Should Property Mngrs pursue excessive past due utilities for property owners?

[rjrcm]

Originally Posted by jdm2008

True. I think the main point is, is that if the property manager(he's a property manager if he does more than find a tenant and collects fees from every rent payment) is the only one who signs the lease, so he has the sole responsibility of litigating, for all money due to the owner.

Seems odd that only the property manager would sign the lease. The standard lease we use here have both manager and landlord sign. However, the real definition of responsibilities for taking tenant actions should be defined in a separate signed agreement between manager and landlord.

[CarlitosBala]

We rented a vacation home up in the mountains last december with some friends. The whole nine-yards. Jacuzzi, sauna, ect.

The owner seemed "cheap" from the get go, and he kept on repeating that we'd be mindful of utilities cost. He kept on uttering.. "turn off the lights", "don't use too much wood for the fireplace", don't do this, don't do that.

Well, a few days in, we started to worry because hot water would run out after a single person took a shower, and would not return for most of the day.

I "hacked" into his locked water-heater closet, only to learn that he had set it to one click above OFF. Literally. There was plenty of hot water after that.

No wonder there wasn't even enough hot water to fill up the jacuzzi-tub once. Much less for 6 people to take a shower once a day.

Freakking prick. His actions made it so that we all of went bananas with the utilities for the remainder of our stay.

Case in point? To me it sounds like the owner wants to subsidize his propane with the security deposit of his tenants. Not cool.

(I could be wrong though, but that's just my take on it)

EDIT: (In this case, the property was advertised for 8 adults, so its not like we all ratted it up in a one bedroom home to save some pennies)

[Lacerta]

Originally Posted by rjrcm

Seems odd that only the property manager would sign the lease. The standard lease we use here have both manager and landlord sign. However, the real definition of responsibilities for taking tenant actions should be defined in a separate signed agreement between manager and landlord.

Our leases only have the tenant and property manager signature on them. However, in my area, landlord is just another word for property manager. I'm assuming by your context, that landlord means property owner in your area. Property owners do not sign a lease here, they sign an agreement allowing us to enter into leases on their behalf. And yes, because it is our signature on the lease, it is us who takes a tenant to court if necessary.

I'll be curious to hear whether to OP hears anything back from the tenant regarding the $300 bill they were sent. If I were the owner, I wouldn't be worried about collecting the $300, I would be worried about the tenant suing for the rest of what should rightfully be theirs.

Propane costs are all over the place, but they look like they are maybe averaging around $3.00/gallon. We don't have any properties anymore with propane tanks, but one that we used to manage had a 1000 gallon tank, which was expected to last for 6 months of usage. So $3000 maximum for 6 months of cold weather, in some fairly nice, large houses in very cold areas. And usually, they use less than that (sometimes much much less), that is just to make sure they don't run out, since the truck can't get up there to fill them in the winter. So I just have a really hard time believing that a tenant could use $1300 worth in 6 weeks without some sort of malfunction.