My wife and I contacted Lisa on the property management side of Top Producers. Initially Lisa was great. She worked with us on what we were looking for in renters and seemed to really care. Top Producer's seemed really great.
By July 2013, tenants had been located and had moved in.
Less than a month into having our renters I came back to the house to get some last little things I had to leave behind. The renters were forewarned and everything was done legitimately and legally. On my visit, I happened to notice the renters had drilled some garage-type florescent lights into our open-beamed living room for extra lighting (pretty tacky looking). Also while there I learned they had been smoking just outside the house, there was trash and debris everywhere and I learned from my neighbors that the male tenants parents were living at the residence (a breach of our contract). Seeing all this, I informed Lisa of my findings and asked that she look into it. It took a while to get Lisa to respond, but via e-mail I was eventually told everything would be checked on.
About a week later Lisa contacted us via e-mail and text again and told us everything looked fine. My wife and I were told that no one else was living in the house (according to the tenant), the trash would be cleaned up, and no lights were found hanging from the ceiling (basically saying I didn't see what I saw). I was a little discouraged by this, but then again, I was assured everything was fine with our investment.
After this occurrence everything was fine until the following spring (4/2014). Through the winter we had attempted to contact someone at Top Producer's several times. Our phone calls weren't returned most of the time, but we were eventually connected with someone. This someone stated the price for our house would jump after the winter. We were also told the winter would be a slow season, so it was suggested we rent it out when we move and sell in the spring. This seemed to make sense and obviously getting the most for our money was worth the wait.
Come April, we contacted Jay on the real estate side of Top Producers again and learned winter was actually a great selling time and houses, "Went like hotcakes." Grrr... Getting that discouraging feeling again, I told Jay we needed him to work with Lisa on getting to the house so he could get things started to get that thing listed. Through that month, we tried to reach Jay three times about getting over to the house and have it appraised. We were finally told that our renters were giving some resistance to Jay coming over, despite being given proper and legal head's up.
After some more unanswered texts and e-mails to Lisa, we learned the tenants wanted to leave by May 1st, and wanted to know if they could breach their contract to do so. Seeing the problems we'd already had with them, we agreed, with the one condition being we were keeping their deposit.
May 1st rolled around and the tenants were still there. We learned this through our realtor Jay and not Lisa. Was told they decided to stay another month due to the house they were moving to was not available until June. By this time our contacts with Jay and Lisa are strictly via text or e-mail. These texts were often unanswered for days. I did note a trend in Lisa's response. I saw she was writing back late on Thursdays or Fridays. Any replies to these wouldn't be answered until the following Thursday or Friday night.
Regardless, we found out the tenant's wanted another month, and agreed to leave by June 1st. The end of June was the end of their lease so it was disclosed that their deposit would be used to retro those days the house was empty, plus whatever monies would be needed to fix damages. Agreed.
Wife and I went from discouraged to stressed-out by this point.
Tenants moved and we than received an email that we needed to give them back their deposit. We said that is fine, but they owed us for a months rent and we needed to do a walk through-in the end they would either be paying us or coming out even. A visual walk through was done with facetime with Lisa and my wife. My wife had a hard time noticing much do to the quality of the call but trusted Lisa would note what was wrong and compare to the first walk through done a year prior. That didn't happen.
Toward the end of this, the tenant caused a disturbance at the Top Producer Officer and was subsequently kicked out. Further, the tenant was referred to ME to handle the rest of his move from my place. That's right, the property manager referred their tenant to the owner because they couldn't handle him anymore.
I would NOT recommend this company whatsoever. read more
