MMJ Spots

I have property management company that I trusted to take reasonable care in managing my property and operate as professionals. Two years ago, they accepted a young unmarried couple as tenants. They didn’t have any real credit to speak of but the little credit they had wasn’t bad. I have discovered since, that one of them failed to sign the rental agreement, which the management company assures me “isn’t a problem”. They both moved out after one year and began illegally subletting to a group operating a marijuana growing operation. This group of strangers trashed my property. I have reason to believe that the management company had some indications of problems at my property (compaints from neighbors, visits from police, etc.) but I was never notified of ANY problems until I received a code enforcement letter about trash accumulation and started getting seriously involved. In the course of two years, the property management company did one “drive-by inspection” and told me that “everything looked fine from the street” and that they normally wouldn’t walk up to the property to look at it. Had they walked halfway up the driveway, they would have seen very clear indications that the property was been trashed. Luckily the tenants and their friends are out now, but they caused about $4500 in damages. The management company says that if I pay for the repairs, that they will send the two tenants (one weasel signed contract, the other didn’t) to collections to recover the costs for me. I don’t feel that I should have to try and collect from one, maybe two, weasely deadbeats, that a prudent person never would have rented to in the first place. My position is that the management company should have used much better judgment in renting it out in the first place (ie: no credit for a 21 year old doesn’t mean good credit), gotten both signatures, and actually gotten out of their car to take a look at the property at least once in two years, as opposed to doing the absolute least they could do to fulfill their duties to “manage” the property. They could have, with a simple exercise of what would be reasonably expected of them, mitigated this damage months ago. They’re telling me that they can’t find the tenants move-in inspection and/or photos. Also they’re refusing to conduct a thorough move-out inspection, which I have done on my own. What is a property management company’s duty to monitor a property they manage and would they be liable for the damages created by the tenants ? Or is it, as they tell me, my problem now, “we’re not responsible for what the tenants do”. I feel that the management company should pay for the repairs and collect it from the deadbeats or just eat the costs. What say you ?