A Bangor-based property management company failed to pay thousands of dollars to clients in the months leading up to its abrupt closure in early January, according to six landlords who relied on the company to take care of their rental properties.
On Jan. 3, the owner of Real Property Management Acadia, Chip Foss, told his clients in an email that his company would shut down that month and file for bankruptcy, according to a copy of the email.
By then, clients had already been in touch with Foss and his staff over the previous six months with alarmed questions and complaints about the rental properties his company managed, according to interviews, emails and financial records that the six landlords shared with the Bangor Daily News.
They wanted to know why the company stopped paying them the rent it collected from their tenants. Some had asked for their tenants’ security deposits and not received them. Their inquiries were often met with vague or puzzling responses, or no response at all. A seventh landlord said she cut ties last summer due to concerns about the company’s supervision of her property.
The situation has caused anxiety and financial stress for the mostly small-time landlords who trusted Foss’ company to provide careful oversight of their buildings. Some have found the ordeal especially frustrating because it has been difficult to figure out how much the company owes them due to its limited and confusing communication. Multiple landlords provided the BDN with business statements from the company to corroborate their experiences but also to show how difficult they were to understand.
“I’d like to see him pay for what he’s done,” said Michael Bunker of Cumberland, who said the company owes him thousands of dollars associated with a home in Old Town that he rents to a couple.
Foss acknowledged to his clients that his company owes people money. It isn’t clear, however, how many landlords have been affected. As of Jan. 31, the company had not filed for bankruptcy in Maine.
“There are financial obligations that we will work to resolve, as that is a [sic] something we find morally responsible, but that will take time,” Foss wrote to his clients in the Jan. 3 email.
Foss did not respond to multiple interview requests over two weeks and declined in an email to answer specific questions about his business, citing the advice of his legal counsel. The BDN presented a summary of his clients’ complaints, and Foss replied that “some of the items you name are absolutely inaccurate.” He declined to provide specifics.
The seven current and former clients described positive first impressions of Real Property Management Acadia, which formed in late 2018, according to state business filings. That began to change last year.
The clients who spoke to the BDN, all but two of whom live out of state, relied on Foss’ company to handle the rent collection, maintenance and supervision of properties they owned from afar and had acquired to supplement their income. Real Property Management Acadia paid them income from their buildings around the 10th of every month, a total that could vary after the company subtracted its management fees and any expenses paid to maintain the property.
But Bunker hasn’t received a payment from the company in a while.
Though his tenants have paid the company $3,000 a month since they moved into their rental in August, Real Property Management Acadia has only paid Bunker once: a deposit of $5,479 in October that only arrived after Bunker asked why he hadn’t been paid, he said. He provided the BDN with screenshots of his bank account corroborating the company’s transfer and showing his tenants’ monthly rent payments to the property management company.
When Bunker asked Foss why he hadn’t received at least $9,000 in additional rental income, the answer baffled him, he said.
Apparently, there were unpaid bills associated with the property, Foss told his client. Some of them were so old that Bunker questioned why the company never paid them. They were also for services Bunker had canceled, such as for pest control, or his tenants said were never performed, according to Bunker and emails he provided. In a December exchange, Bunker went back and forth with Foss trying to understand the charges on a statement from the property management company.
“If I’m missing something on that missing money,” he wrote Dec. 20, “maybe a 1 minute phone call could answer this.”
They never spoke. Bunker repeatedly tried, and failed, to reach Foss on the phone, he said.
In January, Bunker’s tenants, concerned about a possible bankruptcy, contacted Foss to request bank records showing the location of the $6,000 security deposit they paid Real Property Management Acadia when they began their lease.
Landlords are required by state law to keep security deposits in a separate escrow account where the money cannot be commingled with the landlord’s other assets. They also have to give the deposits back to tenants when they move out so long as the tenants don’t cause damage beyond normal wear and tear. At any time, tenants can ask their landlord for the account information where their deposits are kept.
Foss told Bunker’s tenants that he transferred their security deposit to Bunker, which Bunker called a lie. Foss also said he had used nearly $1,800 of the security deposit funds for “back bills on the property,” according to an email. The tenant responded in a furious email that such a move would violate state law.
“Where is our $6000 dollar deposit located at?” the tenant asked Foss again. “You were responsible for it, not Michael.”
‘Deeply concerned about the broader financial impact’
Kristen Al-Sharafi said Real Property Management Acadia started managing her five rental units on Bangor’s Center Street in 2019 when she moved from Maine to Dublin, Ohio. The properties typically generated around $5,475 in rental income a month, with the rent from one tenant partially subsidized by a federal housing voucher issued by BangorHousing.
The arrangement worked well for years, but she started to notice problems over the summer, she said.
On July 31, an office manager for Real Property Management Acadia sent a mass email to clients letting them know that the company was dealing with some staffing challenges that had affected “the level of service we have been known to provide.” In the email, the office manager apologized if the company had not responded to any owners who had reached out.
Two months later, on Oct. 10, the company sent another mass email explaining that monetary disbursements to owners were supposed to go out that day but would be delayed. It said that the company’s accountant was without electricity due to Hurricane Milton, which had slammed Florida.
Al-Sharafi was in the process of selling her buildings around that time. But when the sale went through on Nov. 21, the property management company had still not given her the money from five tenant security deposits, and she urgently needed to transfer that money to their new landlord who bought the buildings, she said.
Since then, Al-Sharafi has struggled to figure out exactly how much Real Property Management Acadia owes her because the company’s business statements are confusing, and she’s received limited information from Foss, she said.
For instance, she did not receive any rental income in November, but she confirmed in writing that the Bangor public housing authority paid Real Property Management Acadia $694 on Nov. 4 to cover its share of her then-tenant’s rent. She is still waiting on four of the five security deposits and is unclear about the status of a $5,000 fund she set up years ago for major repairs, she said.
Her estimate of what she is owed has ranged in the thousands of dollars as she’s sorted through her records over the past month. Meanwhile, Foss said he would address her losses and apologized for making her feel ignored. But he asserted in a Jan. 15 email that she had outstanding bills related to a broken sump pump and had been advised by his lawyer not to disburse any funds.
That only further confused Al-Sharafi who said she had resolved the sump pump problem in October when she paid a plumber more than $1,200, she said. She provided the BDN with a receipt for the payment.
In the meantime, the ordeal has caused Al-Sharafi emotional and financial stress, she said, explaining that she emptied most of her savings account to cover her tenants’ missing security deposits.
“Furthermore, I am deeply concerned about the broader financial impact on property owners in the Greater Bangor area,” she wrote to Foss on Jan. 4.
‘I just want them held accountable’
Don Heinlein of Gambrills, Maryland; Theresa Russell of Derry, New Hampshire; and Joe Wassam of Searsport also said the company didn’t provide clear reasons for why they hadn’t received rent revenue or security deposit funds.
Heinlein provided bank statements to show that the company deposited no rental income into his account in December for the three-bedroom home he rents out on Guzzle Road in Gouldsboro.
“I sent [Foss] an email, and he responded with, ‘This is the worst nightmare of their life,’ and ‘This was never the plan,’ and they’re very sorry,” Heinlein said.
Foss only hinted at what that nightmare entailed. In the email he sent to clients about the forthcoming bankruptcy, Foss said he had discovered a “significant issue” with the company’s accountant and had sought legal counsel to help resolve the damage the person had caused.
Heinlein said he asked Foss twice if he’d reported the accountant to the police but didn’t receive a response.
Russell, who entrusted the care of her childhood home in Glenburn to Real Property Management Acadia, said the company gave her vague explanations for why she didn’t receive three rent payments from late last year that totaled $5,220.
An office manager for the company told her in a Dec. 10 email that there had been a “system error” and that “things are moving a bit slower due to the holiday season.” The company’s accountant was also out of the office, which had “slowed down communication slightly,” the office manager wrote.
Shortly thereafter the company deposited $2,610 in the bank account of Russell and her sister, which was only half of what they were owed, Russell said. When Russell sought an explanation from Foss, he didn’t reply to her email. Russell and her sister followed up with a letter demanding their full compensation within five days. It also elicited no response.
Russell said she and her sister are owed a total of $4,343 in missing rental income, security deposit funds and money that had been reserved for maintenance.
Down on the coast, Wassam has tried to recoup more than just two months of rental income and a security deposit. He also complained that Real Property Management Acadia charged him fees he never agreed to pay.
Wassam and his lawyer calculated that the company owes him a total of $6,853. That sum includes $1,710 in fees for a rental insurance program that Wassam was charged for monthly between April 2023 and October 2024.
Foss told the BDN he notified all his clients that they would be charged for the rental insurance program, referred to as the “owner benefit package,” unless they opted out of it. The BDN reviewed an email that a different client received in March 2023 describing the program, which made it clear that she would be charged $45 per housing unit every month if she didn’t opt out.
Wassam said he was never notified about the program. The first mention of it he found in his email was a message he sent to Foss’ wife and the company’s chief operating officer, Veronica Foss, in June 2024, asking what the fees were for, he said. When she replied that it was an insurance program, Wassam told her he did not see a need for it.
He continued to be charged the fee until October 2024, a month after he severed ties with the company, he said. Wassam said he did not feel the company should be allowed to charge for a service he never authorized with a signature and was not part of the original contract he signed, which he shared with the BDN.
“At this point, I just want them held accountable. That is my single desire,” Wassam said.
‘Crashed and burned’
Casey Risley, a University of Maine graduate who lives in the small town of Onalaska, Washington, said she stopped receiving rental income from Real Property Management Acadia in the fall. While she acknowledged that the rental she bought on Birch Street in Bangor has required major repairs due to its age, she was frustrated with how the company handled some fixes.
When she first purchased the building in 2021, she sunk about $30,000 into renovations that Foss’ company oversaw for a 12 percent fee, she said.
But she recently learned that some of that work, like the construction of an exterior staircase and new flooring, already needs to be redone. She believed Foss had overseen shoddy work. (In an email, Foss said he understood Risley’s concerns but disagreed that repairs were because the original work was done poorly.)
The company also failed to pay the property taxes on her building last year, according to emails between Risley and the company. When Risley discovered the issue, she paid the overdue bills herself. She then struggled to get the company to reimburse her quickly. A company accountant had accidentally placed a “hold” on her account, according to one email exchange from July.
As with others, Risley eventually stopped receiving disbursements from the company in the fall. She received a series of confusing answers why. First, her tenant was delinquent, the company wrote to her, which she challenged. Then the company’s accountant was out of town. In mid-December, the company went “radio silent,” she said, except for some communication with Foss about a plumbing issue.
Like Al-Sharafi, she estimated she was owed thousands of dollars in rental income and security deposits, but she believed that outstanding maintenance bills could be deducted from that total.
“My bank account is dwindling, and I don’t have funds right now to pay cash for the repairs that need to be made,” she said. “I will have to take out an additional loan for that property to make it right.”
Lizzie Peckenham, an American who lives in Russia, said her relationship with Real Property Management Acadia “crashed and burned” last summer due to what she felt was poor communication and oversight of her rental home on Patten Street in Bangor.
Real Property Management Acadia told her it would cost $9,963 to repair damage at the home after her tenants moved out in June. The ceilings and walls were “extremely” gouged and chipped, and a leak had caused “extreme” water damage to a ceiling, a former maintenance employee wrote to her.
When Peckenham told the company she would keep her former tenants’ $1,700 security deposit to help cover the cost of repairs, the company declined to give it to her because it considered the damage regular wear and tear, according to emails and records. (Foss told the BDN two contractors reached this determination.) Peckenham disagreed that the damage, especially an unauthorized installation of a dog door, constituted regular wear and tear.
By then, Peckenham decided to find a new property manager. She declined to pay Real Property Management Acadia its fee for canceling its services because she considered the company in breach of contract for failing to conduct regular inspections to catch or prevent damage to her property, she wrote in an email. She did not receive a reply. (A copy of her contract shows that she signed up for “semi-annual” evaluations of her property.)
“I paid for a service they clearly were not performing,” she said in an interview.
Then, in September, she received an email from Foss stating that his company accidentally credited her account, and, in fact, she owed it money.
Fed up, she said, she ignored it.
Have you worked with Real Property Management Acadia? Let us know. Reporter Callie Ferguson may be reached at cferguson@bangordailynews.com.
