Battle at the Board
Progressive Property Management - Thursday, January 19, 2017
Recently, another property management company filed a complaint against me because the information I had posted in the Comparison Chart on this website was incorrect. In our industry, this is a very serious situation. If the local board finds that you have violated the Code of Ethics, the fine can be as high as $15,000. This same person had called me 9 months before and claimed the information I had about his company was incorrect. When I asked him what was incorrect so I could put in the right information, he declined to say what was wrong nor would he give the right information. He then asked I remove his company completely. I refused. It is my goal to make this industry transparent, and if I allowed him to bully me into removing his company, so could every other company in the chart.
I have used this chart for 3 years and received only one other complaint: it was from an attorney who owned a property management company in San Diego. He pointed out a couple mistakes, and once I corrected them, he was fine. The person who failed the grievance against me didn’t like the fact that his terrible Yelp reviews were right there in the chart, and the manner he conducted business was inferior to others in the chart. Mind you, the fee he charges is below what we charge and the only people who use the chart find it through my marketing. In fact, my website and marketing was helping his business.
At the ethics hearing he still refused to say what was wrong in the chart. It wasn’t until late in the proceedings that we discovered that his brother also owned a very similar property management company and I have included the wrong broker’s name. He accused me of espionage, stealing trade secrets and being underhanded in pretending to be an owner interested in his services in order to acquire the correct information. We had to use this technique become otherwise, they would not share their fee and costs.
In the end they asked I remove his company from my chart. There was no fine and they found nothing wrong with the Comparison Chart, but I did have the wrong name as broker. As long as the information I have in the chart is correct, I can continue to make this industry accountable and transparent. Some will resist change and try to make it difficult to understand how they do business. I am committed to exposing the ‘bad actors’ and help owners of rental properties make informed decisions.