The founder has a certain charm and ability to appear understanding and very capable. AJAN created an aesthetically pleasing presentation, about our property and its potential, yet it provided very little data for anyone who is not easily sold with incomplete numbers and figures as you would see in a business meeting in a movie.
1 Example: We will add washing machines and raise rent by $X. They put that in a table without any thought to infrastructure expense, break even date, proper ROI analysis etc. It was a purely marketing 101 presentation.
Regardless due to this man's charm and our certain bias for younger entrepreneurs (as we are) we had some confidence that AJAN would be able to handle the job of managing our multifamily home. The founder told us he will be personally "committed" to handling our property due to their very dedicated small company with large focus on their clients.
Prior to initiating a contract with Ajan, we discussed being provided 3 quotes from different vendors for major repairs. In my experience when a mgmt. company works with a specific contracting partner, it is setup in a way to benefit the both of them and not necessarily providing me the best pricing:quality of work. They agreed!
WE SIGNED :)
they sent someone soon after to go appraise the property and create a professional report on all required maintenance, aesthetic improvements etc. as well as meeting the tenants - they noted that it is nothing they cannot handle. The result was a text image of some items with prices on a notebook. That is a report in AJAN's quality system.
AJAN suggested some improvements:
I provided them the opportunity to try a contractor that I had worked with previously and had great service/price. He refused claiming I accepted a price he already quoted me, the funny thing is that the price he quoted me was pending a discount the next day. Instead the revised price increased.
He noted that there is a large sense of urgency for this work to be done, those things included paint.. frame of a door... some front porch improvements etc... and mold which would have been covered by insurance anyway by different people...
My partner and I tried to civilly hint that he should work with the contractor we had a good relation with and waited..
2 days later the founder calls us and lets us know that he would like to terminate our contract, in the midst of an issue with the tenant, - more about this later
1st excuse: The extent of work it will take to manage the property and general scope of work is too much to handle apparently he spent 4 hours on the phone and that is too much.. ( remember they assessed/agreed with confidence after the inspection)
2nd excuse: Claims that my partner and I have differing/conflicting information and he can not work with such people. My partner and I were extremely easy going and the riskiest thing we did was ask him to just consider working with a different contractor that provided us with significantly cheaper quotes".
3rd excuse: to summarize, the tenant that the founder contacted was extremely offended with the way he was spoken to. This is a "professional tenant" that knows his rights, the tenant threatened to sue ajan and requested 5k.
At this point the founder asked us to have 0 contact with the tenant (we did not know about any of the above).
Next, the founder calls us and informs us that our best option is to pay this tenant 5k and "forget about" rent owed to us. He added he will be doing us a favor of finding him a different apartment in Cape Cod.. typing this right now just makes me laugh at my ignorance....
Here are some more things to consider:
-The founder claims "trust" and "full disclosure" are HIS NUMBER ONE QUALITY.
-The founder admitted that their main benefit is that they have a management software that streamlines maintenance requests and tenant management . (100's of software like this exist for small fees or free online). The reason we needed their service is to be on the field and manage when needed.
-HE IS NOT IN THE SAME CITY EVEN. That is all ill say about that
-AJAN will give you the illusion that they will handle everything like miracle workers to really put the owners at ease.
UNTIL you sign their contract, at this point whatever they say is the way it has to be or else you will see a very different side of the personality traits I discussed earlier.
-After all this damage they tried to get away with just stopping the contract immediately although there is a "60 day notice period" The smug reaction was ill charge you for the 60 days.
I would recommend to anyone thinking about hiring this company to consider twice and maybe a few more times for good measure. Any sense of professionalism that they will market to you should be taken with a grain of salt. read more