This is the conclusion of my three-part article on people I have encountered in the real estate business. I continue my discussion with developers, contractors and property managers.
I have come across some of the worst – the notorious breed of builders and developers. They are like car salespeople but mutated beyond the realm of humanity. They have developed (pun intended) the ability to bypass their conscience to amass wealth by unethical and devious means. They have no qualms about making false allegations and malafide claims to extort others while refusing to acknowledge bona fide claims against themselves.
Contractors can be good or bad. They tend to do business on their own terms, usually forsaking business principles. Estimates and quotes mean nothing to micro businesses; one must pay what they ask for regardless of what has been agreed to, for them to ever do any work for you again. They show up to perform service if and when they please. They do not take kindly to being made aware of their contractual obligations.
Property managers expect to be paid something for nothing. They shirk responsibility if anything goes wrong, and it usually does, because they expect a property to be taken care of just by dispatching contractors over the phone, without being on site to supervise. They care more about their relationships with their contractors (their “friends”) than about doing justice to their clients. Of course then, they will pay whatever a contractor asks for because it is not worth losing a contractor over one client account. They do not understand the concept of work being done right the first time, and in a timely fashion.
My operations manager presented a property management firm with a six-page written report of what the agent assigned to the property had done wrong. The owner did nothing except say that it was “water under the bridge” – based on the agent denying ever having received instructions, the purported lack of which led to the misdoings. When reported to the organization whose logo their tout on their advertising as an endorsement of their ethical standards, the organization favoured the “friend”, in this case the member who pays their ongoing sustenance. The report led to harassing phone calls every few minutes from the owner of the property management firm, calling our operations manager a liar and an extortionist, and threatened to reveal privileged information pertaining to the tenants to each and every tenant and sue us for libel, as a means to get us to withdraw the complaint.