Terminating Agents

If someone has a rental management contract with a RE agent and they close their local office and their next nearest office is over 100km is this grounds to terminate the contract without penalties?

Cheers,

Smallbuyer

 

Does your contract say it can be reassigned, and if so has it been?

 

You don't need 'grounds' to terminate a contract and there are no penalties AFAIK.

 

Hello,

Im NOT looking for a hitman

The management agency is based over over 100km and hasnt actually changed so i don't think assignment is a valid argument. When the contract was signed the idea was the admin, accounts etc was done from that office but the property manager was based locally and the property would be managed locally. They no longer have the local property manager and are trying to say they can manage it fine from over 100km away. I disagree and don't want to wait until something really bad happens to terminate.

The standard contract has penalties unfortunately.

Thanks

 

I wonder how they're going to do their quarterly inspections? Drive 100KM, make a day of it?

 

Thats what they say, also for home opens. Big issue is if their is some problem local agent can get around their quick and sort out, when the place if for lease a good potential tenant calls up they can duck around and meet them onsite right away. Agent that far away is a very bad idea in my opinion which is why i would never sign with a non local manager.

 

What are the penalties please?

 

50% of fees for the remaining period of contract, enough to make sure you dont want to pay them

 

Yeah but I'm pretty certain that the fees are mostly only levied on the rent collected. If they don't collect the rent, they are not entitled to any commission.

 

Unfortunately the penalty is 50% of the fees on what the rent would have been, the calculation of penalty fees for a wrongfully terminated contract is not in dispute. The dispute is about right to rightfully terminate the contract if the agent provides a materially different service to what was offered at the time of signing the contract.

 

Does it really matter that the agent is 100kms away if they perform the services you have contracted with them to perform? The whole idea of 'ducking out' is great in theory but in my experience a lot of managers will either have to give notice to an existing tenant or they will try and organise inspections together. I would worry more about whether the agent is performing the service than their distance from your property. A property manager 5 minutes away could do a much worse job than one 100kms away.

 

The agency moving offices is not grounds to terminate a management agreement.
There is no breach.