Over 80% of property managers think they communicate well with their renters, but fewer than 40% of residents agree. This shows that, if you have complaints about what a property manager is doing, you are neither alone nor should you hold your tongue.
But, how do you go about presenting a concern to your property manager, or if they ignore it how do you escalate the issue?
Below, this article will illuminate how to file a complaint against a property management company. Through reading this post, you should be able to plan how to handle any issues that come up through your dealings with property managers. So, if that is an issue you are dealing with, read on.
How to File a Complaint Against a Property Management Company
The complaint filing process is not complex, although it may take some time.
There are many different steps that you can take to make a complaint against such a company. You do not need to perform them in the following order, but we recommend that you contact the company involved first. This will show that you intend to resolve the issue amicably should it go any further.
- Write a letter of complaint to the property manager in question
- Contact the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
- Contact the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
- Contact your local city
- In extreme cases, file a lawsuit
Any company in residential real estate should consider any complaint that you send them. After this, at the very least, they should respond with a message in some form or another.
There is a chance that you are not comfortable with contacting the property management company themselves. Reasons for this may include legal issues or personal safety. If this is the case, you can of course escalate faster.
You can find more information on each of the above steps to file a complaint below.
How to Write a Complaint Letter to Property Management
The first thing that we suggest you do in most cases is to write a direct letter to the property management company. If you have not done this and there is no impediment, you should do so. You may find that their failure is not due to malicious action but a lack of communication between you and them.
This may not always guarantee that they act fast after this. After all, you are one tenant of many who may all have issues that need resolution. Although, they should at least confirm receipt of any complaint that you send them before they move forward with it at a future time.
Any good complaint letter will not only detail the situation as it is currently but will provide useful context and remove extra fluff. We would suggest that you break down every step you wish to communicate in bullet point form.
If the company then ignores your complaint, then you might start to consider it to be negligence. You should take the issue further.
Contacting the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
The HUD acts as oversight for any issues related to housing, house ownership, and property renting. This includes a complaint about property management that you might have. They act as arbitrators when necessary and can resolve issues brought to them.
If you file a report with them, they will do their best to investigate the issue in question. Should they deem it worth investigating, they will do so and you may hear of the results. Although, circumstances may dictate that you do not receive a full report from them.
Issues that the Department of Housing and Urban Development handles include:
- A property manager not paying out security deposits
- Dangers to a tenant’s health
- Discrimination based on protected statuses
- Fraud
- Ongoing maintenance issues
- Problems with professional management
- Safety concerns
Contacting the Better Business Bureau (BBB)
The BBB is an independent organization that assesses and rates businesses across the country. If anyone has an issue with a business, including a property manager, they are likely to want to hear about it.
Many companies care a great deal about their BBB rating, as it affects how both competitors and partners view them. For this reason, they are likely to pay attention if a complaint is made about them to this organization.
Contacting the City
Washington DC is a city comprised of many departments. Many of these could help you with investigating any issue that your property manager is creating.
The city’s website has many links to report issues with how your property manager is handling your home. Examples include:
- Reporting unlawful actions by your landlord
- Reporting that your living conditions are not safe for habitation
- Reporting that you are being discriminated against
Discrimination includes if a landlord doesn’t accept housing vouchers. It is also discriminatory if they restrict access to specific services or programs.
The city takes a property manager’s responsibilities very seriously. They will start an investigation if you raise concerns with them.
Filing a Lawsuit
If you report a property manager, there is a chance that the issue is not resolved to your satisfaction. If that is the case, you can always consider filing a lawsuit with your property manager or anyone else involved.
We cannot offer you advice on how to do this and instead would recommend that you contact a competent attorney. They should be able to run you through the filing process as well as discuss how they can help you and what that would cost.
What Renters and Landlords Are Actually Complaining About in 2025
The complaint filing process hasn’t changed much. The reasons people end up filing in the first place? Those have.
Poor maintenance handling, unexplained charges, and errors in rent collection Property Management OKC have been the recurring themes across reviews and housing forums this year – but the pattern isn’t random. Most of these complaints trace back to the same root: a property manager who is hard to reach and slow to act.
79% of renters say they should be able to communicate with their property manager via text or chat. Property Management OKC That’s not a high bar. But the industry average rating hovers around 2.3 stars, with 96% of reviews falling at either 1 or 5 stars Direct Express – almost nothing in the middle. People either have a good experience or a genuinely bad one. There’s not much gray area.
Below are the complaints that came up most consistently in 2025, and how Nomadic handles each one.
Complaint #1: Maintenance requests go unanswered or take weeks to resolve
When tenants report a problem and hear nothing back for days, they assume building management is ignoring them. The repair itself is almost secondary at that point – the silence is what breaks trust.
Nomadic’s maintenance response time averaged 23 minutes last year. Not days. Requests go into a tracked system, get assigned, and tenants receive updates throughout. That’s not a promise – it’s a number we publish because we stand behind it.
Complaint #2: No one picks up the phone
“We can’t seem to reach them or get a call back” is the number one complaint across the industry. It sounds like a customer service problem. It’s actually an operational one – most management companies are understaffed relative to their portfolio size, and it shows.
Nomadic runs a 24/7 hotline. If something goes wrong at 11pm on a Friday, there’s a real person to call. That matters more than most of the features property managers advertise.
Complaint #3: Unexplained fees and confusing owner statements
Board members and owners are rarely able to tell whether they’re getting fair value from vendors the property manager selects. Confusing financial reports show up repeatedly as a top-three complaint industry-wide. To be fair, some of this is complexity – maintenance invoices, vendor markups, and management fees can legitimately be hard to untangle. But that’s an argument for more transparency, not less.
Nomadic’s owner statements are itemized, timestamped, and accessible through the client portal. If a charge appears, there’s documentation behind it.
Complaint #4: High vacancy and slow leasing
Setting rent too high is a common mistake that compounds quietly – a unit sits empty for six weeks while the owner waits on a price that the market won’t support. By the time the price drops, two months of income are already gone.
Nomadic averaged 18 days on market last year with a 97% occupancy rate. Pricing decisions here are based on current submarket data, not guesswork or anchoring to what the last tenant paid.
Complaint #5: Legal missteps – lease enforcement, notices, and DC-specific rules
The most serious complaints – improper evictions, missed inspections, lease violations – suggest a dangerous lack of legal knowledge. In DC, Maryland, and Virginia, the regulatory requirements for landlords are not forgiving. A missed notice period or an improperly served document can void an eviction filing entirely and cost months of lost rent.
Nomadic’s eviction rate is under 0.5%. That’s partly due to tenant screening, and partly due to the fact that lease enforcement is handled by people who know DC housing law – not generalists working from a template.
If any of these complaints sound familiar from a previous property management experience, that’s worth paying attention to before signing with the next one. Contact us to talk through what managing your property with Nomadic actually looks like.
What Next?
You should now have a much better idea of how to file a complaint against a property management company without a hassle. Wouldn’t it be better if you had a property manager you never needed to complain about, who would act with professional candor? Lucky for you, Nomadic Real Estate provides just that.
Learning how to choose a property management company from the start can help you avoid these issues altogether by selecting a manager with transparent communication, proper licensing, and strong tenant relations.
Our people can talk to you about what we can offer to provide you with a professional property management service. All you need to do is contact us. So, give us a call today and we can discuss what we can do for you.
