I recently rented a house to a very nice young couple. As I went through the process with the listing agent one thing after another happened that in my expereince raised all sorts of red flags...As we went through the negotiation of the price, the lease, etc. I was rather surprised by the suggestions that this agent came up with. This agent is a complete gentleman who has been in the business for under five years successfully. So I began to wonder if there is a right way to do things, or were my reactions to his suggestions just my way of doing things. Were his suggestions ok in terms of the process, were his suggestions wrong, was he too new in the business, were his suggestions based on a lack of experience? So here are some of things that came up and what I thought.
1. The first problem that came up was that my buyer was uncomfortable exposing his SS'#'s and financial information to someone he doesn't know. His credit report would be pulled and then what happens to it, it ends up in a file in an office. In a few years thrown out in the garbage. We are all hearing about identity theft and he was concerned. The listing agent on this property was adament and finally I had to speak to the owner of the property to overcome the agents rather rigid requirements. The owner of the property understood my clients objections and we cam up with an acceptable solution. On to the next step.
2. In New York State Real Estate Agents are not permitted to draw up legal documents and a lease is a legal document. We are allowed to fill in the blanks, name, address, start date, end date but we are not supposed to write up addendums. So, instead of using a Bloomberg lease which is standard, tested and used in all of the rentals I have done this agent decides not to use a Bloomberg lease because it is too difficult to convert it to a PDF and fill it in when necessary. So he writes his own lease in a Word Document, yes he write the entire lease himself. It is missing loads of wording and is missing a load of stuff that both the buyer and seller should ahve in the lease. Does anyone else in New York see this as a problem? He writes the entire lease which I give to my tenant to review. They get back to me and say that they won't sign it, it only protects the owner of the property.
One of the items he puts in the lease is that the owner can place a for rent sign on the property for the term of the lease. My client and I say no that isn't fair. They are paying a fair price to rent the house and shouldn't have to live with a for rent sign on the property for the entire year they are renting. I suggest that if a sign is necessary perhaps one or two months off the end of the lease is fair so the owner can find a new tenant. of course, this sign is for the agent not the owner because you can't find a tenant ten or eleven months before the end of a lease. He put a lot of other stuff in the lease but I won't go point to point but it was a document that could not have signed.
3. After the lease is signed, I call the listing agent for payment. He tells me that he sent a bill to the current tenant who is living in the house and he has requested that the tenant write a check to RE/MAX to pay my commission and he is waiting for his check from the owner. A week later I call him again and he says that he sent a bill to the tenant and hasn't heard back yet. The listing agent doesn't know where the tenant is and tells me that as soon as he hears from the tenant he will pay me. Does anyone else have a problem with something like this? He tells me that the owners funds are not available to pay me and I need to wait!!!! Finally two weeks after the lease is signed I explain that he needs to pay me. That the check he is waiting for from the owner should be used to pay me and when the tenant returns he can accept a check from the tenant in payment. I was not willing to accept a check for my commission from the tenant.
Honestly in 15 years having done numerous leases I have never come across this type of approach. Inexperience? Not knowing the law? No oversight?
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