Iron Bridge Property Management (Auck) Ltd

I used Iron Bridge to manage our previous family home where we had lived for more than 5 years in Hillcrest. At the end of a year's tenancy I discovered 3 cuts had been made in 3 support beams in the garage (see photo attached). Iron Bridge did not pick this up at any point during the tenancy through inspections, and couldn't provide me an ingoing report that they were supposed to complete and photos to prove the status of the property prior to the tenancy. Other issues they did not pick up include broken wardrobe door handle, missing plants in the garden, a dying tree etc. Home owners and landlords, if you're thinking of using them, think again! Do not make the same mistake I did. They are totally incompetent! (P.S. If my rating for them remains 1 star, that means they have not tried to get this issue resolved, so readers don't be fooled by any fake response they may have.)

Amazing service and fast response I got from Alex for managing our property. Very detailed in providing updates to landlords and assisting landlord to get the best result. I will recommend them to others if you ever need such service!

We naively signed up with Iron Bridge Property Management to look after our former family home and tenants when we moved out of Auckland. Our property manager is Louise Higgins and more recently, we have also been dealing with owner: Aaron Smith.
Our feedback to anyone reading these ‘reviews’, is to steer clear of this company.

We now know that there are many property management companies out there who offer quality, attentive service for a fair and reasonable cost; companies who don’t lock home owners into a fixed management agreement that perpetually extends with successive fixed term tenancies. We have inadvertently found ourselves locked into a commercial relationship we want to end, while paying commission at a whopping 11.5% incl GST.

While we have more than one gripe with this property management company, there is one particular issue that anyone contemplating dealing with Iron Bridge should be forewarned of:
Iron Bridge provide zero transparency at the point a fixed management agreement ends, before it is automatically rolled into a new fixed period. That means, unlike the status quo for other fixed term service providers (e.g. phone & internet providers and power companies), Iron Bridge’s customers get no redisclosure of contract terms, no opportunity to opt out of a further fixed term obligation, and no opportunity to renegotiate the terms of the new fixed period. Effectively the property management agreement and fixed term tenancy agreement are lumped together by stealth.
The contract is written in a such a way that in order to end the management agreement, a property owner needs to unsettle and potentially lose (in our case, long-term) tenants by refusing to offer them a further fixed term tenancy, just to extract themselves from the Iron Bridge relationship. Failing that, a home owners’ fixed obligation to Iron Bridge is indefinite. Read that again.

We have been advised by legal counsel that the Iron Bridge contract represents arguable breaches of both the Fair Trading Act and the Commerce Act. Because Iron Bridge refuse to address the concerns around the legality and therefore enforceability of the contract, we are now in the process of escalating our complaint. We hope our efforts will at a minimum, shine the light on unethical practices like this, so consumers can better navigate some of the pitfalls of dealing with the currently unregulated property management industry.

Don’t make the same mistake we did. Whether you are a landlord or a tenant, ensure that you find a property management company that doesn’t disadvantage you by locking together the obligations of two very separate legal agreements.