I decided to hire Azari after reading all the positive reviews on this website. Regrettably, their inability to properly manage my property turned into a nightmare thereby resulting in significant monetary loss and tenant dissatisfaction.
I was hoping that hiring Azari Property Management would create less work for me. Sadly, it would have been easier to deal with the tenants on my own. Due to their negligence, billing errors, and fraudulent charges, I was constantly checking the accuracy of their work and essentially managing them.
Once Brandon,a key person, had left Azari last month September 2010, the rules and rates changed without warning. This was particularly true when the owner Manzar had to get involved with the tenants directly. For example, Azari charged me 40 minutes to tighten a screw. At one point, Manzar wanted to charge me $250/hour on top of the monthly management fee to read and respond to my tenants? emails. She complained that the new tenants were taking too much of her time. Interestingly, her company found these tenants, and now her ?management? company did not want to deal with them.
Under Azari?s management, one of my units was vacant for more than two months until Azari found a tenant. For some reason, I was charged two months management fee while there were no tenants to manage.
After finding a tenant for this particular 2 months vacated unit, I didn?t receive any rent payment until another two months later. It turns out that the rent payments went to Azari?s charges which turned out to be inaccurate. Many items were either overcharged or double charged and undocumented deductions, items purchased without receipts. I immediately pointed it out to Azari since I thought that it may have been inadvertent. Unfortunately, they refused to refund me for the clearly overcharged and double charged items. In fact, in an email, Manzar stated ?I replied to you several times that your request is not accepted. Let?s just take our losses and say goodbye.? In other words, she wanted to take my money and run.
On my final owner statement this month, Azari made another deduction from the tenants? security deposit transfer without providing any receipts again, after the owner Manzar said, ?Let?s just take our losses and say goodbye.? A Oven and Broiler racks ordered online. The price on Amazon is $14.95 for both, and Azari charged me $121.56 provided no receipt. The price difference is 800%. Azari also charged me a 1/2 hour for ordering this item online.
Now that I have broken my ties with Azari, I had an opportunity to directly communicate with my tenants. I learned that they have been extremely dissatisfied with Azari?s management of the property. In short, they indicated that Azari blamed all problems such as delayed responses and repairs on the owner (me). As the owner, I simply paid thousands of dollars in out-of-pocket costs per Azari direction. Naturally, I was not responsible for making sure that everything was taken care of in a timely manner; this is the property manager?s job, and that?s why I hired them. Now that I have changed property management companies, my tenants want to sue Azari. They stated that Azari ?have put you in great legal jeopardy?we should all join suit and sue Azari for errors and omissions. They have been so abusive and unprofessional that I truly feel that they shouldn't be in business.?
RECOMMENDATION: If you care about your investment then avoid this company like the plaque. Do not be fooled by their initial charm and seemingly professional appearance. Please do not make the same mistake that I made. If you already signed a contract with this company, make sure you carefully look over your statements. Also, you may want to find out how they have been interacting with your tenants because in my case, Azari blamed their negligence on me.
Thanks for reading. Good luck!
more