They managed my property in Albuquerque for a couple of years. The first year was OK but then everything deteriorated rapidly. We needed major plumbing work done to the property. AMMRE said they would solicit bids from their local contacts (we're out of state). They could only get one bid that came in at $150,000. I was suspicious that only one plumbing contractor would be interested in a job of this size so I told them I would also be soliciting bids. I found a company in Texas to travel in to Alb and do the work for $40,000. Annoyed and suspicious, I went through the previous year's operating statements and found that the occupancy they said we had in the apartments did not match with the income they collected. They said the high vacancy was because of the plumbing problems in the building. When I told them the rents collected didn't match the actual occupancy, they said they were allowing certain tenants to stay rent-free during the rehab work. I asked why they never asked me and they had no real answer. The work was going on for 6 months and didn't affect the habitability of the units for more than 1-2 weeks cumulative, so a lot of rent went uncollected (at least by me).
At this point, my building's manager stopped returning my phone calls and emails.
I diplomatically contacted the owner of AMMRE with my concerns about how my building was being managed. I gave her the benefit of the doubt that maybe she had a rogue employee and was unaware of what was going on.She listened was apologetic, said that didn't sound like something the he (the manager) would do intentionally, and said the she would have the manager contact me immediately. He never did. I called again a couple of days later, and she said something like "he hasn't called you yet?". Keep in mind they work every day in the same 2000sq ft building about 3 rooms apart.
I'm still not 100% sure what was going on but the absolute best case scenario is that our building was being horribly mismanaged. The other, more likely scenario is that we were being taken advantage of by the people we put in charge of our investment.
At that point I gave 30 days notice that we were switching management companies. I decided to bite my tongue and be diplomatic about it because they still had my building for 30 days. I called the owner again and said that it just wasn't working out and to please help the transition go smoothly. She said she was sorry I felt that way but they would cooperate fully.
They did not return calls of the new company either and delayed just about everything during the process (turing over keys, access to the building, etc).
With our new management company, cashflow skyrocketed almost immediately. My only regret (other than not pulling the plug on AMMRE sooner) was that I didn't share my experience with more people. I doubt I was the only person this happened to.