Realty Network Inc

Realty Network has been managing my property for about 5 years, and doing so with excellence. I found them through another highly rated property management company that did not service my area. RN is proactive, very quick to follow up on requests and has a great online portal that provides financial information on demand. Excellent all the way around and very happy after 5 years with them.

We were initially happy with James. He was responsive to our calls when we were trying to get the property rented. He was a nice person and reasonably easy to work with. However, once the place was rented, Realty Network did the bare minimum required for the job. They were irresponsible, hired unreliable contractors to complete work, and provided little to no oversight of the work being done. We may as well have saved the 10% a month they charged us and made the calls to service providers ourselves from across the country as we would have ended up with the same results. There are many examples of how this company failed to responsibly care for our property while we were away. Here are a few indicative ones: 1. The first issue had to do with receiving our first month's rent from the tenants. The tenants moved in January 1, 2012 and paid for the entire 8 months in cash up front directly to Realty Network front before moving in. When we still hadn't received the check from Realty Network by the end of January I emailed James and he said that I never sent him my mailing address to mail the check. I subsequently pulled up the email I sent him a month earlier in mid-December 2011 with that information and forwarded that email to him. In what would become a regular pattern in our dealings with this company, James did not acknowledge his mistake, just said he'd forward the information to his accounting department. 2. The sink started leaking and James called a plumber to fix it. The plumber said that the faucet needed to be replaced so James called us and told us. We said that was fine, but to please be sure that it was replaced with a faucet that looked nice in our kitchen, even if that meant spending up a bit on the replacement. James said that he understood and would make sure this happened. When we got back to the house in August, not only was the faucet cheap and unattractive, but the finish didn't match the rest of the kitchen. I realize that we may not see eye to eye on what is attractive, but something as basic as making sure the finish matched the rest of the hardware is a fairly basic task that was apparently too much to ask of Realty Network. Again, when we notified them of this issue, they didn't acknowledge their role in the problem, just forwarded us along to the plumber to sort out the issue. 3. Realty Network was suposed to have the house cleaned before we moved back in. They did so, but again hired a shoddy provider. When we got back and my son walked on the floor with bare feet his feet turned black as if the floors hadn't been cleaned in a year. We notified Realty Network of the problem and they, again, refused to take responsibility telling us that the cleaners said that they did clean the floors. End of discussion. 4. Our house has antique refurbished storm windows on it so, before moving out, we asked that Realty Network hire someone to professionally remove them when the tenants wanted the window AC units installed. We then receive an email from James saying that one of the storm windows had broken and needed to be repaired. When we asked some questions it turned out that the "professional" who removed the storm windows to install the AC units, didn't remove them at all. He just propped them up and installed the AC units under them, allowing water to catch in the frame and causing the wood to rot. We had been very clear that we wanted the storm windows removed to install the units. This is not only basic home maintenance but leaving them propped up there is hazardous to people walking below! As usual, Realty Network pretend like it was not their responsibility to pass on the instructions that we had very clearly given to them on this issue. We had even included a clause on this issue in the lease! James' response was "I don't know why he didn't take them off." I know why... because James failed to tell him to do so as I asked James to do...explicitly. 5. We told Realty Management to go ahead and have the storm window fixed when they initially told us about it in early July. By the time we got back in late-August not only was it still not fixed, but it was missing. They told us that they gave it to the shoddy contractor who had made the error of not removing them i the first place - even though we told James to please not use that contractor any longer for work on our home. We then had to chase the contractor to bring it back. This took several weeks and when he finally did return it, it showed up incomplete. 6. It took Realty Network over a month to return our keys and the balance of our operating account to us after we moved back in. They told us that they were waiting for an invoice from the same shoddy contractor who broke our storm window before they could close our account. When we told them that we'd like the keys back asap regardless, they gave the keys to the same shoddy contractor to give to us without asking us for consent to give our key out. This was probably the thing that upset us the most about the experience. In our view giving your clients' keys out to contractors without their permission is unacceptable. When the contractor did show up with the key it was, of course, a key to someone else's house. We then had to chase him down again to get the right key. In short, using this company is more troublesome than doing the property management yourself. They hire unreliable contractors, they do not oversee work done on the property while you are away, they don't take responsibility for their errors, and as demonstrated by the key issue described above, they are unprofessional and irresponsible with their clients' homes and property.