Not too long ago, I had a real estate agent contact me with a request. Given that I am involved in Property Management, I was asked if I can lease a condo for one of her customers. Apparently, the person had bought a condo in the Los Angeles area at a price way above fair market value (awful deal!), so he no longer was able to afford the payments, nor could they sell the place (it is located in an area of high value loss), so he decided to rent it out for a ridiculous price to not only cover his mortgage payment, but to also make a profit. They also refused to make any type of improvements to the place to gain more rental value. On top of all that, I was supposed to find someone who wants to sign a 1 or 2 year Lease. What? At that price?
The problem here is that the agent told their customer that that would be no problem, because I am really good at what I do, so she's sure I'll find someone to rent it.
Now, I may be great (I appreciated the complement), but I cannot do magic. I did some research, added amenities, tried to include as much as I could into the rental price, but my final estimation was at $2300/month (pushing the upper limits).
Here is brief description of what I was dealing with: 2 bed/1 bath, 900 sq ft condo, 2 parking spaces, balcony, pool in complex, unfurnished, no view from either side, no refrigerator, not walking distance to anything, non of the utilities were included, worn down carpet, old kitchen cabinets, and overall a dismal shape. Asking price $4200.00/month.
I thought about it, and there was no way, I was going to scam some tenant (if one was interested at all) into paying a ridiculous amount of money for a place like that. I have pride, and I want to feel confident that I am offering a good product. I want to be able to sleep at night feeling good about my work, not guilty. I tried and tried to explain to the owner that he needs to be reasonable. The thing that struck me is that the real estate agent who referred the business to me, also didn't seem to realize that what her customer was asking for was just not going to pan out. Would you buy a house for $1Mil if you could buy the same house two doors down for $650,000?
Anyway, I finally refused the work and moved on with my day-to-day activities to some bigger and better things.
Please tell me how you would have handled the situation, or if you have any stories where you had to refuse business because one of the parties was unreasonable?
Thank you.
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I think in exactly the same way. I think you handled it perfectly!