| rev:text
| - Kathy managed the rental of a home that I owned for 18 months. Initially, she was generally pretty quick to respond and appeared to be on top of things. This deteriorated a lot over time. In hindsight, I wonder why I didn't terminate my contract with her much sooner.
There were several occurrences where she was behind on monthly accounting reports by two or more months. Also, there were several times where my check was not mailed to me on time with no reason given. More than once, I was told that it was already in the mail only to see it arrive with the postmark date of the day I inquired about where it was.
At one point, the refrigerator had to be replaced. She paid the vendor twice from my funds by accident. Because she was behind on accounting reports, I wasn't able to see that she paid them twice. This was causing me to not get my rent check, which I kept asking about and she kept saying she'd mail it. When she finally looked into it, she discovered the double payment but made me wait for her to get the refund from the vendor before disbursing rent to me.
In December, a neighbor to the rental called and alerted me to the fact that he had recently seen the people living there move out pretty much overnight and a new guy move in. The neighbor also stated that within a week of the new guy moving in, several police cars were at the house for about five hours serving a search warrant. I contacted Kathy to inquire about tenants changing and also brought up the search warrant. She stated that to her knowledge, tenants had not changed, subletting was not allowed and that she'd look into it. After a week of not hearing back, I sent her a follow up email and never heard back.
Rent checks came in for a couple more months and suddenly stopped and she could not get in contact with the lessee so she posted an abandonment notice. With no response, we got possession of the property back. Kathy entered the house first and determined that there was indeed nobody living there anymore. I drove over the following day and had a look. The refrigerator was filled with rotten food and maggots because the power had been off since December (it was now the end of March). All of the food in the cabinets expired in December. I found a carbon copy of the search warrant on the kitchen counter. Police seized 25 bales of marijuana in December and arrested the sub letter.
Based on the expiration date of the food left behind, postmark date of everything in the mailbox (December), the date of the water shutoff notice still on the door (December), and everything else left behind (debris from the marijuana bales from the police search, in addition to other trash, clothes, bedding, etc), it's a very safe assumption to say that nobody lived in the house after the warrant was served.
I'll never know for certain exactly what happened but I've come to the following assumption: The lessees sublet to a drug dealer and he paid them for several months up front. They proceeded to make monthly payments as if they were still living there. They were not immediately aware that he had been arrested so they kept paying. Once they either ran out of his pre-paid money and / or discovered that he was locked up, they stopped paying rent.
Since I never got any response from Kathy about her findings from checking into sub-letting, I assume that she didn't actually check into anything. I don't think she could have specifically prevented the sub-letting. I do believe that some due diligence after I contacted her about it would have revealed that there was nobody at all living there, which would have put the property back in my hands 3 months sooner, avoided a refrigerator full of maggots and a yard full of weeds.
I sent her a 30 day contract termination notice on April 5. It took her until July 18 to send me my accounting reports for January 2014 through July 2014. I didn't get my check for the balance of my account until July 29. I was told the check was mailed on July 25th, it was postmarked July 28th, the day I inquired about it.
I even sent an email to the President of West USA Realty to tell him of my experience, I didn't get a response. I understand that the president of such a company is a busy person and probably doesn't have time to read such complaints, but I couldn't find any other email addresses for people beyond agents.
I got the place cleaned up and I sold it. It brought a smile to my face to deny Kathy the chance to earn the commission on the sale of my house.
Obviously I had a very poor experience. I saved every email exchange with Kathy from the very beginning. The facts above are facts, not exaggerations or false claims. I believe the assumptions are reasonable based on the facts available. Based on my experience, I'd steer clear of Kathy, The Gondella Team, and West USA Realty.
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