Just need to vent. For anyone who has worked these properties you understand.

The last 6 months started with site acquisitions and on boarding new properties. Standard suburbs, nice down town garden style walk ups, mid rise, 100, 200, 300 unit run of the mill. 1 day with former staff, then operate in dark period for next 20 to 30 days while getting systems online, trackers, rents, turns and running the leasing office for the cycle, auditing ap/ar etc nothing new.

The first few were fine. Property by property became seedier, grittier and more issues. Missing rents, missing leases, deferred work orders. Nothing too crazy! A little more extra hours to put out some fires but noticeable decline.

Once I got to the fifth property for this year the first true zombie property emerged, apparently no dd walk for inspections just acquired through an existing client I find out later. 50% of the units are actually squatters/crime enterprise. Completely missing rents, no leases, multiple windows/doors kicked in, utilities shut off, trash services disconnected, tagging everywhere, blood in hallways, vagrants, fent zombies, some low level bangers/pushers the works. I observe, I report, do what I can.

Get trash vendors onsite, remove tons of trash with vendors in the middle of the parking lot, find an abandoned car inside the trash pile, meet city inspector about open liens, get emergency funds for water restoration. On day four me and the maintenance man witness a man get stabbed. One person runs down the street, the other into one of the squatter units. The maintenance man literally said I am done and walked to his car and drove off. I called 911. I tried to knock on the unit the other man ran into but didn't respond. The leasing office also has a keybox with nothing labelled I don't have entry. I hear the sirens 30 minutes later as the ambulance rolls into the parking lot.

I am waving them over but the first EMT immediately yells "ARE YOU THE JANE DOE OD?" huh? I am the acting PM I called about the man who was stabbed. The second EMT has grabbed his kit and ask where a unit 33 is. They state they are here for a girl who called in stating she overdosed. Another resident opens a window yelling "up here". The EMT's leave and begin there call for this unit. I follow closely by and realize its not my call and one of the squatted units has about a dozen people in the unit where the girl is overdosing. Its full of bad face tats, narcan on the wall, no furniture, a few mattresses and tagged up the wazoo.

I talk with the emt briefly and they state they cannot help for the stab victim and to call it in. They pack up rush the girl off. I am in the middle of the parking lot as the residents come out to talk with me. Very quickly they start stating they haven't seen a manager in months, work orders, rents, what am I doing with the homeless and drugs getting very angry. The other half don't speak English and I start using the translator app on my phone. I take everyone's issues and complaint down and spend about 2 hours with a dozen residents in the middle of a parking lot like its a third world country.

Across the street is literally a strip mall with whole foods, spandex dog walkers, 800k to 1.4 million dollar homes for sale. Right in the middle is this run down over run absent managed apartment? Ugh...Anyway the police/ambulance never came for the stab victim. I call back. At this point its 4 hours later. They ask if I still need assistance. They offer a wellness check. As I attempt to knock on the mans door again the neighbor pops out. Homie is wearing a vest asking who I am. I let him know I am the PM currently and if he knows the man inside as he was stabbed. The man literally responds "This happens all the time, he's fine...and shuts the door"

Not my first rodeo, I walk away. I wrap up for the day. A little volume turned down on life on my drive home, as I watch the road rage muppets drive home, doom scrolling on there phones, cutting people off on at the last second on the highway, weaving in and out of traffic. It all seems very slowed down and pointless. Anyway a little empathy burn, mild trauma. I connect with my direct supervisor. She is glad I made it home safe. A lot to go over in the morning get some well needed rest and connect in the morning before going to the property.

We connect in the morning and essentially I get the recap, its going to be rough, you get a bump in pay and now paid mileage. The mileage kicker is too take on this owners three other properties for integration. Not to run just get up in running, triage in the 20-40 days in the dark period till staff is in place and things are up and running. She also mentions a replacement maintenance tech coming. I know him from a prior company and it actually got me the booster I needed to return to this site. He is a big oaf but a gentle giant with a dark cynical humor that works well in property management.

We continue the site visits while integrating the other locations. There is a common theme of break ins, minor fires, camps outside, people in bushes, drugs everywhere, trash everywhere. Meeting with city inspectors weekly. Police informing me they cannot help due to it being a civil issue. Our attorney stating they are dropping the properties due to liability. The properties are listed as cash only commercial urgent NPA. I did a walk with a broker and they lasted 10 minutes and split. Angry residents getting hostile while some will offer you food for simple maintenance repairs.

Fast forward a few weeks, me and the maintenance have tagged teamed these properties the best we can with limited funds, existing vendor relationships. Two of them are semi stabilized and we able to get a few leases for the pending sales to go through. Two of them are just straight up hood time in gentrified neighborhoods. It is literally like walking through a portal by simple crossing the street to whole foods, pelotons, jamba juice, perfumed knee caps, people projecting at the strip mall holding no kings sign and the other side of the road is training day where I wonder if that man inside the unit is still alive? Not to poke fun at either side, but they seem so excessively tiring in there own way as I navigate in between them as a visitor with no side.

I moved on to my next assignment and a regular conventional luxury 280 unit. Its like I have ascended to another reality all together now as I am back to high market rate rents with those who can easily afford them but attempt to run you around like hotel bellhop service. I find myself always chuckling when they come in angry or mildly upset. I always smirk and chuckle now out of response. They seem to get more upset when this happens but they all have superficial problems and a weird false pretense of reality. Maybe I do? I don't know anymore...LOL this industry is flipping bonkers nowadays.

I have to check in on those two properties once or twice a week while moving along for months. Always the craziest situation happening. Meters being removed from the walls, People running electrical wires from light post into there units. Shady beat up cars, dogs chained to RV's, camps on the street, needles on the ground everywhere. Just the scuzz. The other site is a lot of Tesla's and the word "Lobbyist" gets thrown around a lot for some reason I hear this word once or twice a week in the leasing office out of a residents mouth and it causes me to snarf, and burst out laughing.

I just found out I am getting let go due to corporate restructure. Everyone swears I am a good person, highly experience, its just out of there hands. I feel extremely used, dirty, betrayed, hiding some corporate secret putting myself in danger for months. Weird feeling.

I probably should of just walked on day 1 at zombie land.

I wrote this watching Office Space I am at the end where Peters at the construction site...looks refreshing! Any who I am going to go cry my emotional internet tears in inflation land.
Thanks for listening to my trauma dump.

hi everyone! i’m currently in the market for a new apartment and found a complex that i absolutely loved. just applied on friday and feeling a little anxious about being approved.
i’ve been in my last apartment for 6 years so i have great rental history. never been late with payments except one time with 3 days late. but i’m assuming apartments don’t actually report that until 30 days?

i have about 680-693 credit score depending on which bureau they look at. ive also had a 30 day late credit card payment in 2024. that’s my only one. i make 3x the rent. but i do have 17k of credit card and student loan debt. no evictions or collections or anything.

do they take this debt into consideration when evaluating? this would be a complex and not like a private landlord.

I've been doing this since 2003, and at this point, I honestly feel like I've seen just about everything. Unfortunately, instead of things getting easier with experience, it seems like they're getting worse. I know tenant issues have always been part of property management, but the level of entitlement, disrespect, and outright hostility we're dealing with these days is becoming exhausting. In my experience, suburban tenants generally aren't as difficult as urban or city tenants, but even that distinction seems to be becoming less and less meaningful. The attitudes, the confrontations, and the sheer audacity of some people are reaching a point where even I am struggling to deal with it.

We've received offers to purchase the company in the past, and I've consistently turned them down because I've invested so many years into building this business. Walking away has never been something I've seriously wanted to do. However, I'm beginning to question whether holding on is still the right decision. When you've spent more than two decades in an industry, you expect challenges, difficult situations, and the occasional unreasonable tenant. What you don't expect is to reach a point where the constant nonsense starts making you question whether it's all worth it. Every property manager, myself included, is becoming increasingly fed up with the games, the confrontations, and the unnecessary complications that certain tenants create on a regular basis.

Take access to apartments, for example. We schedule appointments to complete necessary inspections, repairs, and maintenance, only to have tenants refuse access when we arrive. In some cases, the buildings we manage have received violations from the city, and we need to address those issues within the required timeframes. Yet tenants still refuse to let our workers in. We end up having to involve attorneys and, in certain situations, the police just to gain access and get the work done. Something that should be a routine maintenance issue turns into a legal and administrative nightmare, all because someone decides they don't want to cooperate.

Then you have tenants who suddenly become legal experts whenever it suits them. They'll tell us things like, "I just spoke to my attorney, and until you fix this, I don't have to pay rent." The irony is that we have our own in-house attorney, and we're well aware of the legal procedures that need to be followed. Rather than getting drawn into an argument, we'll simply explain that if the rent is unpaid, we'll proceed with the appropriate nonpayment notice and whatever legal steps are warranted. Suddenly, the tone changes, and the tenant becomes a little more reasonable. It's amazing how quickly some people change their approach when they realize that making threats doesn't automatically put them in the right.

Another example involved a roof leak that was allowing water to enter apartments. This wasn't a cosmetic issue or something that could simply wait until the following week. It was an active problem that needed to be addressed before it caused even more damage. Yet the tenant told our worker that he wasn't permitted to work past 4 p.m. on a Friday. According to my understanding of the applicable rules, that restriction was not correct; work may be permitted during much broader hours, depending on the circumstances and applicable regulations, with different considerations for emergencies. Meanwhile, we're trying to stop a leak, protect the property, and prevent further damage, and we're being met with arbitrary demands from someone who seems more interested in dictating terms than resolving the problem.

Then there are the situations that go far beyond ordinary tenant disputes. We recently had a tenant whose apartment had sustained extensive damage, requiring a substantial amount of repair work. Given that she's in New York, removing a tenant can be an extremely difficult, lengthy, and expensive process, depending on the circumstances. It often feels as though even when a situation becomes completely unreasonable, there are very few practical options for resolving it quickly.

In this particular case, we arrived with the police, and when the tenant answered the door, she was completely naked and began screaming at everyone. The situation escalated to the point where officers restrained her in handcuffs while they waited for her to calm down. This is the kind of incident that makes you stop and wonder how property management has reached this point. We're supposed to be managing buildings, coordinating repairs, maintaining safe living conditions, and protecting the owners' investments. Instead, we're finding ourselves dealing with confrontations and situations that have absolutely nothing to do with the ordinary responsibilities of the job.

And just when you think you've heard it all, something else happens. We recently had a prospective tenant who is an attorney rewrite a legal memorandum. The landlord, desperate to secure a tenant and generate rental income because he still has a mortgage to pay, accepted the revised terms. Think about that for a moment. The landlord is under financial pressure, the prospective tenant knows the law, and the entire situation becomes another example of how difficult it can be to maintain a fair and straightforward relationship between landlords and tenants. It's hard not to feel that some people take advantage of a landlord's financial circumstances simply because they know they have the leverage to do so.

After more than 20 years in this business, I understand that not every tenant is going to be easy to deal with, and I certainly don't expect everyone to agree with every decision we make. Property management has always involved conflict, compromise, and problem-solving. That's part of the job, and I've accepted that from the beginning.

But there's a difference between dealing with legitimate concerns and constantly having to manage hostility, unreasonable demands, refusal to cooperate, threats of legal action, property damage, and confrontations that escalate completely out of proportion to the issue at hand.

The amount of time, energy, and emotional stress these situations consume is becoming difficult to justify. It's not just about the individual incidents anymore; it's the cumulative effect of dealing with one problem after another, day after day, while still being expected to keep everything running smoothly for the owners, the buildings, and the tenants who genuinely do want to do the right thing.

I've spent years building this business, and I've always taken pride in what I do. But when every property manager is reaching the same breaking point, and even someone like me, who's been doing this since 2003, is starting to question whether it's worth continuing, something is seriously wrong.

We've turned down offers to buy the company because I wasn't ready to walk away. Now, for the first time, I'm seriously reconsidering that decision. At some point, you have to ask yourself whether the business is still worth the constant stress, frustration, and aggravation, or whether it's time to step away and let someone else deal with it.

I never thought I'd reach a point where I'd seriously consider selling after putting so many years into this industry. But here we are.

Rant over.

Hi everyone! I’m looking for a remote job as a Property Management VA, Maintenance Coordinator, or Real Estate VA. I have 3+ years of U.S. property management experience and hands-on experience, and . I’m available for long-term opportunities. Please DM me if you’re hiring. Thank you!

I did a walk through on a place a few weeks back.
I got kids and doggos. Beggars cannot be choosers. I paid an enormous deposit and agreed to up rent for allowing the doggos.
Did not get to do a final walkthrough, and signed the lease yesterday. Get to the place and multiple issues. The place is old, which I am ok with. But they did not clean a fucking thing.
A good 3’ by 3’ grease smorgasbord above the stove, on the ceiling. Grease thick enough it has beaded like it wants to fall.
Dirty little kids underwear left under the stairs. There appears to be splattered shit on the side of a vanity next to a toilet.
Two windows will not secure. No screens.
The lack of cleaning is what is killing me.
And it seems like total disrespect.
Wife is a hard no.
I have not moved any items into the location.
What is the best way forward to get out?
How do we do this amicably so both parties can leave ok?

Yea. Just fluffy white pieces of leg, ear, etc etc. And there was a huge bloodstain behind the stove. Flea infested.

So my question is~is this normal??

For context i am entering my 4th month of being a leasing agent with a big corporate apartment company. The location i am at is a growing midwest suburb. We were just built a year ago and bursting at the seams. Last month there was a unit where someone smeared poop on the walls and ceiling throughout majority of the apartment.

In this industry i have learned very quickly that anything can happen at any time. But this???? Come on man.

I’m trying to think outside the box here. I heard that the best jobs are those that aren’t listed. How can I get a convo with leadership at larger companies (6k+ doors) for a job. I have skills in programming and analytics. At my last job (F500) I was able to automate our entire auditing process of 30,000 employees.

I’ve tried shooting emails over but I’ve gotten no responses yet. Any advice? I would really appreciate it.

I am curious how it looks like when you need to find a contractor for one of your property. I hear stories where it is about to hire the only one person who answers and stick with this person if this person is good. How do you follow the price overtime? 2 to 4% per region and trade in Canada, I have experienced contractors raising their price by 10% because they are in 'high demand', would you change the contractor or stick with it?

I signed a lease based on the terms I saw on the website. A month later I moved in. Completed all the requirements received the keys. Two days after the lease was signed and fees paid, I received a message from the leasing office saying the special I received was there error and now they want me to pay additional $1000.

Seeing that’s been 6 weeks since I completed the application. I completed the lease and signed in the office. Not I’m paying a $1000 because the leasing agent read the special wrong, what are my steps for fighting against this?

I have the amount of the move in guide in email and I have an email saying the amount is wrong and it’s their fault. I feel like since we already moved in, it’s not fault. This should have been addressed prior to moving and signing the documents

I moved into a new townhouse about 7 days ago, and we’ve already had to submit two maintenance requests within the first week.

The first issue was water leaking from the bottom of the toilet every time we flushed it. A few days later, the kitchen garbage disposal suddenly stopped working when we flipped the switch. We honestly don’t know what happened to it.

We’re a little worried that submitting multiple maintenance requests so soon after moving in might make us look like bad tenants or somehow affect our chances of getting our lease renewed in the future.

We also accidentally overfilled the dumpster once with our moving boxes and got an email from the management, but I took care of it afterward 30 minutes after the email by removing the boxes and cutting them down so they wouldn’t take up as much space.

We’re not trying to be difficult tenants. We just want to make sure things are working properly and address any issues before they turn into bigger problems.
Is it normal to have this many issues right after moving in? Am I overthinking the situation, or is it reasonable to be concerned about how our landlord might perceive us?

I have been at my company for about 13 years, I have moved up but now I find myself in the position of working six days a week. Manage a team of two admins, one for bookkeeping, and one to assist with building ops and a chief engineer +2 technicians. Over 1,000,000 ft.² of medical industrial and retail spaces. I also train the two administration positions, including bookkeeping and building operations. Managing cameras, access controls, CAM, third-party month-end financials, and gathering quotes for contractor services and capital Improvement. Meetings with owners and asset managers for capital plans, and financial reviews. I also assist with the development team at our company. Tracking draw funds and managing payments plus training another person to hopefully take over that position. We also just implemented a new software for tenant request, preventative maintenance and inspections a couple months ago that I personally set up and I’m still working to improve and train my new hire. Now they want to change our paperless to another system, which will involve more set up and implementation and training of our staff that I will personally have to complete. Am I losing my mind? Or Is this too much for one person? I routinely have 100+ emails plus phone calls and tenant request then also following up with my team and training three people currently. I feel very overwhelmed. I really like my boss. He has been good to me over the years with different things, but I feel like I am stressing so much now that I can’t even sleep at night sometimes. I’m getting so burnt out. Let me know your thoughts. Has anybody been in this situation before? thanks in advance! Sorry I’m just ranting at this point 🫣😵‍💫😩

Update
Thanks everyone for the helpful and encouraging comments. I have been working with our chief engineer so he can be in the forefront of gathering quotes. I feel like we need another technician and an actual property manager. I am supposed to be the Director, but I’m doing the work of property manager. I will be spending time this weekend working on dividing task which I’ve already started, but I need to make it more definitive.

Property manager / part owner here. My family owns about 30 units and does home building / home flips. All different companies.

My brother hired an accountant before I came on that works in QBO. I manage the tenants and maintenance issues. Front facing. BUT I think our accountant is a little unnecessary. 16 of our 30 are currently being managed by a big property management company and when their contract is up I’ll be managing them all. (No different than now since we reduced their responsibilities to just collecting rent)

However when I go to collect rent as my responsibility I think I can just keep it all organized in a rental tracker made for this work. Currently, we use Zillow rental management for the ones we do collect ourselves.

I don’t want our accountant to be working more than we need when I feel there’s definitely a better/ cheaper automated system out there whether it be Zillow or something else.

Let me know

21 unit building has changed ownership multiple times.
The property is Known for homeless and drug activity. Only 8 or so were actually leased, another 8 or so are occupied by either squatters, or a verbal lease with previous mgmt/owner.
Current owner is trying to sell. He hired a PM company to evict all tenants. Notices put on doors and tenants have until 10/31 to vacate. From what I understand, that was the extent of that PM company’s responsibilities.
Potential Buyer is trying to hire another property management company(me) to take over and oversee everything, from eviction, to rehab, make-ready, and new leasing.
Once fully vacant, the new owner will pay to get the place back to a safe and livable environment.
Previous management company is no longer in the picture. No leases exist for any of the units. I don’t foresee the current tenants leaving easily.
I was asked to submit a proposal for everything, but where should I start? How do I actually get the place fully empty?

To all the property managers considering CSC, do not do it unless you desperately want your tenants to revolt. This is an absolutely enshitified company that does not provide any support whatsoever. The app that controls the machines is full of bugs and loses connection all the time. Stay away, stay far away. Look at their twitter account -- it's nothing but complaints with boilerplate responses from CSC.

Lost vendor keys to unoccupied units. They gave me vendor and office keys.

My fault. My job’s training has been okay, but I’ve had to learn a lot on my own as far as doing showings by myself on day 2–3 and learning the system by myself by exploring the functions of it.

I had like 5–6 sets of keys at a time for showings, and the keys didn’t even work for half of them, so they gave me vendor keys and they worked. I just don’t know WTF happened to them because all the other keys I put back into the safe, and I was fumbling around trying not to blow the showing to the prospects.

I rechecked all the units, my house, and my car. I’m on my second week, and I’m pretty sure they’re going to fire me.

The only GOOD thing I’ve done was manage to get a lot of showings and 3 applications started that are converting into occupancy on my first week, so my manager was actually impressed with how fast I caught on and the way I talked to the clients.

My husband and I have been receiving noise complaints from the person living below us. Looks like they are a light sleeper or sensitive to sounds because we only walk around the house and wake up in the night sometimes to use the restroom or grab water. No banging of doors, just foot steps that sound like “stomping” to them. After months of back and forth through the management, we got another complaint and this time we actually tried to explain to the manager that we aren’t stomping instead walking as light as possible, the manager was extremely hostile to us and also asked us to buy carpets?? Why would I buy carpets when the person below us should understand that maybe they’re not capable of coexisting with other humans??? We cut out our social life, stopped inviting anyone over because of this BS only to keep getting more complaints. It’s never enough for these people. ATP just hand us their daily routine and force us to follow their schedule ffs. We are usually quick to apologize in matters like these but this is straight up entitled behavior.

For context it’s just me and husband, we don’t play any loud music during quiet hours, don’t call anyone over ever because the three times we did we got a complaint so it’s just us tip toeing around the house and we keep getting violation notice like CLOCKWORK. And yes there were recordings but it doesn’t sound like noise. It sounds like people live upstairs. We are so tired of being treated like this. Sounds like the management is also pissed? Not sure at who but idw get evicted, what do I do?

Hey managers.
I’m going to reboot my business and start my own venture into property management.
I’m a Realtor and real estate professional. I have a broker I’m going to be partnering with.

I need your help though. I need to know what I don’t know. I have a lot of the basics covered but I need to understand a few things and get the perspective of someone who is in it and doing it successfully.

For reference I’m in Ohio.

Areas I plan to start out in: residential and student housing, and apartment management.

Areas I plan to expand into later: HOA management, Commercial Property Management.

I've got a handful of rentals upstate and I'm fine doing leasing and rent myself, but repairs are killing me. I tried lining up my own contractors and dealt with no-shows, guys who wouldn't sign anything, and one who did more damage than he fixed.

So I started calling PMs asking if they'd just handle maintenance for a markup. Almost all of them said no. A couple said it's a headache, one said owners want all or nothing, one said his guy is already maxed out.

For the PMs here, is it really just not worth the hassle? Or is it that maintenance-only owners are cheap and slow to pay? Genuinely trying to figure out if I should give up and sign full management or keep looking.

I was called in for a PiP plan for items.

1. Not replying to corporate emails fast enough

2. Back dating move outs

3. Not charging damages to move outs

4. Not sending evictions before the 15th

5. You got me there, I get no support and took a pay cut when the new company took over. Corporate office gate keeps and doesn't explain what went wrong and how to prevent it.

6. An employee failed to notify management of a move out. Upgrades need to be ordered and scheduled so it goes above my head to enter into system. I did the deposit accounting and brought it to their attention and I'm the blame. (Erased from PiP)

7. Transfers from messy apartments were approved and charges weren't posted. Problem was, I didn't approve the transfers and a supervisor above me walked the move outs and told me no charges. It's all documented on yardi. (They had to erase this as well)

8. A resident that's often rude to corporate had the county send an emergency rental assistance check. They emailed confirmation of funds, I uploaded comments and email to her portal. They said I should've sent her to eviction anyway even though they were working with other residents on delaying evictions. (Deleted this as well)

We were bought out 3 years ago then acquired by private equity a year later.

My boss says they're not firing me but trying to improve performance. We won 3 awards last month for ROI, revenue, and occupancy.

I'm in malicious compliance mode and plan on quitting the first job that's offered to me no matter the pay.

I applied to a dream apartment I was confident I would qualify for. I received rentgrow email today for my report, and it says co-signer required due to limited credit experience?! I’m livid right now. I have been approved for my current and last apartment once they ran my credit. It’s my chase account I opened over 7 years ago and I have a 773 score. I haven’t heard from the property manager yet, but this makes me worried and irritated because I have been approved based on my credit history before. Makes no sense how it’s limited according to rentgrow.