[Vent] Not enjoying this landlord business so far

It's been less than two weeks since we had tenants move into our old house. We were really excited about it, because we really didn't want to sell it if we didn't have to and it's an ideal rental. We're hoping this will be just our first rental and we can start to get ahead with property. But it's just been trouble from the start!

First there's the annoying property manager. She showed through potential tenants without telling us (original one had cancelled so she went through with another), pushed hard for us to sign up the tenants we weren't interested in, rather than the ones we wanted, and in the end she signed a lease on our behalf without even showing it to us first. I got really annoyed at her lack of communication and in the end called the owner/manager of the agency. And now I'm thinking I must be in her bad books, because she doesn't call me anymore, she calls DH. Even after we've both asked her not too - he works maintenance in a glass factory and can never hear her on the phone, whereas I'm home or at least able to talk on the phone. She hasn't got the message yet.

Before the tenants moved in, I figured I'd write them a little note just letting them know what days the bins go out, and how to work the water heater. It's gas, and by the kitchen sink is a little panel. Basically, when the panel is off, cold water will come out of the hot tap. If you want to do dishes, turn it on, set the temp as high as it goes (50), turn on the hot water tap and off you go. Having a shower? Turn on the panel, set it somewhere between 40 & 43, turn on the hot water tap and there you go. These tenants and the agent apparently don't understand it, because we're having nothing but trouble!

The agent called DH and said the tenants were having a problem with the water temp in the shower, and apparently the cold water taps don't work. He couldn't talk so got me to call her back. I found out they'd been trying to use the hot and cold taps in the shower - how and why, I don't know - so I explained how the thermostat thingy works and she said that's fine. As to the cold water tap, it's slow in the bathroom, laundry and kitchen, there's very low water pressure. But the hot tap is fine, so we always just used that tap - the thermostat was off most times so cold water came out. I explained that to the agent but she didn't seem to get it.

She called DH back the next day. Told him the water pressure and temperature in the shower isn't right. I called her back and explained again. And told her again about using the hot water tap for cold if the pressure isn't enough for them. She said that's fine, but it's "part of the Act that tenants must have both hot and cold running water." They do have hot and cold running water! How do they suppose we got by for over two years!!

They still weren't happy with the explanation, so a plumber was sent out. He said it's because the house is old (built in the 50s) it has tiny old copper pipes. That's why the pressure is so low. He believes that's why the gas hot water system was put in, so you could just use the one tap and have either hot or cold. He said the only real way to fix it is to take the pipe out (which means taking bricks out of the wall) and he can't do anything til after Christmas. After the property manager calling DH, I spoke to her and explained what the plumber said. She seemed ok with the explanation. Then she called DH again, and said she was having a meeting with the tenants because they weren't happy!

They had their little meeting, where it was brought up that the temp in the shower isn't right :wall: They absolutely must have running water from the cold tap. I don't know, apparently cold water can't come out of the hot tap. And the cold water coming out of the cold tap can't be slow. Property manager called DH, who luckily was home this time. He tried to ask her if the tenants understood how the thermostat thing worked, but it took him three goes of getting halfway through the question with her cutting him off to actually get it out. She said they've finally figured that out, but the cold water tap is a problem. So now she's getting the plumber to go out again, and DH said he wanted to be there to see if there really is an issue and see exactly what the plumber sees.

I just don't get it!! If you want hot water, set your temperature! If you want cold water, leave it off! It really is simple, and I can't think of a situation where they're going to need both at the same time!

If you were a tenant and had a situation like this, would it really bother you? Am I just being crappy?

It does sound a little different to any water service in a house that I have lived in. I guess if I was a potential tenant I would like to be told about the water system before I filled in my rental application. Would it turn me off wanting the rent the house? Not at all - but if I moved in without explanation I would probably be frustrated and confused. Sounds like they need a hands-on demonstation from you or your DH because your agent is probably confusing them even more.

Good luck.

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It does sound a little different to any water service in a house that I have lived in. I guess if I was a potential tenant I would like to be told about the water system before I filled in my rental application. Would it turn me off wanting the rent the house? Not at all - but if I moved in without explanation I would probably be frustrated and confused. Sounds like they need a hands-on demonstation from you or your DH because your agent is probably confusing them even more.

Good luck.

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That's what I was thinking - I would think it was weird, and might need a demonstration if I was confused, but I wouldn't harp on about it once I understood.

I think our landlord, annoying as he is himself, might have the same kinds of thoughts about the overbearing property manager we have. When they both come for inspections or whatever, he's usually the one saying its okay if we want to change things, whereas she cracks it if any room is untidy! :rolleyes:

Yeah, I guess because we lived with it for so long we were just used to it. I just didn't think to mention it to the agent when she came around that first time. It's just frustrating that after putting it in writing in simple dot points, and explaining it verbally three times, they've apparently just set the hot water to 50, and then they use both hot and cold water taps to get the temp they want. No wonder they're having problems! But really, it's not like the cold water doesn't work at all. It's just slow! And actually, where we've moved to has a slow flow too, because we're rural and have a limiter. It's no great drama really.

Hopefully DH and the plumber can sort it out.

I guess because it's not normal and the property manager isn't understanding it it's turned into a drama. But it's no different to our mixer taps one tap that is hot or cold depending where the dial is, yours is just electronic. Maybe the plumber should remove the cold taps so the cant get confused!

I understand how you feel. It's hard renting out a house which you've lived in and the tenants can't work out the houses quirks. I would expect a house built in the 50's to have them too.

Your pm sounds annoying too, not relaying info to the tenants. Getting a plumber in is to help make her life easier! She doesn't want unhappy tenants, but she's going to make unhappy landlords! Which is more important!? She kind of needs you both.

Maybe you should just go over there and explain it to the tenants.

Our prop manager was such a dill she emailed me our tenants email address once, so I started dealing with them myself and was then able to stop using an agent all together.

We now have a new tenant and do the same thing. Because its our (your) house, which was your home.... You understand and know it better than any agent.

I think you need a meeting with your property manager. I think she needs to be shown how to do the water- so she can show/explain to tenants and also you you guys can re-tell her not to call your husband- otherwise when she calls- he could just say "ring my wife" The water thing does sound a bit different and may be a hassle until you got the hang of it. there is nothing worse then not being able to have a hot shower after a hard day :lol: Hope you can get it sorted

As a tenant, that wouldn't bother me in the slightest. In fact, if be happy that you told me how to get better water pressure! We live in an old fibro, and while we're not rural, we do have crappy water pressure and the house has it's little quirks that we have to live with, but I would never complain about them. I'm always really super wary of complaining/making requests to my real estate in case they/the landlords choose not to renew our lease.

Um, she signed a lease without showing you?! That is so wrong!

We've got the same thing in our house, I didn't even think of leaving instructions when we rented it out :redface: They've been in a week today and we've had no problem, so hopefully it's all good.

Thats a good point! Its not right to just sign without showing you. You can use your own agreement- but it does sometime cause a bit of discord with the manager. And bullying you into taking somebody you werent totally happy with isnt great either, but these are all learning things and you gotta start somewhere. Being a LL can be a right pain in the jaksee sometimes and great at others

I'm confused too - you set the temp so you can just get in an adjust the temp to suit yourself with the hot/cold?

Ausgirl, you basically don't use the cold tap at all. You set the temperature you like and just use the hot tap. It takes a go or two to work out what you like in the shower - in winter I like 43 & DH likes 42, in summer after a hard day's work he likes 39 or 40.

Good to hear your tenants get it Kieke! And yeah I was pretty annoyed at her signing the lease. She didn't even tell us. Until she started calling DH we never heard anything unless I called her. When I heard about the lease I called the manager and complained, so I think that's why she calls DH now.

DT, I think you're right, a meeting with her is needed. We should hear on Monday when DH and the plumber are going out there, so then we'll schedule a meeting for after that to go through absolutely everything I think.

Can't remember who said about removing the cold taps, but yes! Lol. And yep, it's just like a mixer tap. I said that last night, I was getting so frustrated. I seriously never touched a cold tap the whole time I lived there!

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Ausgirl, you basically don't use the cold tap at all. You set the temperature you like and just use the hot tap. It takes a go or two to work out what you like in the shower - in winter I like 43 & DH likes 42, in summer after a hard day's work he likes 39 or 40.

Can't remember who said about removing the cold taps, but yes! Lol. And yep, it's just like a mixer tap. I said that last night, I was getting so frustrated. I seriously never touched a cold tap the whole time I lived there!

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I know exactly what you mean - we have the same thing here - you set the temp you want then just turn on the hot tap - don't even think about the cold tap (unless we want less than 37C for DS here and our house was built in the 70s).

Hope you get a good meeting (for you) with the agent and you next week (And the plumber sets the agent straight :p).

Honestly, the water thing sounds ideal to me!! I would love just being able to push in a number and jump in the shower. How easy would that be?!

Your agent sounds useless (and I must admit it sounds like our old agent too). Could you perhaps after your dh has seen what is going on with the plumber and such, maybe ring and ask for another agent to care for your property?? If it were me there is no way I could trust someone to look after my investment after the way she has treated you.

Whilst your property manager sounds like an idiot and deserves a good kick up the bum... If i was a tenant and not advised of the unusual/non-conventional system (before I moved in) I'd be trying to get it "corrected". Having to set the thermostat every time you wanted to use hot water would drive me bananas!

We have had similar kind of instant hot water (Rinnai infinity) with two of our houses and it's brilliant! I LOVE it and will be installing it in our new house! Maybe ask if you can give them an inhouse demonstration because once you get your head wrapped around the different water temps you use and get out of the hot and cold tap habit it becomes second nature.

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Whilst your property manager sounds like an idiot and deserves a good kick up the bum... If i was a tenant and not advised of the unusual/non-conventional system (before I moved in) I'd be trying to get it "corrected". Having to set the thermostat every time you wanted to use hot water would drive me bananas!

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I have to agree with this. If you look at it from the tenants perspective, they are paying money to rent the property and probably expect a conventional system. It's something that definitely needs to be explained to tenants before they sign a lease. Also it would depend on the rent, if it is a very reasonable price I would put up with the inconvenience.

The house we are renting now is about 30 years old and we pay slightly less than the median for our suburb. There is mould on the wall in the corner next to the shower because of leaky taps. It drives me nuts, but we are renting because we can't afford to buy yet and never would if we kept on paying ridiculous rent prices :lol:

You can argue that you WOULD explain it to tennants and put it in the lease - but you weren't shown the lease and therefore didn't sign it. You're out of aaaaall the hassle that way. (And yes, I'd expect a conventional system too as a renter, but a different one wouldn't bother me if I knew how to work it.)

To be honest, I'd put in a complaint with the manager and get a different property manager. Different company if you had to. I'd be very unhappy with your current one as she can't do her job.

Lol beans, I do think it is ideal! I'm getting a bit annoyed here that I have to adjust it with the cold tap, I've gotten used to just setting it and leaving it. But I can see from the tenants point of view, if they didn't understand how it worked it'd be frustrating. I just assumed the note would be enough, it was written so simply with examples. I basically just wrote it as the owners before us had, and we'd understood that immediately.

Hopefully DH and the plumber can sort it out, and DH can at least show the tenants how it all works if they're not getting it. I think it's going to be so much easier to speak with them directly than to go through the property manager.

As for the meeting with her, I think if we don't have a good outcome, or if we have any more troubles (because really, this is something so simple that's been made worse by her constantly calling DH when he asks her to call me every time, and by apparently not passing on info very well) I'll be asking to be transferred to another property manager. I don't really want to switch agencies because I know the owner/manager who is a great guy and we've got a really good rate. I'm not at all impressed with the other agencies in the town, this one's the best despite having this particular manager. The first one we met was great, so if there's definitely someone we can ask to be managed by - I'm just really hoping it doesn't come to that and once we're past this initial issue it should be just smooth sailing right? Have inspections, pay our fees and get the rent with nothing else to worry about I hope!

Yep, I get you on the water thing. I get fed up with having to fiddle round with the hot and cold taps in the shower to get the right temp, and with kids that would be very handy. After a demo from your DH it should clear it all up and they will probably think it is fantastic. And, yeah, if there are any more issues speak to the RE Manager and get someone new dealing with your property. Good luck x

So DH had another call from the property manager yesterday. She asked him to meet her at the house at 4, so they could 'come up with a game plan to fix this issue'. Apparently the tenants also asked to have their rent reduced until they had cold water in the shower. I was ****ed. No mention of me going, and they want reduced rent because they're trying to use the cold water in the shower after having it explained over and over? Uh uh. I went anyway, seeing as DH had to come home for a shower first. I wanted to see what this big deal is!

So we get out there, and the plumber's there too. The PM is seriously annoying, talked over us and just asked the plumber to go out the back and show us what he's going to do to fix it. So we go out and he shows us the pipe that's likely to be blocked, and explains what would need to be done to fix it (basically removing bricks from a wall and lifting a massive slab of concrete). The PM looks as if she's just going along with all this, like she's saying "Ok, go ahead!" Then he says there's an easier fix - leave the blocked pipe there and connect another before the blockage, send it through the roof and down into the bathroom. The blocked pipe will still be running, even though the water will essentially be coming through the secondary pipe. But if there are ever any problems (like the blocked pipe exploding or something, like that'll happen!) then obviously we'd have to fix it anyway. So the PM seemed to think we should fix that one now. As in remove a portion of wall and the sunroom floor. Uh, no.

So at this point I asked to see how the water in the bathroom basin was running. The PM responded "Sure, there's no water at all in there. Last time a few drops of rusty water came out". I really wasn't believing this because it was fine just a few weeks ago. So in we go, DH turns on the tap and there you go! A steady stream of cold water. Not as fast as if you turned a regular tap all the way, but plenty for anything you're going to need in a bathroom. She was shocked. Then said "well it's not enough for the shower". Here DH started getting angry, I could tell by the way he started talking and storming around. So he showed her how to use the thermostat - "Set the temperature you want - they've already got it on 42 so that's perfect for a shower - then get in the shower and turn on the hot water tap. The water will come out at 42 degrees, it'll be perfect right away and you don't need the cold tap. We might as well take it off because if they're using it they're going to get a **** shower every time." FINALLY she gets it!!! So we're all good with the shower. I did apologise here for not physically demonstrating it earlier, but honestly I can't have explained it better than I did.

So I said to her "The cold water tap works, do they really need it to be high pressure?" Apparently yes. The plumber said the tenant said to him "It's fine if you brush your teeth in the shower, you just use the shower water. But when you're trying to do it in the basin you need water there." They have water there! From both taps!! Does she need to blast the toothpaste off? The whole thing is so flipping frustrating. DH and I were getting mad at the whole thing, he ended up saying to just do whatever they had to do to get higher pressure in the tap, the PM was happy and we left.

I wasn't going to hang around in the mood he was in, but I wish we'd argued it more. They actually do have alright pressure in that tap. You can easily wash your hands and brush your teeth there. Just don't go fighting any fires with it. And if you desperately need faster water, use the hot tap. Turn off the thermostat - it shouldn't really be on permanently anyway. The most frustrating thing is my note to them is stuck to there fridge. Right there in front of them every day are my clear dot points on how to use the water :wall:

I'm so thankful she didn't bring up reducing the rent, she would have gotten a mouthful because we were already on edge after this. We're just thinking if we 'fix' it now, hopefully we won't have issues with any future tenants, and once these tenants are happy we can hopefully just forget about it all together. And it's all tax deductible, so we'll just keep thinking of July.

I would talk to the owner of the company your PM works for and let them know about her attitude and bahaviour. She sounds unpleasant and rude, not to mention silly- the relationship between owner and PM should be a good 1.

Yeah. It's just at the point now where we want to get past this and forget it. I feel like that will just drag it out more, and once this is done we shouldn't really hear from her right? Other than inspections and stuff, which should be pretty straight forward. If anything else does happen, i.e. rudeness etc, then we'll definitely go to the agency owner and ask for a new PM. I've documented everything so far so we'll definitely have a case to put forward.

Good girl! your on to it hun :)