SCUDO

Landlord Beware
As I write this review of SCUDO Property Management, I genuinely hope that I can steer other property owner’s away from this company so they don’t have to share my experience. SCUDO is a poor choice for property management as it failed to take care of my properties (it managed 6 of my properties over the course of a year and a half) without providing a reasonable level of diligence while charging constant and excessive fees. As an out of state owner, I must have a property manager that I can trust to take care of my property and not take advantage of me.
Some examples of not operating with a reasonable level of diligence include, but are not limited to:
1. Charging for a new dishwasher which was never installed. When I moved the property to a new property manager, I discovered what had happened, and while SCUDO did reimburse me, it clearly failed to do its job.
2. My properties were all delivered to SCUDO clean (spotless) and ready to rent. During the process of finding renters, SCUDO determined that the properties had to be cleaned again. I was charged $300 to $400 per property to have them re-cleaned. First of all, SCUDO should have taken care not to have people with dirty shoes trapse through the house during showings. Second, the fees are beyond excessive to clean an empty house.
3. When the new management company went to get keys from SCUDO, there were NO KEYS for 2 of the properties, and they were given a key for another property that didn’t work.
4. Two of the six properties (which had been fully remodeled one year prior, in fact one was a new building) had a laundry list of issues we had to address. Any manager paying attention to the property would have brought these issues to my attention.
Some Examples of the excess fees include:
1. A “maintenance coordination fee”. Seriously, I can’t make this up.
2. $125 fee for preparing a 1099. I was charged this fee twice on a property SCUDO managed for 12 months (despite the fact that no 1099 was necessary the first month since there was no revenue).
3. SCUDO’s “submission to legal” fee. Every other property management company I have worked with will bill the tenant for these fees and reimburse me once collected—not SCUDO.
4. $1000 to leave before 12 months fee—seriously, a fee to hold one hostage since SCUDO knows the value of its service.
5. $99 periodic report fee—I am not sure what is being reported as a third of my properties had major issues uncovered immediately by the new management company.
6. They also charged at least one of my tenants a “tenant benefit package” for $31.99/ month, when the tenant applied for rental assistance, SCUDO took close to $200 out of the rental assistance money for this “benefit” as well as late fees (which, of course, went to SCUDO). Essentially, SCUDO is always careful to act in its own best interest rather than that of its clients.
7. Of course, there is the 8% per month “management fee”, but I am not sure what you get for this, as SCUDO charges an additional fee for everything that a typical management company covers in the 8% management fee.
8. These fees add up, January through November, on the three properties that SCUDO managed, their fees alone were 16.28%, 17.73%, 14.7% respectively. If you are a property owner, if you hire SCUDO, you should build in at least 16% to 17% for their fees in your pro-forma.