With 20 units, it’s $8000/year he can pad into his income.
A bit dicky for $8000/year, right out of the Carleton Sheets playbook. 😉
The rate of $125 is, IMHO, reasonable. Which puts it at about 3.2 hours. Not sure how he billed .2 What’s the itemized list?
Overall, $400 to deal with the unplanned service scheduling to release the apartment isn’t bad. Yea, a monkey could do the scheduling, but then you’d be in a corporate apartment.
It’s a lot of nit picky back and forth interruption calls and emails. The more responsive he is to get the unit on the market and ready, the more nit pick hours he bills. The less, because he’s attending other business, the more lost rent you owe him.
If you were in Wisconsin or some other states, said charges are prohibited and considered part of the expected cost of being a LL. In California, he can charge you for advertising and leasing costs associated with a lease break.
Also, even if the LL is charging more now, if you were below fair market rent, the LL does not need to rent for the same amount.
For me personally, if you had been a good tenant for 3+ years and I immediately rerented the place it’s a karma thing. So feels like a middle finger thing on the way out the door. As flu said, it’s just business to that LL.
Perhaps you’d like to offer your humble opinion to the new renter so they know what kind of service to expect from the business when they look to leave.
