By far the worst experience that I've ever had with a property management company. Seriously-…read moredon't do it. I will describe my experience with a few key terms: Broken promises, disappearing acts, disappointed tenants and vendors, missing money, lawsuits.
I hired Tri-State Property via their agent or owner Gena Wilkinson Currie to manage a few properties that I own in Philadelphia. Initially, this appeared to be a straightforward agreement until tori-state breeched this from virtually every perspective. I bundled these into flags. The sad part is that this is not all inclusive of my experience. Some can be described as poor business service levels and others could be categorized as downright criminal. I've simply outlined the facts.
Flag 1: While selling their services, Tri-state insisted that they were transitioning to an online payment option for tenants. This was an important selling attribute for me. During the first month, not only were directions for this online service not provided, but several tenants remained confused as to where or how to send rent in any mode, though I sent multiple reminders asking the company to follow up with the transition communications. (Oh and 3 months later, no online payment option had yet been established or communicated)
Flag 2: Though during initial discussions, Tri-state insisted that they had access to handyman resources, the first request to have work competed for a newly vacant apartment was followed with, "yes, we have a network, but this job may not be large enough for them." Huh, so who's supposed to do it? I quickly engaged by hiring one of my contacts who did the job at less than half the price with no problem.
Flag 3: On several occasions, hired contractors that I'd previously worked with reached out to me when they were hired by Tri-state but strangely were unable to get in contact with them when it was time to further discuss the project, meet at the property as needed or arrange for payment (Exterminator, plumber, rug cleaners).
Flag 4: Though the contract states I'd receive remittance from rent collection on the 20th of each month via electronic payment and I previously provided the required information to allow for this, this never happened. The issue of remittance became a clown show that included sudden non acceptance of my calls, promises of delivery via mail post the 20th (never arrived), blaming of the bank's system, promises of a new electronic payment (that never came), FedEx arrival of a check in the wrong amount (that subsequently bounced). During their 3 month collection of rent, I NEVER RECEIVED ANY OWED MONEY.
Flag 5 (aka the straw that broke the camel's back): I received an email from a tenant that had moved out thanking me for the time that I management the apartment, but displaying 100% disappointment once this was transitioned to TriState. Though the tenant had moved out on the 4th, TriState had still not conducted a walk through as of the 18th, which also meant they had made no attempts to rent out the now vacant apartment, since they didn't have keys!!! ( I attempted to meet to provide a copy of keys for all buildings several times and this never occurred. In fact this failure, is the only failure that actually worked to my benefit as it was one less thing to request when I subsequently needed to engage lawyers.)
