We own a single family home which has been rented, through a Property Management company, for the past three years, orginally under a year long lease, Jan.-Dec. '10, subsequently on a month to month lease. Due to a disagreement over the timing of rent collection and deposit of said collection less the management fee, the Property Management company sent us, the owners, a letter dated Nov. 14, 2012, stating they were dissolving the owner/management agreement as of Dec. 15, 2012. The renter was not advised of this dissolution of the Agreement by the Property Management company.

There was never a problem with the renter paying her rent on time, in fact she often paid weeks before rent was actually due on the first of each month. The problem was with the Management company depositing her rent payment into our account weeks after they received it. The renter sent a check for both December 2012 and January 2013 to the Property Management company which was deposited into our account, less the 9% management fee, on November 23, 2012. Monthly rental is $1250, property management fee is 9%, (112.50 per month), the renter sent a check for $2500, $2275 was deposited by the Property Management company.

I wrote a letter to the management company requesting remimbursement of 1/2 December and all of January's as, per their letter, they were no longer acting for us or legally entitled to $168.75 of the $225.00 after Dec. 15, 2012.

The Management Company replied that "Management fees are charged on rent collected, the renter paid rent in advance through January 31, 2013." In other words, it didn't matter that they had dissolved the Agreement with us, nor had advised the renter that the Agreement was no longer in effect, they collected the rent and were entitled to the fee. Is this true?