What are property managers required to do by law?
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What are property managers required to do by law?
We have a property manager and they have let our house fall into disrepair over the years. We only know this because we demanded they go out and send us an inspection of the house. We now have repairs that are more along the line of having to replace the damaged area – our back stairs instead of doing upkeep repairs. They have also allowed tw2 renters now to walk-out without paying their last month’s rent, and never followed up with trying to recover the losses despite our request for them to do so. This most recent tenant now owes us also for $5000 damages caused by the tenant not continuing to care for the house during their last 30 days in the house they left without giving notice, so they were still on the hook for the house for 30 more days. We have been trying to sell the house since we moved because of a military move 6 years ago, and have rented it out in the meantime. The house is falling apart because the property managers weren’t keeping better watch over it, and this is hurting the resale-ability and rentability of the property.
Asked on February 12, 2017 under Real Estate Law, Missouri
Answers:
SJZ, Member, New York Bar / FreeAdvice Contributing Attorney
Answered 7 years ago | Contributor
The "law" does not impose any obligations on property managers; it is a contractual relationship, and the obligation(s) of the property manager are defined by the contract or agreement between them and the property owner. The property manager must do whatever the contract/agreement says they must--no more and no less.
Therefore, you need to look to what the agreement between you and the property mangers was: if they failed to live up to what they agreed to do, you could sue them based on breach of contract (i.e. violating their obligations) and/or fraud (lying about what they could or would do) to recover any losses their failure(s) caused you.
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