While I had my share of troubles renting a place in Bay Area, I should say that renting out my house in San Diego has been quite an interesting endeavor.
Considering that we will not have time to manage the property directly, I hired an agent to lease out the house and manage it for me. She’s the same agent that has been managing Michael’s parents’ two homes in San Diego, and Michael told me that she came recommended by others.
Michael took all the photos of the house, and I wrote up the description of the house for her to advertise on various sites, including Craigslist. When I checked the craigslist.com listing, I realized that she did not include the major components that most people would be interested in knowing, such as square footage, despite the fact that I included all that information in my write-up to her. So I wrote her again and asked her to change it. Then I realized that any time there was someone interested, she would always ask me when I was going to be home to show it. I did give her a key after all, and she was supposed to show the house. But she never did it once. I did not mind it, as I did want to check out the people who might live in my house.
After I decided on the tenants, my agent said that it’s important for them to send the safety deposit in cashier’s check to her. I figured that it’s a sign of her caution and responsibility. After she deducted her fee, she wrote a check to me from her property management office’s account, and the check bounced! I asked her why, and she said that it’s an account for several properties she managed, and it could be due to the fact that one tenant’s rent check is late or bounced. Then when I met with her in my home (the 2nd time she even came to my house), I asked her to double-check the key I gave her to see if it fits. She could not find the key in her big key train. Eventually I had to find it for her.
Feeling nervous about her ability to deal with the cleaners and coordinating with the tenants after Michael and I are gone from San Diego, I wrote her an email and made a list of things to be particularly careful about, including checking the cleanliness of the house before letting the cleaners go (as my tenants are very much into cleanliness). She then wrote me back and said that she felt hurt by the email, because she “has been doing it for a long time” and that she’s “good at her work”. – I was thinking to myself, “wouldn’t that be something for me to judge?” I would have fired her were it not for the fact that I really don’t have the time to identify another agent during this transition period.
When I mentioned it to a friend of mine, he said, “we forget how spoiled we are by interacting with Ph.D. scientists, until we have to deal with others.” – I was surprised to hear him say that, considering that as an IP lawyer, he frequently complains how difficult PhD scientists are! He clarified further by saying, “Yes, PhD scientists can be really difficult to deal with, but at least they get done what they are supposed to do in their territories.”
Indeed my experience with renting (both directions) as well as interacting with the support staff in our healthcare system has made me perhaps more snobbish than I would have liked.
1 comment:
If you feel the agent is imcompetent, you should fire her and find another one. I think it's better to go through the brief discomfort of firing someone and finding someone new than have to deal with the discomfort of working with someone incompetent.
I guess, of course, you risk hiring someone who is equally or even more incompetent, but you can screen those people out pretty easily. You have more tolerance than I have.
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