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My rental property has been managed for a couple of years by company A. I recently found out that management of my property had been sold to company B and that I wasn't informed earlier as it was hard to reach me overseas.

I immediately contacted A and found out that the rent roll with my property on it had been sold by the actual individuals performing the day to day management, rather than the company itself. I presume it was some kind of franchise arrangement that allowed this as opposed to an employee arrangement.

I am now back with A and happy with the new (old) arrangement but for 2 weeks B collected rent and believes that they are entitled to payment for their efforts. From my perspective what B has done, aside from cause undue stress and disruption to my tenants, is act as my agents under false pretenses and intercept rent money without my authority to do so. I have scoured the documents I signed with A to find a section that allows transfer of my authority and it just isn't there. I have also repeatedly asked B to provide the evidence that this is a legal activity but they cannot; they only have vague statements and a history of the same activity to lean on.

B has agreed to what they consider a full refund and what I consider the return of money that was never theirs to begin with so this is purely an academic question: If I have given a rental agency authority to act as landlords over my property, can they transfer that authority to another person or agency without my consent?

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    Presumably the transfer of authority was given explicit conditions, and implied anything necessary to meet the needs of the representation they make of you, but anything else is implicitly left to you. So unless it was a necessary action for representing you or explicitly granted, transferring authority is not something they had the authority to do. – Nij Apr 14 '17 at 1:18
  • @Nij. So there is an implicit agreement that a transfer is necessary for continuation of management for the owners benefit? That makes sense, except the other owners and I weren't informed that this transfer was going to occur; we were told it had occurred. Wouldn't there be a requirement to notify the owners of the pending cancellation of the existing agreement so they can make their own arrangements, leaving an unauthorised transfer as a last resort? – JRoughan Apr 14 '17 at 12:27
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    I would presume so, but a particular case really needs particular legal advice. – Nij Apr 14 '17 at 19:18
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If A or its employed had, or represented to B that they had, proper authority to sell their contract with you, then B accepted in go0od faith. In that case B performed work for you, and if it did so to a reasonable professional standard, should be entitled to reasonable compensation, up to whatever your contract with A provided. If BG felol short, that would be a different matter.

If your contract with A did not in fact entitle them to assign or transfer their obligations, you might well have a case against A, but B was entitled to rely on A's representations that this was above board, unless B had actual notice to the contrary, or B had reason to believe otherwise, such that a reasonable person would have been suspicious at least.

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