, particularly the spending of our money expressly against our written instructions. Now it is a matter of principle to get that money back before we move. Also, we are currently based overseas so there is the challenge of sourcing 4 new "local" property managers in 2 states - that was part of the appeal of Different, to have one agent managing all properties.

    I wish they would listen to feedback (no, I wish there was someone to contact to provide feedback!) as the concept is really good and I'd like it to be successful. They have not nailed it as yet, despite seeing the clip in this thread with Ruwin stating that he is all about customer service/experience. That might have been the case 18 months ago, but clearly not anymore.
     
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  4. Trainee

    Trainee Well-Known Member

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    Honestly never understood how one company can manage properties everywhere. They dont charge enough to hire or partner with local agents.

    Concept sounds cool but property management needs local knowledge and human interaction.
     
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  5. browntiges

    browntiges Member

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    Yes agree - a lesson we are learning the hard way! :(
     
  6. Scott No Mates

    Scott No Mates Well-Known Member

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    That's what happens when price is the determining factor rather than quality of service (local knowledge, people, accessibility, systems) rather than just $ & systems.

    It may be OK if you're locally based and just looking for the front end (rent collection, access to rental databases etc).
     
  7. Mel Morgan

    Mel Morgan Sydney Property Manager Business Member

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    I think Different are banking on high volumes and luring in clients with the low headline management fee (their letting fee is actually quite high) as property management clients tend to be 'sticky' and don't easily leave despite the level of service.
     
  8. Tom Rivera

    Tom Rivera Property Manager Business Member

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    In my areas they aren't even that cheap with the management fee! Their advertised "low" fees are about bang on what my average management fee is AND they charge $900 for letting- three times our average, without half of the inclusions!

    One of my clients moved to Different a while back because they'd just expanded to QLD and he was really happy with their services in Melbourne- we left it on good terms and admittedly this was a higher value property, so it was cheaper. The lady I dealt with on handover was fantastic and I was worried that we finally had a successful disruptor model coming to market :eek:

    After a year they hadn't conducted a single routine inspection, and then when the tenants moved out, I found out they lost my handover file so I had to provide documentation again. My ex-tenants even had to get in touch with me because they couldn't get anyone at Different to get back to them.
     
  9. Hayley Cannon

    Hayley Cannon Well-Known Member

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    I recently picked up 2 properties off them. I emailed them cc'ing the landlord in advising of the notice to change and asking for tenant details so we could email current tenants in anticipation of the changeover for a smooth transition, no response.

    Days later at around 8pm at night I started to get multiple emails regarding these properties asking for further notice signed from the landlord - the landlord responded confirming the change then I was being sent files for the property and an email sent to the tenants along the lines of "we don't manage this anymore i have cc'd your new agent in" - I think this is unprofessional and given the tenants were due to pay rent the next day and outstanding maintenance requests (read reported by tenant and not responded to) I feel this would have been a smoother transition 1. In work hours and 2. With a day or so to prepare the tenants for the change
     
  10. Paul@PAS

    Paul@PAS Tax, Accounting + SMSF + All things Property Tax Business Plus Member

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    Often disrupters enter a market based on low fee and standard services. They usually use pareto's principal ie 80:20 rule and seek to avoid the 20% of the work that costs and just want to focus on the 80% of business that makes them money. Hayley's experiece is a sign of them avoiding a cost of doing business. And they avoid costs like retail premises and even staff being properly paid by a contractor / outsource model.

    You often get what you pay for when all the polished spin is stripped away. The new agent now has to waste loads of time and probably doesnt have a fee to address this. Perhaps the industry needs to adapt and have such a fee. Its bait to bring clients onboard who all think they are getting something better but they arent. The 8pm reply is probably within work hours for the team that supports that model in some dubious location.
     
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  11. Onyx_OCAU

    Onyx_OCAU Well-Known Member

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    My landlord experience using Different for property management - it lasted about a year. I co-own the property, and the other co-owner was lured by the "industry disruptor" aspect of their business model. So we gave them a chance - we knew that Different were new to the game.

    When one first makes contact, as with any other standard agency PM, they put forth their most eloquent speaker and sweet talk you into assurances and empty promises to make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.

    We filled out the forms to come onboard with them, and they promised to take care of things like re-direction of rates and utilities, giving the required notice to current property management agency. Except they simply sent an email to the existing PM, so there was quite a bit of panic for me a week before the changeover date - as the existing agency claimed they received no notice and had no knowledge of the change in management. In hindsight because Different had simply sent an email and considered it job done - and didn't follow up with a phone call, the email probably got caught in the spam folder of the existing PM agency.

    Also, they didn't take care of the re-direction of rates and utilities. They wanted me to do it. It was during Covid, there were travel restrictions, I resided interstate to where my billing address was for all finance/tax related things, I kept my mailing address separate to my residential address for personal reasons - but it felt like when they promised to do something and then I had to do it myself, what's the purpose of me hiring a property manager if I needed to do all the managing of the property myself?

    Another problem is, they won't name specifically a person who is in charge as THE property manager - as a landlord there is no surety of a contact person. It's a group email that they assure everyone in the office knows about everything else that's going on.

    Different likely outsource much of their non-managerial positions overseas. It doesn't seem like I could count on a timely response to issues during business hours (AEST/AEDT time). But the majority of communication takes place 6pm to midnight - the property officers or other customer service facing people tend to respond mostly during this timeframe (as Hayley above has also experienced).

    They encouraged landlords to create an account on their website, to do things like approve maintainance requests and so on; and I did. Only when it came to a maintainance request it was all done via email and it wasn't uploaded to the website. So it was pointless...

    I don't believe Different have many contacts or resources for tradies in the industry. My property was located in the Hills District of metro Sydney, and when the bathroom needed attention for tiling work, they had someone come from Kogarah to provide a quote (this is 1.5 hrs away, clear across the other side of town). The quote given was around $1300, when I had received a <$700 quote from the prior PM before the changeover in management. They didn't seem to want to organise further quotes - I had to provide them the name and contact details myself of someone I had routinely used for maintaince previously; (yet again, felt like I was doing all the management work for a property - what I thought I was paying someone else to do).

    Ultimately, because of a combination of factors - the delay to which the maintainance eventually took place and the poor workmanship (related to the work carried out - but 6 months down the track) the water damage had affected the overall structure of the 40-50 yr old house, a structural engineer was brought out to inspect, we've since ended the tennancy and property management agreements and have decided to demolish the house to rebuild.

    Once rebuilt, I would go back to the locally based real estate agency for property management, and definitely will not be going with Different.
     
  12. Omnimaqq23

    Omnimaqq23 Well-Known Member

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    Some really great reviews of Different here and perhaps they need to take all the feedback into consideration.

    As a millennial I was quite stoked to be honest when something like this came along - by this I mean a property manager with more of a technology tilt (you can download your statements and its all in one place instead of being emailed to you and it's a pain to find if you don't file it etc). I read about them on the AFR and decided to sign up because of the low fees. So I got rid of my local property manager, who was doing just fine but the fees were higher.

    Luckily for me, my tenant was quite low maintance and didn't require much "managing" so we didn't even get any maintenance requests etc and so the manager just collect the rent and pay the rates... simple job. They did do the routine inspections as per what was advertised and that is also on the portal which is great. They also released beta of the Android app for the portal (instead of logging into Web) but I never got to trial it.

    I stopped using Different end of last year, purely because I started renovating the property and the tenant moved out. Negatives I would say is:
    They charged me the $100 fee when the bond released back to me but no rental income since the tenant left already and the bond was released later.. Which I thought was weird but thought ok.. They did do more work because the tenant leaving

    They also failed to redirect the bills back to me but I just emailed their group email and someone responded that oh yea we forgot about these bills do you want us to pay for them? I chucked both bills online so I get them emailed to me.

    So in conclusion, if your property was low maintenance and straight forward... no issues, but I'm not sure how it would go if it was more complex.

    I'm a sucker for technology improving efficiencies but they do seem to be lacking on the human front.
     
  13. Onyx_OCAU

    Onyx_OCAU Well-Known Member

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    My saga with having Different for property management continues. I can't stress enough if anyone is reading this to please not consider them for property management services. I have had to do more to manage the property myself having Different managing my property than I have ever had to do including a private rental I manage myself.

    Today, I was sent 2 bills from Different, from yet another person's name I had never dealt with before, with the return email the same generic one as always. Both bills were past the due date for payment, along with it demands to transfer funds to cover payment of the bills because there were insufficient funds in the trust account. The most frustrating part is, one is a water bill - including usage amount for the period of about 1 month between the bill commencement date and the date of previous tenant moving out. The tennant has long since left, long since gotten their deposit bond returned in full; and so I'm essentially out of pocket for what they should've dealt with 3 months ago.

    I had terminated the lease agreement and tenancy of the property mid December last year; even had it all in writing and we were supposedly all in agreement that the month of December would be the final month of me engaging their property management services. Since there is no more property, there is nothing more for them to manage. But they've continued to send zero balance statements every month since then.
     
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  14. James Bond

    James Bond Well-Known Member

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    Thank you for posting this. I'm sorry to hear of your experience.
     
  15. Paul@PAS

    Paul@PAS Tax, Accounting + SMSF + All things Property Tax Business Plus Member

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    So why would they have received the bills to be paid ? Did you redirect these ?
     
  16. Onyx_OCAU

    Onyx_OCAU Well-Known Member

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    I have redirected since the tennant moved out and I've gained posession of the property to demolish, but these bills were prior to current issue. ie. rates notice from Sept; Water bill from November 2020. So within the timeframe Different were engaged as property managers; only 4 months late in bringing to my attention. Now I've got to go back and look at monthly statements to ensure they did not in fact already deducted the funds from within that timeframe the bills were due for payment. All this equates to me managing affairs for which I thought I'd paid them to do so. That's what gets me frustrated...