You're listening to the Weekend Collective podcast from News Talks.
And welcome back to the One Roof Radio Show. I was just saying to my producer t I said, well, this music sucks, and She's like, this is exactly the question that the tune you asked for. And I was thinking, maybe it's not the version I'm thinking of, but yes, you're right. Who's got the power or whatever? Welcome back. I'm Tim Beverages. This is the One Roof Radio Show.
By the way, if you missed our panel with Annibin's Francis and Pete wolf Camp, you can go and check out where you get your podcasts and which I suggest would be iHeartRadio. Just look for the Weekend Collective and the way you go. But right now, as I say it's One Roof Radio show, we have a new guest with us. He is the managing director of a Spire Property Management and his name is Mike Atkinson. And Mike, good afternoon. How are you doing good?
Thank you happy to be here?
Yeah? Yeah, well we'll find out in about an hour's time. Hey tell us how long have you been in the property management game.
I've been running Aspire Property Management for twelve years, and I've been in property management overall for coming up to twenty.
Now, what made you want to get into that.
I was in London and I had no money left in my bank account and an ad in the gum tree and I did my first day in property management. I just loved it right away.
What was it you loved about it so much?
There's always something happening in property management, so you get to do quite a lot of relationship building, you get to go out to property. I do really like property. You're always on the move, always something happening, and you can make a difference in people's home life as well if you do a good job for them.
Wow. We'll take into that a bit more in the moment. But if you've joined US, eight hundred and eighty ten eighty is the number you can text on nine two nine two, and we're going to into with the recent changes and tendency laws. You might remember that under the previous government they got rid of ninety day notice periods, which meant that it became very tricky to get rid
of a lousy tenant. But now that they're back in one might argue that it is now easy for a bad landlord to get rid of a really good tenant and so it's hard to get the balance. But the question is, and we want your calls on this, do you think that it's that the government have made the right moves restoring the ninety day notice period, which basically means you don't have to have cause, you just have
to say ninety days see you later. Do you think that that has been a shift towards restoring the balance to where you'd like it to be already think was a bad move. We want your calls on eight hundred and eighty ten to eighty. And of course, as we've briefly heard from Mike's experience in property management, you give him a call if you've got some questions as well you would like to get a bit of guidance on. But yeah, so just a little bit more about the
London situation. How much different is London to New Zealand.
Well, I was working in Body corporate then, okay, and yes it was a little bit different than the work that I'm doing now. But it was very interesting as well.
Because what's the percentage of people in residential property who would rent? And I mean, if you're in London, it seemed that well, I didn't know anyone who owned just about No, it.
Was pretty high. There was a big company over there called Foxton's who did a lot of that, and it was very dodgy over there, the rental management sector, and I experienced it as a tenant anyway.
Were most people are a lot of tenancies over in London? Are they sort of just still managed by landlords who've got lodgers or they've got a spare room or a spare of flat downstairs. But I don't know how it works.
I think it's a bit of a mix. They still have people managing them privately and a few established agencies as well.
Yeah, so okay, tell us what was the problem that the government wanted to address when they brought back in the ninety day notice period.
Well, the previous government bought in the you could only get rid of a tenant if that met a certain set of criteria, and I think they decided that was a little bit too rigid and the landlords had given up too much control. People wanted to be able to have the final say on who stayed and who went from a property that they owned.
Yeah, look, how I did talk back on this all the time, and it did talk back on it quite a bit, and it seemed that one of the problems was that if you had really bad tenants sometimes it was quite hard to get rid of them because one you had to have neighbors who would give evidence, and
it became quite a rigmarole. And yet now we have you know, you can give literally ninety days and somebody could be a fantastic tenant and you could have a landlord who's I don't know or to think that value having tenants right now anyway, But what are the ills that can come around simply by this system.
Yeah, I mean, I think it's given the landlords quite a lot of power. So if you have a good tenant and a bad landlord, that landlord can say, you know what, let's just get rid of that person, and it can make them have to move house, which is a big undertaking, as we all know. So the new
legislation does have a retael notice stageboard into it. So if you are a landlord and you issue a ninety day notice and it is partly or wholly motivated by a tenant having tried to exercise their rights, So for example, a tenant saying, hey, the dishwash is broken.
No, you can't come around your notice.
Yeah, and then they just say, you know what, I don't want to deal with you. Here's your ninety day notice. Well, the tenant has twenty eight days to apply to the tribunal to have the notice thrown out. Then they have if they don't use it in the twenty eight days, they've got up to a year to take the landlord to the tribunal to seek to rule that that was an unlawful notice. And if it's unlawful, it can be up to six thousand, two hundred dollars fine for the landlord.
So they haven't gone back to the previous rules of ninety days. Okay, they've added one extra layer in there to protect tenants as well.
That does sound like quite a good layer. Where does it sit for you? I guess you're dealing with this all the time. I would have actually, I would guess as a property manager, because you are acting for landlords and looking after tenants and so you're interfacing. But I guess you are the landlord's representatives, aren't you. So I would have thought you'd like the restoration of the ninety day period because it is because you guys aren't just
about turfing people out for fun. You like to have people in properties, except the lousy ones.
Yeah, And I mean it's the same for a landlord as well. If you ever do exercise your right to use this ninety day notice, you are going to be incurring quite a bit of cost. As a landlord. Your property is probably going to be vacant for three weeks because of your relationship's broken down so much with your tenant that you give a ninety day notice, you're probably not going to get viewings done there until after they leave.
You're going to pay your property manager a leading feet, so they're still only going to be used in extreme circumstances. It's not good business to get rid of tenants. When you're a landlord, you don't get much rent without a tenant.
And actually, how as just while we're on that, how is the sort of letting landscape in terms of the balance between supply and demand.
Well, so at the moment, the ballot is definitely in favor of the tenants. Around about June last year we had five thousand, five hundred rental listings in Auckland. By December it was up to six thousand, seven hundred and now it is only just returning to five thousand, five hundred levels now. So whenever there's over six thousand listings, it feels like there's more.
Property in New Zealand or Auckland.
Auckland, sorry, yep. When there's more than six thousand, it feels like there's not enough good tenants for the properties. So it's like musical chairs and all of a sudden it's around the other way. Instead of having people dying to rent your property, you're actually struggling to find them. So the market at the moment favors tenants, so they've got an upper hand in that area in Auckland at the moment.
How much pressure is there on landlords therefore too, I mean people reducing their their rents or are they making their properties more appealing instead, or what are they doing?
Well, if you've got a property that's really well looked after and you know actually it's quite attractive to tenants, you'll still be doing okay. When you've got a sort of bull market, so to speak, Your even your bad properties are going to get rented. But when as soon as the market turns, which it has, if you've got a property where you haven't invested in repairs and maintenance,
you'll be the last last property to go. So yeah, people are dropping their rents, and you know, we're encouraging our owners to use professional photos, get some painting done, do something to make your properties stand out at the moment. Otherwise, you know, it might be sitting online for four weeks plus.
And that Actually it's funny because when you think four weeks so it's been empty for a few weeks, it sounds like such a casual sort of comment to throw away, But that can actually be quite a lot of rent that you'd really count on, especially if you've got the you know, you haven't managed to bring your mortgage right down yet.
Or yeah, and then you normally would have to pay your property manager one week's rent plus GST letting fee, plus advertising costs and things like that. New tenant will normally ask for some repairs and maintenance to be done. So yeah, it can get expensive for landlords leaving your properties empty at the moment.
Now I'm just trying to think, I'm not sure if maybe do you like the way the law is at the moment with ninety day period, if you were designing it, if Mike Atkinson was designing the law around getting rid of lousy tenants and keeping good ones and protecting tenants at the same time. Is the legislation so ninety days? But if it's vexatious or vindictive, I, as a tenant, could say, hang on the man, I'm going to the tennis tribunal because you're being to.
Give you a really good answer. I'd need to see how this actually plays out by testing it, Because is the tribunal going to say that if the tenant has mentioned one thing about the grasp being not cut in the right amount of time, does that throw out the ninety day notice? How strict are they going to be? But under the old law there was still quite good
avenues available to get rid of problem tenants. And I did like the idea that people were able to know that they weren't going to get kicked out of their houses.
I guess there is one thing that you can do which so convinced that is to sign a fixed term tenancy. Isn't it there is? I mean, do we seem of that?
We About five years ago I tried to convince tenants to sign up for three year two year fixed term tenancies. I couldn't get anyone to agree to sign up for longer than twelve months. It just seems like, for some reason, it's just bedded into the culture here that you sign a twelve month fixed term tendency. Is that?
What are we commitment fobes? I don't know what it is, but you might want to go to Australia. Oh, I'm not sure. Things don't feel great. I don't want to time a south down.
Yeah, but that so that is a way if you're a tenant and you want to have some security of tenure is approach your property manager or your landlord and ask for extension. If you're on a periodic tendancy, you can sign a new extension anyway. So you know that gives you a bit of security around your property.
So how on, So what do you think of the law? Would you would you tweak what we've got at the moment still allowing notice? And it's actually we should point out I'm going back on my you know, I studied property law about thirty years ago or something, so I can't remember too much about it, but maybe not quite that long ago. But you can still give notice, say for if you are a landlord and you have to move back into the property yourself. That is still a
legitimate cause and always has been, hasn't it. Yeah, that has always been, and that just shortweeks notice, doesn't They've shortened them down to forty two now to give a little bit less time. Okay.
At the same time, they've also now tenants only have to give twenty one days notice if they want to leave a periodic tendency.
So would you go with the law as it was or as it is now, or with some sort of subtle change because we're going to play around. It's fun to play around with these things, and no one's going to quote you.
I would say the old law, with a bit more action from the tenancy tribunal not making it so impossible to prove that a tenant is antisocial, would probably have been a better system. But the tendancy tribunal lags behind. And I'm also not sure how the tenancy tribunal is going to interpret the new changes.
Do you guys have a lot of mean I'm guessing this is a dumb question, but do you have a lot of involvement with the tendency tribunal?
We do, Yes, We go probably once every two week. A lot of the times it's just unpaid rent, but it can be any sort of dispute these days. Who should pay for cockroaches? Who should pay for.
Sounds like rare. It's some sort of dodge you take away, John, Yeah, Actually, what's that mean?
What a man?
Who should pay for cockroaches? What is it? What is it? Even that question? What's that?
Well?
You can have Let's say a tenant's been in the property for two years and then all of a sudden there's just a lot of cockroaches in the property. It can be once you've been in for about two years, it's normally assumed that you, as the tenant, has probably allowed this cockroach infestation to come in. But if the property has only been you know, if you only moved in for a couple of months, that was probably there
when you moved in. And so then you get a two hundred dollar bill for getting rid of the cockroaches. Landlord doesn't want to pay, tenant doesn't want to pay, and off to the tribune.
Or you go, wow, I never knew that that was who's paying for the cockroaches? We'll say that these are the big topics that well, I looked seriously though, if you've got a few cup I mean, what does the bad cockroach infestation look like?
Well, it depends if they're German cockroach. For a native.
It sounds slightly munty. Pythony asked, But look, we want to take your cause. If you do you think that the government was right to bring the back in the notice period. Look my gut reaction, but I'm not I'm not a landlord or a tenant. Fortunately that if I had a bad tenant, I wouldn't want to have basically, wouldn't want to have to go near the tenancy tribunal because it just sounds like one big house or so I'd be like, I'd want to just give them notice.
But of course, if you're an unscrupulous landlord, there are lots of good people who can be in the way of that. So what do you reckon? Do you think the government have got it right or would you like to see the ninety days scrapped and go back to the former system Maybe weether slightly more effective tenancy tribunal. And the number is eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. Text is nine two nine two. My guest is a new guest on the Wonderrouf radio shows Mike Atkinson from
a SPA Property Management. We'll be back in just a moment. It's twenty past four. Yes, welcome back to the Weekend Collective. There's a one roof radio show where with Mike Atkinsoni's managing director Aspire Property Management. Actually, just how do people get in touch with your company? Mike, Hang on a second, I'll just turn your microphone on. There we go.
They can go to our website Aspire Property dot co dot nz and they can get in touch with us that way.
I imagine it's if they just Google your company as well. Google'srett effective at getting you as one of the top hits, isn't it. It is Aspire Property Management, right. I'm still hung up on this German versus casual cockroach sort of thing before we but we'll dig into that in a moment. Let's go to Ivan.
Good a, Yeah, good, good afternoon.
I just wanted to ask the guys. You guys built a brand new town here. It's not doubt for rental, right had I had tenants and I haven't managed and anyhow I thought they were doing a good job managing it, but obviously they weren't the fight after three and a half four years, I actually had a went inside the place to have a look and and the property. They had fans poured all over the carpet and from here and there. It was a terrible mess. They had animal
damage to the carpet. They had they demaged the garage door. They had broken the spouting with a camper van. We went up against it and that, and they had.
Fat right, right, it sounds pretty bad.
Fat on the oven, right, And I had the electrician bowling, but it was a fire hairs. I had to replace it. I took him in to have a look at it. And anyhow, the whole ones I went to the private uni, right, yep, we're with ye, And the tribeian just sat there and smiled at me. All right, yeah, And they said care you and can you prove that this was intentional damage by the tenant. I just know what I could proved an intention or she intentionally did it, all right? Of
course they said, well you've got to claim insurance. So insurance each time they spuilt the old tina on the on the carpet, that was a separate claim. And there was a live the place, so everyone was a seam or there was an excess of seven of them, so you know it was I saw it as being really unfit. Now was that more still in place?
Right?
Yeah? Okay, thanks thanks Ivan, Mike, what do you what do you reckon?
Well, that's the thing when we were talking about who has the power overall, is that at the moment because of that ninety day noticed, landlords have the power, but throughout the sort of life cycle of a tenant, and what this caller was discussing is an example of where the tenants have the power and when it comes to
dispute resolution if you go to the tenancy tribunal. That caller's story is incredibly common for people where you have a tenant and they let the property go really downhill, and you go to the tribunal and they treat you like you're the bad guy and you are awarded next to nowhere towards your cost.
Well, why does that happen? Because my understanding that intentional damage is also to do negligence is another thing as well. If you are deliberately leaving things uncleaned and well we get to the cockrate just then, don't we.
But anyway, yeah, so careless and intentional is supposed to be paid by the tenant, But if the landlord has insurance, then they can claim the excess or the rent up to four weeks rent, whichever is lower. But then your insurance company will do as this caller said, and every drop on the carpet is one extra excess.
Well that's pretty obnoxious, isn't it.
Yeah, So in an example like that, if you've had a property manager looking after the property for four years and it's been one tenant and it's gotten to four years where you've finally seen the property, I would recommend that you go and review the routine inspection reports that you've been sent and have a look to see if this happened quickly. Was the property manager doing their job, because you go to the tenancy tribunal to hold the
tenant to account. But if you have a property manager and they've been charging you twenty seven hundred dollars a year to manage the property and they haven't been doing the job, then you may have a claim against the property manager.
Ah, the problem is litigation. I mean, for the most I think that's why I still prefer the notice thing because for most people busy live big responsibilities with owning property or and just our general lives. The idea of having to go to a tribunal would probably I mean, this is the argument why you'd have a property manager, really,
isn't it. Yeah. I know you're not here to spruk for that necessarily, but look, to be honest, every expert who's involved with property we've had on this show who are investors, they say, unless you are prepared to give one hundred percent of your time to managing your and you know what you're doing, you should give it to a property manager in the first place, which would obviously be your stance as well.
Yes, but when you are choosing a property manager, you do need to do some due diligence about which manager you're choosing to make sure that the person that you're trusting to look after the property is going to do a good job as well.
Is there a lesson or something that you can advise on with regard to insurance policies as well, Because if you're going to get someone who said, look, you know, oka your coffee table's being damaged by hot plates being on it, that's one claim, then this claim than that claim. Before you know, you've got how many thousands of bucks in excess. Just about can you get policies which cover the event being the crappy tenant?
Yeah, so you can always take I'd recommend that people take tenancy or landlord insurance as well, so that's on top of your normal insurance. So that will give you cover when the tenant doesn't pay the rent and you get left significantly out of pocket. And then when you're choosing your insurance policy, obviously the premiums are lower when
you have a higher excess. When you have a really high excess, and they say excess for every event, you're actually you don't have insurance because the excess is just so high.
Do you know much it costs for that sort of extra insurance? Because of course, you know, owning, buying an investment properties expensive, You've got your mortgage and you've got your normal insurance. Is that another cost that would frighten people off? What is it reasonable?
It's about three hundred and fifty dollars per year to get this sort of tendency insurance.
I love the suspense I felt there when you said it's about three hundred and fifty dollars per and I was like, drum roll, please, per year. Yeah sounds too good.
Yeah, so it's very reasonable and it gives you quite a bit of cover and some methan fitamine protection and stuff as well.
Bloody brilliant. Okay, that does sound good. Look, before we go to our next caller, just a couple of texts here, High Zib can you ask Mike, my wife and I have a tenant who won't mow the lawn, put the rubbishout, or pay rent on time. As soon as we give a ten day notice, he sorts the issues out. We just served the eleventh ten day notice in fifteen months. Is there a way we can give notice to leave? Well, I think we know the answer to that, don't we.
They can, but also it's a fourteen day notice, not a ten day notice, so they won't want to be relying on those anytime soon.
Okay, maybe they're thinking ten business data.
Yeah, true, true, Yeah, so you can give those. They can just use the ninety day notice provided it's a periodic tendancy. But if you are issuing, if it's a fixed term tenancy and you're issuing repeated fourteen day notices for the same infringement, you can apply to the tenancy tribunal only cost twenty two dollars and you can go along and try to get the tenancy ended that way.
And how quickly would that end.
It depends on where you are in the country. The tribunal process, just getting your date in front of the adjudicator can take up to sort of six weeks.
Funny. It's funny because it sounds with tenancies and I know it's not sort of like district court and it's supposed to be accessible and stuff. But the only thing I can I always remind myself as well, is that the consequences for anyone who falls afoul of the tenancy tribunal is having to either find a new tenant or find a new home. Quite big stuff, really, isn't it.
It is, So that's why they can't streamline it too much because some of the issues they deal with are quite important. But they know sixty five percent of tribunal applications in twenty twenty three were landlords just seeking unpaid rent. So I think they need to stop doing those in person and start doing those over the phone, and that will free them up have more time to deal with the more complicated matters.
Some question, do all property managers charge the same, are they generally?
That twenty two dollar fee was just what the government charge.
I'm just thinking in terms of if you've got a property manager, is there a standard sort of charge or some some more equal than others.
Ranges from sort of six point five percent up to sort of nine percent, depending on where you are in the country. The lower the average rent in your area, the higher the management fee percentages typically.
Oh, because of the work that goes into.
Yeah, about the same. I mean, you've got to be renumerated through the percentage model. There are some people that do flat rate fees.
That's why you said. If you're paying your property manager, say two six hundred dollars a year, that's taken into accounts, so you're going to be paying it in a cheap market, but it'll be a high percentage because simply the work is still the same.
Yeah, that's about the average rate that people will charge.
Across the country. Okay, there we go. Right, let's take some more calls Gary High.
Hello, how are you good?
Thanks?
We have a property in another part of the country. Not going to go into too many details, easy enough to fly back and forth from there. Currently, the property managers in the last eighteen months have been inspecting in On every inspection, they're pretty much coming back with things to do which aren't critical, but in a couple of times because we have an excess on it, saying spend up to five hundred and then send us the bill, and they seem to like to do that almost every time.
So we're thinking of dropping them and just flying there ourselves and doing our inspections and doing the maintenance off our own back, because I think we can say that ourselves up to two thousand dollars.
Are you seeking? Are you seeking some confirmation that this could be a good move or some or some warning or some warning.
Never hold you to anything just during the fat Okay, what.
Are your thoughts on that, Mike?
What happens when your tenant moves out and you need to find a new tenant.
We would have to do that ourselves.
Yeah, and I mean that's my That would be a reservations if you have to fly down and do it. It's actually not as hard to manage the ongoing process remotely, but when you need to go to the property and do things like that, you know it's not it's not impossible to do it and there are resources online to help you if I was, if I sell my business and still have my rental properties, I won't be managing
my own properties. I think it's I think it's it's hard to do, and I would rather spend my time focusing on another endeavor.
I guess Garry, the question would be, is your ten because some some landlords have a feeling for the fact that their tenant's going to be there for a long time, and then other times it wouldn't acclue. Do you have any level of confidence that.
You are comfortable tenant is the will stay there?
Yes, well, that's okay. How far do you have to fly? It's not it's not Auckland Queenstown because that expensive.
I don't want to comment because that might drop me in it. So it's it's the flights are regular and reasonable. Okay, we've done with funds on saving money? Yeah, yeah, so that's sort of where it's sat.
How often would you be looking to go down and inspect it.
Every three months or four months, every quarter? What what purses text deductible in regard to doing it ourselves.
I would have thought I would have thought all of it, wouldn't it be? I mean, this is tax advice. But Mike, if you are flying down somewhere simply to do a property expection, I would say.
That's I I'm definitely not a tax accountant, but I would say that does sound like it potentially could be.
So it'll be with forming like a limited liability company or something silly like that to look after one property, or you know.
What, if you can afford to. Here's Mike. Would be my non binding suggestion, Gary, I reckon you should spend. You should spend. You keep your property manager on just for a little bit longer and use that money you're saving to get a little bit of advice from an accountant and then go from there. And then that'll help you because you might find that that little three month trip down to that wonderful destination can double as a holiday while completely text.
You know where it is. When you said that, well.
You know, don't get paranoid about it. It could just be like a years anyway. Okay, good on you, Gary, good luck. I guess if they know what the rules are, if they've got a good tenant, he sounds like he's I'll fill in the few gaps just with their imagination. But it sounds like he knows the tenant, he's confident they're staying for a while. So far, so good. If he's got a property manager who he's not happy with, he probably could manage it for himself.
I think he actually should have a go at managing it himself. There is some people can do it, and that's and it's fine. And then as a property manager myself, the best customers are the people that have tried to manage it themselves and have given up.
Is that because they alive.
Because then they actually really value what you do, because they've tried it themselves and realize that it's not that easy.
That is a very good point. Look, we're going to take a moment now. You can give us a call if you've got any questions. We've got lots of texts which we'll deal with as well as many as we can get through. But if you want to jump the queue, the number is eight hundred and eighty ten eighty. Don't forget. We did actually throw that question about as to whether the government's got it right with bringing back the ninety day change, with the ability of a tenant to appeal
it for a lousy landlord. If I can sum that up that crudely, but it's twenty three minutes to five news talks, he'd be that's welcome back to the weekend collective. This is the wonder if radio shan tin beverage. My guest is from a SPA property management. He's the boss there. It's Mike Atkinson taking your calls around. Well, any problems
you've got to do with property management as well. By the way, fun fact because Mike mentioned the charming idea of the German cockroaches who apparently lay eggs that's every six days, and we just had a bit of a laugh about just the idea. There's German cockroaches Asian cockroaches, and I googled them and it says unlike they said, they don't fly as easily as the ones in Australia. And I remember going to Australia and thinking what the
hell was that that just flew past them. They're like, oh, that's a cockroach what they fly anyway, Apparently German cckroaches aren't so flashy there. Let's take some more calls. Kelly, Hello, Hi.
I just want to talk about property management. We have a home and income and so I took it upon myself to do the property manager because it's you know, they're going to be living on the same property as yourself. So I didn't want to, you know, to discimonount to anyone. But I tell you what, the nutters that apply for rental property and I live in Auckland.
That apply for.
These rental properties, I must take my hat off to your property managers because there are so many interesting people that apply for these things, and I just you know, I absolutely value having a property manager. But for me, I had to do it because I had to actually select these people to move it on to our property. But you know, like there's some very slim picking and you know, certainly when they are living on the same property and you've got to actually deal with them, it's
pretty difficult. So I value to my property managers and I would always do it because it's you know, land you have to deal you know, the foohoo stories or anything like that.
So yeah, yeah, thank you JS Kelly. Actually I think Kelly's highlighted. Can you actually if you want to manage your own property, can you still engage a property manager for a fee to find a tenant for you? Or is that a bit you know.
Yes, you can still do that. It's called a casual letter arrangement and normally costs about one week's rent plus GST.
That seems pretty reasonable, but I guess I would only be worried to be like, hang on a minute, they can find a tenant, and then they're not what they don't have to worry about that tenant, are they? What's the sort of what's the peace of mind that you're still going to get a really well vetted person.
Well, you'd like that person to come back and use you again. A lot of agencies are actually stopping doing the casual letting because of what happens when it gets past to the private landlord is actually more likely to come back.
Because they don't manage their relationship well enough. And then they say this is allowsy tenant, when maybe it was because they were allows.
The or the tenant might have their rights trampled on, and then they look at their tenancy agreement and it's got aspired property management in the top right corner of the letterhead, and so they come back to you. So it can be we we do casual leading for clients that we've got a relationship with, but we're still happy to take on new ones as well.
Cool. Okay, let's take some more calls Andrew High.
Yeah, hi there, I guess it's coming back to the question that you just had. As the property manager surprise, ultimately surprise or provides us with a tenant that doesn't really well, let's be Frank Wrex the house and causes a huge mess. Who's liable?
Well, that would depend if the property manager has done their due diligence on the tenant and then provided the application done that.
Yes, you have done the due diligence done yep.
Next, Yeah, So then that basically that liability would then fall back onto the property owner because they're effectively the person getting the reward in exchange for the risk. And then you could try to claim that back from the tenant, but you wouldn't be able to claim anything back from the property management company.
Okay, hey, thanks for your call, Andrew. Now let's have a look at a few more texts. There should be a two somebody said there should be a two tier tenancy notice period, a short notice for provable bad behavior and a period exceeding three months for other exceeding three months for other reasons. It's a huge sometimes crushing disruption in people's lives to have to move out and find
new accommodation. I mean that is the problem, isn't it just casually saying well, you've got ninety days see you later.
Yeah, and I agree ninety days can potentially be a bit short. But under the Act, there's actually a landlord can give you twenty one day's notice when a fixed term is ending, and that's a lot less time in terms of being able to give shorten notice periods for provable bad behavior. Who the only way to prove it is to go to the tribunal, and that'll take you longer than ninety days.
Another word, person says you seem to be forgetting that it costs time and money to get what. I don't think we have forgotten this, but it says it costs caught time and money to get tenants. So just randomly getting rid of tenants is not in a landlord's interests, I would insert, is not in a good landlord's interests. But why even a bad loan, it's not in their interests except a ballmarket maybe where they can just get the next you sucker.
Well, yeah, and that is actually something that I mentioned earlier is that a landlord is only going to use this in a circumstance where they feel like it's warranted because they are going to incur vacancy costs. And even without vacancy costs, you get a new tenant to move in the next day, it isn't worth doing unless you have a valid reason. So you're not going to get no cause where you just move a tenant out because you woke up and felt like doing it.
No, Hay Tim. We are an elderly couple who own a one bedroom apartment as an investment property. In December, we renewed the rental for a further one year fixed term. Things have taken a sudden turn on our health front and we need to sell as soon as possible to remove into a retirement village. How can we get out of this if the one year fixed term tenancy that we signed in December, the new term actually starts mid March. That's from Gerada.
You can sell a property with a fixed term tenancy in place, So a one bedroom apartment could be of value to someone with a tenant in it if they're not planning on living in it themselves.
Oh. Actually, in fact, that could be a selling point.
Yes, that you turned a tenant paying rent.
Okay.
The other option is any fixed term tenancy or extension can be ended by mutual agreement. So if you find another property across the street that looks the same and you tell your tenant, hey, this is our situation. We'll give you two thousand dollars if you move to the property next door that I've found for you, and then if they agree, then the tenancy the extension can end and you can sell it vacant.
I think also that what you've just touched on there is that genuinely most people are good people. If I was a tenant and the landlords were having health problems and I knew that, you know, things weren't looking good, I think I'd probably say, look, if you need to sell, pay my moving fees and I'll let you out of it.
I mean, yeah, that would be the first place to start, would be to have an open conversation with your tenant and see what sort of solution that you can come up with.
How often do you find that people are surprise you with being reasonably decent. Are you in the sort of area at society where you do have to deal with quite a lot of tough stuff.
I think that the majority of tenants, the majority of property owners are all really decent people that just are trying to get by with their lives. There is the sort of bad apples on both sides that can sort of spoil the reputation for everyone. So I think overall they're all pretty decent and it's just a few bad apples in there.
Okay, And there's another one here. Hey, can you ask what the maximum number of properties that property managers can manage in their portfolio? My experience is property managers are good, but my for property management companies do the minimum and are not always I'm not sure if they're okay, and are not always proactive to perform rent reviews on time within a one year period sixty day period. So obviously
they think that their property managers but slack. So how many properties can one individual reason realistically manage?
Well, that's where it's like a really good question. When landlords are looking for a property manager and you see a property management company offering lower fees, they will often have their property managers managing more properties in order to be able to make the numbers stack up. So you're going to get slightly less service if you go with a five percent property management company. I think anywhere from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and forty if
you've got someone doing the lettings with them. Some companies manage one hundred and sixty plus. It's really it does depend on how much of the work for a property manager the property manager actually does. We have people that do lettings as well. We have a lot of automations that we use, and then our property managers average about one hundred and twenty, so we're still on the lower end even with all of our automations and things like that.
Actually, automation, imagine does AI play a role in your industry?
It definitely does. And it's about too because you know, if you can implement a chatbot that can talk to the tenants and ask answer the questions, and the same with the landlords, it's going to play a massive part in property management.
Maybe you'll be able to just send your drone to say, go and have a look around this place. Yeah, just leave your windows open, tenant.
Yeah no. I mean, it's a very interesting time coming up, and there's already there's already inspection reports you can do with AI helping you write all the notes and things like that. But now, yeah, I mean that's that's a massive.
That's for another day.
Yeah.
Anyway, Hey, look we're going to take a quick moment, come back with the one roof Property of the week is next. It's ten to five news Talk sed B.
The one roof Property of the week on the Weekend Collective.
Yes, and the one roof Property of the week. I always as I always do so it's like taking a holiday, but this one really is like taking a holiday. It's a spectacular the coastal views it's in. I'm just scrolling back to trying to get out of the photo so I can actually see the address here. That's right. It is one forty c Rodney Road in Lee in Rodney, and I don't actually I might even hand it over to you might to describe the property. What do you
make of it? Six bedrooms, three bathrooms, three garage, three car garage and four hundred and three square meters Go, oh, hang on a second, there we go, there's the button.
It is a stunning property with amazing sea views. It would sort of be fit for a Bond villain. I think, just absolutely amazing. You forget that properties like that even exist in New Zee are.
What are the things that attract you to a property if you're looking around something, Because the okay, the views, views, views are great. I love a good view. But the thing that got me I just I love a nicely tiled bathroom. But you know what I mean, there's been things which can turn you off. It's like, oh I don't like that, and bang you're out.
Yeah, what do you for me? It's going in swimming pool.
Ah yeah, the swimming pool. It's got that infinity pool. Look, here's the thing. I love this. The RV. I'm going to get you excited if you're in a reasonably prosperous situation. The RV is two point eight million dollars. Now I'm going to disappoint you that you need to be in a much more prosperous situation because the estimate ranges from four point nine million to five point eight with an
estimate of five point three million. But your breathtaking views above Parkery Beach, and it's also got seventeen acres of this is probably the other bit that did it for me. I'm not sure how often you'd go for a walk in your own gardens. But it's got seventeen acres of private curated bushwalks with cascading waterfalls. It's got glow worms if you're lucky enough to spot them, which means doesn't really have blow woms if you're lucky enough to spot them.
And yet it's quite stunning. So go and have a look. One forty c Rodney Road, Lee and Rodney Sex bedrooms, so you've got plenty of room for your guests when they come. Actually, the other thing I do, Mike is do you imagine what your leisure activity would be? Because for me, I see the terrace and the pool and I just think friends sitting out in the barbecue sizzling. That's what I think. What do you reckon?
Well, I'm definitely interested in that waterfall, having your own waterfall. I think you've really made it.
I got to own waterfall and that's not just the bath overflowing. Hey Mike, by the way, thank you, thank you so much for coming and I hope we can get you back again sometime.
Thank you for having me.
And if people want to check out your work, they can either just google Aspire Property Management or.
Website Aspire Property dot cod or n.
Z excellent, great stuff and thank you for you. Sorry we didn't get to answer all the text, but we'll get on to it well. Obviously I hope to have Mike back and we'll do it again next time. Up next it is the Parents Squad and Google Sutherlands with us. Do you have to treat your kids the same each given that they might be quite different? When do you treat them differently? Is that a OK? We'll be taking
your calls and discussing that with Google Sutherland. Next for the Parent Squad, it's coming up to three minutes to five.
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