Yelp really should consider allowing a user to submit a 0 star review! From recent personal experience, these property managers will not "own" anything and will constantly do the minimum to put the ball back in "your court". You will never call them and have them answer your phone call. You ALWAYS will have to leave a message and then wait for a call back FROM A PRIVATE NUMBER. They purposely make it so you are only at their beck & call, never the other way around.
In our case, they required a 60 day notice to end the lease. Our initial lease was for 12 months but at the end of that 1st year we had the option to either convert to a month-to-month lease with an added $75-100/month in rent or agree to another 12 month lease. We agreed to another 12 month lease, valid thru 6.30.15.
They told us in person (Jim & Donna) when signing the initial lease that if we were to give a written 60 day notice AND be cooperative with allowing future potential tenants to walk thru the home prior to vacating that it wouldn't be a huge deal to not fulfill all 12 months (or in our case, because we renewed, all 24 months of the lease.) The tenant that was vacating the rental that we were moving into was leaving in the middle of a 12 month lease (for a new nursing job on the East Coast) and he helped them show us the home prior to moving anything out and it sealed the deal. I am sure it is MUCH easier to re-rent a home when it is furnished and while somebody is living there. The problem is this property management company looks at a tenant as rent insurance. At the end of the day, if I give a 60 day notice and you don't find a replacement renter within those 60 days, that's on property management. Not the soon-to-be-ex-renter. Renters are not some form of an insurance policy on a positive cash flow for the properties you manage. That is YOUR JOB, not mine! My job is to pay rent by the 1st and give you a 60 day notice when I am ready to move on, per the lease.
On March 31st, 2015 my finance sent our 60 day notice letter, intending to vacate at the end of May 2015, 1 month early from the end of the 12 month renewal. The 60 day Notice was not acknowledged or responded to for over 1 month!!
In the beginning of May we started to receive sporadic emails and phone calls from them hoping we would be available to allow a possible tenant to walk thru the home, sure, no problem on our end. We helped out by showing the home to 3 different people they found that were somewhat interested it in and we thought nothing more. After all, we gave the required 60 day notice that would exclude the 24th & final month of our obligation (June 2015) and heard nothing back. We learned through dealing with these people that no news is good news and we treated the situation as such.
Well what would you know! The end of May 2015 rolls around and we vacate. As instructed, keys & garage door openers left inside the home on the kitchen counter. Doors locked. The beginning of June comes and we don't pay rent on June 2015, shouldn't come as much of a surprise as they should have been aware of that 2 months ago when they received our notice! Our security deposit, which is equal to 1 months rent, has not been returned to us by the middle of June. In the state of Arizona, property managers are required to return your security deposit within 14 days of the renter vacating the property OR provide an itemization of the items they are withholding part or all of the security deposit for. We received neither.
From here, the back & forth communication is so difficult with these people that we opted to stop screwing around with them altogether. I am sure the only profit this business actually turns is when they successfully screw a tenant out of their security deposit refund.
Next, we filed some paperwork with the Local Justice Courts. In the state of Arizona you are allowed to petition to receive up to 3 times the amount they are illegally withholding on your security deposit refund so we completed the paperwork requiring the justice court to rule in favor of a $3,300 refund (out security deposit was $1,100). We provided a copy of the email sent showing the 60 day written notice to the court and also provided the company's URL to their website to confirm that we sent it to their email, the one showing on their website. Yep, we did everything right on our end.
About 10 days later (this took place at the end of July 2015), what do you know? We receive an itemization in the mail detailing $1,090 worth of charges that would be withheld from out security deposit. Included was a cashier's check for $10.
It took 2 full months to get $10 back from these people. After they provided the itemization and $10 refund we decided that moving forward with the justice court case would result in a our word vs. theirs scenario (regarding the $1,090 in charges) so we just dropped it. Don't rent from them unless you are a real estate attorney!