Location: Missouri
Decades ago, my grandparents entered the mobile home rental business. As my Grandfather progressed in age, he hired a maintenance contractor to help manage the properties; let’s call him “Guy.” When my grandparents stopped being able to keep up with the finances, they gave Guy access to a petty cash bank account to pay himself and his brother, who apparently have their own workers. Despite there being only 20 units, I recently discovered that guy was being paid for performing 100 hours of work per week. That would be a staggering 5 hours of work per mobile home per week. We contacted the tenants to see what work was being done and almost all of them said that Guy doesn’t usually take their calls for required maintenance work and their Mobile Homes are in desperate need of repair. My grandfather showed us that rent deposits are being made into his bank account by Guy, while Guy claims that he does not handle the rent. Guy then pays himself the rent he has collected. Only a few renters are now actually paying their rent directly, and the business has been unprofitable since 2015. Is there anything we can do without having to spend money on a Lawyer, that will only cost us more money that we can’t recover?
TLDR: my grandparents hired a guy who does only a fraction of the work that he pays himself for.