GPS Renting Owner Terms Disclosure

Effective: Sept 1, 2021​

First of all, thank you for your trust in GPS Renting! We continue to strive to provide you Professional, Honest, and Kind services. At the same time, we are committed to providing a flat rate of 10% management fee, including resident placement, monthly management, and lease renewal, with excellent services.

To ensure we can provide quality services, we update our terms regularly to ensure clarity and transparency since the market, rental law, business environment, and technology evolve every day.

Owners' Duties and Responsibility

1. Provide all documentation (e.g. CC&R), records, and disclosures as required by law or required by Agent to manage and operate the Property, and immediately notify Agent if Owner becomes aware of any change in such documentation, records, or disclosures, or any matter affecting the habitability of the Property. If there is any penalty, fine, or legal action because the owners did not share the documentation, records, and disclosures, the Owner is fully responsible for the consequence.
2. The owner agrees to have all utilities on while the property is vacant during the marketing and leasing period. This includes electricity, gas, and water.
3. The owner will maintain without interruption policies of casualty and liability insurance for the property and at the Agent’s request, the Owners will furnish the Agent copies of such policies. While we are unable to provide specific insurance recommendations, we can offer general guidance on the importance of homeowner insurance for rental properties. For rental properties, it’s essential to have a landlord insurance policy rather than standard homeowner's insurance. This type of policy typically covers the structure of the property, liability protection in case someone is injured on the premises, and potential loss of rental income if the property becomes uninhabitable due to a covered event. Landlord insurance may also offer optional coverage for damages caused by tenants. It's crucial to review different policies and ensure you have sufficient coverage for your property, liabilities, and any additional risks related to renting out a home. We recommend consulting with a qualified insurance professional to tailor coverage that best meets your specific needs.
4. Onboarding setup: There is an one time setup fee $295 and $135 marketing photos per Property for Property Services or other services provided for in this Agreement. It includes new property walkthrough, the onboarding inspection, marketing photos by GPS teammates for once and all the documentations setup.
5. To ensure the safety of residents and remove liability from the owners, we do require rekey for all the properties. The cost is rekeying up to six locks for $179. This will be an owner expense at first. But in the future, it will be resident expense upon their moving out. (Similar to house cleaning and carpet cleaning). However, in the City of Seattle, by law, the owner needs to pay for this expense, so there won't be a tenant reimbursement for any properties within the City of Seattle boundary.
6. Agent establishes a separate bank account for the Tenant Deposits and will hold all the Tenant’s Deposits. When onboard a property with existing tenants, the owner will transfer the deposit to the Agent’s Security Deposit trust account within 14 days to comply with Washington state law. There is a daily penalty of $10 for not transferring the Security Deposit.
7. Pay the Agent the management fee according to the amount on the Property Management agreement. If the Agent onboards a property with the tenant’s late rent, the management fee will be calculated on the monthly rent charge rather than the amount that the tenant has paid. There is a $35 minimum monthly management fee, which applies to the entire management period including vacancy.
8. To ensure a smooth property management experience, the owner will pay property-related bills (utility, repair, etc.) through the agent within 7 days of receiving the bill. For most of the properties, there is a $200 reserve amount in the GPS Renting trust account (the account is at Chase at Canyon Park Bothell). We will pay the bill with the funds from the trust account. However, in the situation that the bill is more than the money in the owner's trust account, the owner will need to contribute more to the trust account. The owner can do that by contributing the money to the agent’s trust account without charge. Here is an overview of the owner's contribution. https://www.gpsrenting.com/owner-portal-overview-en/ If the owner does not make an owner contribution within 7 days, agents will pay the bill with the agent's fund and charge the owner a 2% convenience fee (minimum $1.99). The owner needs to pay the agent the bill within 30 days. If the bill is not paid within 30 days, there will be a 10% penalty of the total amount, with a 1% daily charge after 30 days.
9. Indemnify, defend and hold harmless Agent, and all persons in Agent's firm, regardless of responsibility, from all costs, expenses, suits, liabilities, damages, attorney fees, and claims of every type, including but not limited to those arising out of injury or death of any person, or damage to any real or personal property of any person, including Owner, for: (i) any repairs performed by Owner or by others hired directly by Owner; or (ii) those relating to the management, leasing, rental, security deposits, or operation of the Property by Agent, or any person in Agent's firm, or the performance or exercise of any of the duties, powers or authorities granted to Agent.
10. The owner agrees to keep all mortgage obligations, property taxes, association fees, or any other obligations that could lead to a foreclosure action against the property current and paid in full as required. Should the Agent be notified that a foreclosure action has been initiated against the subject property, this shall be considered a material breach by the Owner. At the Agent’s option, the Agent may terminate the contract or the Agent will freeze all of the Owner’s funds related to that property, and the Agent will make no further disbursement to the Owner. The owner will have 30 days to correct and make the obligation that initiated the foreclosure action current. Should the Owner fail to make current the obligation, and thereby stop the foreclosure action, the Owner authorizes the Agent to refund the security deposit to the resident and to deduct from the Owner’s funds on hand with the Agent all amounts due to Agent or Resident including, but not limited to, any refund to Resident of prorated rent or expenses and all of the management fees that would be due to Agent through the end of the lease term. Owner and Agent agree that the Resident is not a third party beneficiary and nothing in the paragraph shall limit Agent’s other legal remedies to collect from Owner any unpaid fees due to Agent.

Standard Property Management Service Scope

Your property management service includes the following:

• Leasing
• Rent Collection
• Monthly Online Statement
• Post Move-In Repair Bundle to Save Money
• Utility Management
• Maintenance Coordination
• Spring and Fall Maintenance Package
• Emergency Response Service
• Evening, Weekend, and Holiday Emergency Response Service (*additional charge applied)
• Annual Statement
• 1099 Tax Form

GPS Renting standard SLA(Service Level Agreement) is a 24-hour response time unless it is an emergency, which is property damage, people safety, or anything the RCW defines as an emergency. We have teammates go through all the voicemails, text messages, and emails every day and create follow-up tasks for people who have not followed up yet. They will try their best to follow up within 24 hours. Hope this helps! Thank you for your understanding!

Optional Services That Owners Can Add

In addition to the standard service we provide, we also have additional optional services that you can choose.

• Additional Inspection Fee - $155/occurrence. At GPS Renting, we are revolutionizing how property management service is charged. When we are visiting the property for repairs, we always inspect additional areas to see the condition. If there is anything alarming, we will schedule an official inspection. If you want an additional inspection, the fee is $155 per occurrence. We will generate a report just like the Pre-Listing Inspection that you have seen when we onboard your property.
• Additional Owner Mail Handling Fee - $25/month. At GPS Renting, we help you manage all the utility-related mailing. We understand that sometimes you need help with other personal mail too, such as bank statements, mortgage statements, etc. If you need a place to receive the mail, you can use our office address. The service charge is $10 a month. We will receive the bill, open it, scan it, and send it to you digitally. In this case, you can always be on top of your mailing needs.
• Property tax, sewer capacity, insurance, HOA payment, and other property-related Fee - $25 per occurrence. Your standard management service scope includes all utility payments. Property tax, sewer capacity, insurance, HOA, and other property-related fee payments are not part of our standard process. If the owner wants GPS Renting to pay the fee on the owner's behalf, there is a $25 convenience fee.

Service Legal Document

• From time to time, we need to serve official legal documents to the tenant per the law requirement. For example, in a Lease Renewal situation, we try to save the owner's money by first communicating the lease renewal term with the tenant. However, if the tenant does not respond, we will need to hire a process server to serve an official legal notice about lease renewal. This will cost $95 (The fee may change from the 3rd party law firm). This is the same for tenants not paying rent on time, so we need to serve 14-day pay or vacate notice, or lease correction notice, etc. The owner is responsible for the official notice service fee.
• If the lease requires notarization during lease renewal, we will bill the owner a fee of $25 to cover the notary service.
  

Maintenance Related

• From post-move-in inspection to move-in inspection, we try to bundle smaller repairs together and schedule one repair appointment with your residents 2-3 weeks after they move in. The hourly charge is $95/hour. The normal time spent is 2-3 hours. Since the repair scope includes lots of smaller items and can change based on interaction with the residents, we won't notify you of the additional small repair unless the total repair time is more than 3 hours.
• We work with our sister company GPS Maintenance to handle lots of small handyman jobs. It is a license, bond, and insured company. The handyman charge is $95 per hour. The material cost will be provided in the GPS Maintenance invoice. It includes an upcharge on top of the raw material purchase price.
• After-hour repair fee. Most vendors, such as furnaces, plumbing, sewer, and water heaters, all charge an after-hour service fee in addition to the normal fee. We will not schedule after-hour repair unless it is an emergency. GPS Renting maintenance after-hour service fee is $150. This is repairing the work from an emergency, not responding to the emergency. Responding to emergencies is included in the scope of service management.
• During the vacancy period of the property, the owner will be responsible for all the utilities and landscape. Owner understands that from the date the previous resident moving out to the date the new resident moving in, there may be additional cleaning and landscaping needed. This is especially applicable during March to June when the yard grows so much and also in the Oct to Jan, when the leaves accumulate during vacancy. From March to June, we recommend to have the landscape done at least every two weeks. In order to make sure the property is in great condition, GPS Renting will conduct periodic landscape and cleaning during the vacancy.
• GPS Renting will not charge any markup for any vendor service. However, for some vendors, GPS Renting may receive a volume discount. The agent has the right to keep the discount.
• For specialized and expert repairs, including but not limited to appliances, furnaces, electrical, plumbing, sewer, and water heaters, the vendors always have a trip charge. The amount depends on the individual vendor. If you choose the same vendor to do the repair work, normally the vendor will discount or waive the trip charge. If you choose a different vendor for the follow-up repair or replacement work, please remember that your total repair cost still includes the trip charge for the initially dispatched vendor.
• Appliance ordering. We understand that the owner may want to order appliances themselves. However, sometimes this makes the issue more complicated. For example, because of a lack of information, the owner may order a fridge with a door opening from the wrong side, or the appliance delivery date is way past the WA Resident and Landlord Act allowed time limit. In this case, GPS Renting will be ordering all the appliances on behalf of the owner. We will shop around from Home Depot, Lowes, and Best Buy to try to find the most reasonable price and durable appliances to order. We will send the appliances to the owner for approval before we order it. If we don't hear back within 24 hours, we will go ahead with the order.
• GPS Renting provides an after-hour emergency hotline for our residents. We define emergency as 1) Loss of heat in winter time, 2) Unstoppable and large amount of water leak, 3) Unstoppable and large amount of sewer backup, and 4) fire. According to WA state law, we need to repair within 24 hours of the emergency reported. Otherwise, we may need to provide a hotel stay or resident can seek their own repair. To protect your interest and property, when an emergency happens, to protect your property, we may go above the $300 maintenance limit listed in the Property Management Agreement. We will try our best to notify you when the emergency happens and the cost of the repair, but we cannot guarantee depending on when the emergency happens.
• Price table for common items

Additional Terms

• GPS Renting has the fiduciary responsibility of the owner. In the event of a lease break, according to the lease, the resident will lose all the deposit and will need to pay rent until the new residents are found. However, in best practice, we found that it is best to give residents incentives to collaborate and show houses during the lease break situation. The owner can consider returning the deposit minus transition cost to the previous residents, if the previous residents work closely with GPS Renting to find the next residents, cover all the rents and utility until the new resident moves in, and pay for all the transition costs, including resident placement fee of 50%, repair for the property, cleaning for the property if needed. We live by our motto Professional, Honest, and Kind. We believe that this creates a win-win situation that the owner is not financially impacted during the lease break and the resident can get some deposit back if accomplish all the responsibilities.
• The agent can terminate the agreement with a 15-day notice to the Owner.
• If there is a lease renewal initiated with the tenant within 120 days from the termination of the management agreement, there is a 25% (minimum $675) charge under the terms of the agreement’s lease amount for the lease renewal fee. In a situation where the tenant moves out, and the owner plans to terminate the management agreement. The owner needs to inform the agent of the termination at least 30 days before the lease end date. Otherwise, there is a $675 charge on the termination.

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