Abacus Avenue Property Management

I hired Amateur Avenue (AA) in about March of '14 to manage an occupied property. AA sounded very reassuring and smooth on the phone in explaining their capabilities, even saying they visit properties quarterly. They did perform well . . . when things ran perfectly, such as the tenants paying the rent, but these are not reasons to hire a management company. After months of working with AA they characterized themselves as incompetent and untrustworthy. Every challenge explained here is also met with a sound solution. Many points can be discussed, but I'll limit this to two botched evictions, each with unique errors. It turned out the property was occupied by horrible tenants grossly failing to pay rent and maintain the property. Two rounds of evictions happened with these tenants eventually resulting in their eviction after much unnecessary effort. For the first eviction AA made critical errors, which surprised me given I asked Marc Palumbo explicitly if he had executed evictions before and he had. This will prove to be like saying one knows how to drive a car and then opening the trunk to put the key in the ignition. Errors included not pursuing attorney and late fees. Marc stated these were excluded because my lease did not allow for these. I had a standard lease of the State of NJ providing for collecting such fees under Sections 7 and 8. This also demonstrated he didn't look at the lease. Because of NJ tenant law if a tenant is evicted in court the tenant can usually prevent this IF they make payment for all due rent. Marc never explained this, leading me to think if we won we could actually evict. Marc knew what my understanding was and here's how I know: we had multiple conversations about the 1st eviction where I stated I would RATHER have these tenants out THAN collect rent because it was clear by their behavior they would never act responsibly, becoming worse before better. Yet at no time did Marc ever contradict my understanding. More incriminating was when we won the judgement Marc called me. I said to reject their offer of the rent and evict them, but he said he had to call the lawyer to ask if this was possible. He called me back saying we could not since once we accept the money we cannot evict (not accurate). If Marc understood this then calling the lawyer back would never have been necessary. NOTE: I have these phone calls recorded. The 2nd eviction had more mistakes. AA still did not include attorney and late fees in the claim. Worse AA had no awareness of what was happening at the property. The tenants neglected yard maintenance to the point the Township became very involved calling me in SEP and knowing more of what was happening at my property than AA did. Before the warrant for removal was served the tenants were gone. I determined this without any confrontation by calling the power company on DEC 1ST to insure the power was on for the sake of heating the property. The power company verified the tenants had their account closed on NOV 20th. I also passed by the property and observed papers accumulating, an empty driveway, and no lights on. I then looked through a window and saw it was empty (except for vast amounts of trash). AA stated they avoided visiting the property to avoid a confrontation (yet somehow I avoided a confrontation with mimimal effort, and I'm not even an expert in the world of property management). Also, the property had been sitting for 11 days with the thermostat off. Does anybody see a problem with this? Furthermore, crucial time was lost in returning this property to the market. On DEC 2nd I called AA for maintenance on a broken water heater. Marc Palumbo asked why this was urgent (acting condescending since he was happy about this). I explained I needed to get the property ready to put on the market for another management company. I was still paying AA to manage this property and I have emails proving this, hence I called them. Marc said I should have the new management company handle this. A sour grapes attitude, such as this, makes AA worthy of the title Amateur Avenue. Since it was explained to AA weeks before they would be fired Marc held onto the hope that I would stay with AA, even though I never encouraged this. I've seen other people with this attitude, but eventually they graduate fifth grade and become better human beings. Avoid AA at all costs. They cannot deliver and have shown no potential to someday do so. Individual realtors working for large, professionalized real estate companies can manage properties far better, but vet them carefully. I know this from doing much research and execution in this field.

It costs 12% of the rent of the property. They are pretty responsive to fill my property really, really quick, they got a really good tenant for me and they handle other things like collecting the rent and everything. They have an online portal to manage it. For property management, their prices ranges from 8% up to 12% and they're 12% so they are high.