Caravan Properties

Awful! Once they found a tenant for our house, they did nothing to actively manage our property. They lied to us, telling us our tenant was taking care of our property, when in reality the tenant was trashing it. They received reports the tenant had more pets than approved, yet did nothing to investigate it, so in addition to thousands of $$ in damage, we lost thousands of $$ in pet rent. Tenant was late paying rent multiple times, yet Caravan continued to let the tenant stay, accepting excuse after excuse, despite the lease and their policies saying no excuses will be accepted for late rent. Caravan even allowed the tenant to renew the lease! Caravan had an incentive to keep a late-paying tenant because Caravan got to keep all the late fees and the lost discount in rent, on top of the 11% of rent we paid in "management fees." Whenever we complained about late rent, Caravan told us "better to have a late paying tenant than no paying tenant," or to show the tenant kindness because of all the sob stories (which turned out to be just stories). No inspections at all (which we were surprised to find out they never inspected the property, given that they told us the tenant was taking care of our house), no "security deposit," and discounted rent, all of which created incentives for the tenant to not report problems, or to minimize problems that couldn't be hidden. Our neighbors gave us an earful on what a horrible neighbor the tenant was, which Caravan would have known had Caravan "recruited" our neighbors to be its "eyes and ears," as Caravan said it would do, but obviously didn't do. We found out our tenant was a hoarder, and there were mice and cockroaches. Our tenant NEVER cleaned the house! We had to completely renovate our house before we could move in, which meant we lived in a hotel and had to put our property into temporary storage. Hail damage the tenant was required to report, but didn't. Water damage from a toilet overflow did get reported, but Caravan lied to us about the extent of the damage. So many things went wrong with this experience, but what really bothers us is that Caravan knew the tenant was causing damage to our house, as they increased the reserves on our account from $1,600 to $10,000 to cover costs of repairs! No advance notice of this, and then when confronted, the owner of Caravan said it was just a "strategy" because the cost of repairs was unknown. In reality, Caravan did know, as $10,000 was pretty close to what the cost of repairs were. I almost threw up when I saw all the pictures of the damage. We found additional damage. Interestingly enough, Caravan doesn't require a "security deposit," instead the tenant pays an extra month's rent at the beginning of the lease for an "option to renew" the lease the following year, then hopes to get a "performance bonus" at the end of the lease for taking care of the house. Do yourself a favor and AVOID this company! The tenant refuses to pay what is owed to fix all the damage, and Caravan also refuses to pay for the tenant's damage, and also refuses to pay for the loss of pet rent and out of pocket expenses we incurred because of Caravan's epic fails.