Looking for a 2BR near C'Sted STX? READ THIS!

I encountered the same sort of situation with someone else. Self proclaimed property manager,bogus "lease" and the owner of the condo has not been paid. Owner contacted me directly through friends and has been great! fixed everything,I paid 3 months in advance and now, I am helping him with a litigation process. I figure if anyone has any questions PM me.

If you had had a lease you couldn't use deposit as rent without landlord permission, But without a lease you pretty much had all the rights. There are no verbal real estate deals, everything must be in writing. There are many owners here who do not know what they are doing when it comes to rentals. They buy investment property and think its easy. And some owners are too cheap to pay for a good real estate agent or property manager to handle their property properly. All property managers must have a real estate license to rent property here for example. As a renter or owner I would be very cautious who you rent from or have rent for you. And most important of all have a strong application and lease. Make the lease spell out everything. Then there is no confusion at the end.

But I'm glad for the warning I was going to recommend this to a friend.

I placed the tenants in the upstairs of the property Julie is writing about. I did not receive full payment for providing that service. Mr. Yates seems to have an unfortunate habit of doing whatever he wants and then threatening the people he is stealing from when they object. Lauren says she would like to make good on the debts, but she has her own issues with Mr. Yates. She begged me to put a tenant into the downstairs, so I located a man ready to move in recently... only to have Mr. Yates tell someone to go change the locks to keep the tenant from moving in. I'd second Julie's warning about being cautious when renting from this landlord. Great property and location, but some ongoing personal issues and never-ending drama that make it just not worth it.

Julie and Dave are good people and I look forward to welcoming them back to STX when they return in a couple weeks. Their first trip here, they renovated a condo I had just sold to a friend... and now I recently bought it from her and am daily enjoying the great job they did on fixing up a beat-up rental.

I admit to being just a little confused as to what went on between Julie, Mr. Yates, the property manager and the estranged Lauren. I will add that after following the board for a couple of years, I respect Alexandra's input.

My two cents worth goes to what Betty addressed. Get it in writing. Expect your landlord to honor the agreement, and be prepared to do so yourself. The security deposit is not your last month's rent, unless you have that agreement up front. And because I have had several issues with tenants who want to assume it is, even though the rental agreement says it isn't, I am no longer flexible on first, last and deposit. Pretty much the only way to protect yourself, and ensure you get your 30 days notice, is to have not only the deposit, but the last month up front.

Julie,
Would it be inappropriate to ask who the rental agent was? Sounds like new people might want to steer clear of that person too, or at least be sure to be cautious.

Thanks to all of you for your input, and YES - get it in writing!!!

I'd prefer not to name the pseudo property manager. She is a young woman who lives upstairs from the apartment (not a professional property manager) who unfortunately let herself get too involved in the drama of the owners' break-up. Initially, she was just trying to be helpful, and we appreciated her showing us the place. I think it's best to give her the benefit of the doubt that she'll make better decisions in the future.

This message board is such a great forum and was a huge help to us for our move to STX...thanks everyone for sharing your stories!

I just had a phone call from the young man who sent me a deposit and never showed up. You may remember I posted asking if anyone had heard from him. He was supposed to take the apartment on Sept. 1. He called today, and guess what? Wants his money back. I told him If I rent the apartment for the rest of Sept., I would pro-rate it. Not good enough for him. He says it's not his (financial) responsibility to rent my apartment! By the way, we have a 30 day minimum rental and a 30 day notice policy.

So, it goes both ways!

This is why I stopped renting to people who are not on island. Too much of a risk. Did you have him sign anything? You can put in your application the deposit is non refundable, etc... But if you didnt get it in writing he most likely is in the right unfortunately. But then again he would have to get a judge here to agree to it and I take it he is not here...

Actually he is on island. He said he had a family emergency and couldn't contact us. I won't even go there. I personally think he arrived as scheduled, got picked up by a friend who turned him onto what he thought was a better deal, and someone has suggested he try to get his money back. I just don't know. Could be he just arrived, like he says, but where is he living? Hmmm!*-)

I have all of the email corespondence, which is acceptable proof. He said he only sent the deposit to hold the apartment, and since he never moved in, we should return it. Said it was only a good faith gesture. What am I missing?

As I said earlier, I offered to pro-rate the money if I can rent the apartment for the remainder of Sept. That's more than a lot of people would do. The 30 days notice is crucial for what we offer. We, however, held an apartment open (actually an upgrade over what he paid for) for the last 10 days of August, to have it available for him on Aug. 31.

We are extremely accommodating landlords. We move tenants around, we move furniture around, we buy extras for tenants, we recently moved furniture out of our own guest room because a tenant wanted a lounge chair for watching TV. Hell, we even dog sit for our tenants, just neighborly, no charge. We could offer a string of excellent references, and only two not so good, and both of those stories would rival trw's!;)

Thanks for letting me vent. When he called me "sweetheart".....arrgh! I am 57 years old!

Well, this is certainly and most interesting post. I find it interesting that people would clog up a reasonably useful forum like this with such a juvenile and largely inaccurate post.

A couple factual additions:

Julie Sommer and her father ( I mean boyfriend) approached us through our other tennants in semi desperate need of a rental. We all know how difficult it can be to find anything. They couldn't afford the rent we were asking and asked if they could do some things on the property in partial payment which we agreed. They put a security deposit in place and paid the agreed upon rent just fine until the last month. On the 8th or 9th of the said months rent, they contacted us to let us know they decided to use their security deposit as last months rent (not asked, told.) Well, we all know that you just can't do that. It doesn't work that way. I politely, but bluntly told her that she needed to either pay her rent or leave. Needless to say she did not. Pretty straight forward and simple. Nuff' said about that.

As far as Alexanda Bently:

She was acting as property manager briefly at one point. After all, we did purchase the property through her. There was never any official agreement in place (obviously a fault by everyone.) After numerous complaints from our current tennants about her not taking care of there needs, Lauren and I FIRED her (Of course Lauren denies that now). Once fired, she produced a faxed, hacked, and ultimately FORGED document that was our supposed aggreement. An original has never surfaced. It's amazing what you can do with photoshop and a couple old closing documents. She was paid her monthly commission for the entire time she (didn't) manage the property. She still holds, to this date, a $500 WAPA and $200 pet deposit for those tennants.

I think a quick conversation with the existing tennants would clear up any confusion about the the drama that unfolded between Julie Sommer, Lauren, and Alexandra Bently.

Bottom Line.
Get everything in writing. Rent something you can afford. Pay that rent you can afford.

Entirely untrue, Brian. I have a whole folder of emails back and forth with you and Lauren clearly showing I was your property manager. I even have an old PM on this site from you in which you asked me to manage the property as you were leaving island for Alaska. What you are calling a forged document was what was mailed to me by you and Lauren from Alaska. If you played with it before sending it planning in advance to later make such a false claim, I wouldn't be surprised as I have come to expect that kind of ridiculous thing from you over the past year.

The fee for placing the tenants in the upstairs unit was not paid in full. I had graciously allowed you to pay it out in monthly installments rather than as an up front fee due to your financial strain at the time. You later expected me to deal with a deranged landscaper you had an agreement with, which was not something I ever agreed to handle. I do not confront wacked out psychos holding machetes. It's just not part of the services I render.

You claimed you fired me for not filling the downstairs unit as quickly as you would have liked. What does that have to do with not paying the fee for filling the upstairs unit? Then later you claimed that I was never your property manager at all... yet again said I had not done my job. So which is it? Was I your property manager with a job to be done? Or not working for you at all, in which case I couldn't have had a job to do so why were you firing me for not doing it? Your logic has some serious flaws. What is not in question is that I placed tenants into the upstairs and you did not pay the placement fee in full. I have had tenants for the downstairs multiple times at Lauren's request and you have repeatedly blocked them from moving in.

At the time you asked me to find a tenant for the upstairs, you had a long-term tenant in the downstairs who later left and Lauren then called desperate for help in filling that unit also. Unfortunately you took weeks to get me a key to that unit and then I found it in serious disrepair and not rentable. Months went by and you did not prepare it adequately for rental at the rate you were asking. I had tenants willing to pay a lower rate than you wanted, but they weren't going to pay top dollar for a unit in disrepair with little to no furnishings in it at that time.

The security deposit and utility deposit were paid to Lauren at the time the tenants moved in and I have since sent her copies of the cancelled checks from First Bank to settle the question of where those funds were being held. Lauren told me she needed to use the money to pay your mortgage which was in arrears. You really need to stop stating I am holding their deposits as it is patently untrue and that has already been fully proven. The only payment due is from you to me for services already rendered in placing tenants into your upstairs unit. You can check once again with Lauren for the income/payment statement that I emailed to her along with the bank photocopies of cancelled checks.

WOW, I would stay away from this landlord on general principals -- waaaay too much drama for me.

But the post points out a good/bad thing about island living, everybody know somebody who knows somebody else who know YOUR business. Hard to hide behavior here.

uh huh!
This is better than Y & R any day! 😛