Kamloops woman managing properties without a license got snitched on by former employer
The Kamloops woman who was ordered to stop practicing property management was reported to the authorities by the president of her former workplace, new documents reveal.
The order is against Kathy Alaina Bakker and was issued by the B.C. Financial Services Authority on Feb. 10.
In its reasons for the order, the authority said that prior to 2020, Bakker worked for a company that is a licensed brokerage. Early in 2020, on Jan. 24, the president of her former workplace emailed the authority to report her for not having a license to be a property manager. The identity of her boss and the company they worked for was not disclosed.
After the president of the company lodged his first complaint against Bakker in January 2020, he contacted the authority again in May of that year to indicate that Bakker had replaced his company as the property manager of a 40-unit apartment building that generated over $50,000 per month in rent.
When the authority contacted Bakker in January 2021, a full year after she was first reported, she claimed to have performed the same work without a licence for five years while she was for her former employer. It is unclear whether the current president was in charge when she worked there.
Bakker also indicated that her intention was to provide rental services through her own business, and that she would end contracts she had for property management. She suggested she would still try and help landlords find tenants but within compliance of the Real Estate Services Act.
When the authority tried following up with Bakker, requesting relevant documents, she did not respond.
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She was server with two documents – a Notice to Produce Records and an Undertaking to Cease Activity – on March 2, 2021.
However, “Bakker has not responded to the requests to produce the documents nor has she entered into the undertaking to cease activity,” reads the decision for the order.
At different points between January 2021 and January 2022, authority staffers found Bakker’s contact info still listed on rental ads and her social media accounts were still advertising rental services.
Bakker was ordered on Feb. 10, 2022 to stop all property management activity and to produce various documents to the authority within 30 days.
Last month, Bakker told iNFOnews that she ran a local cleaning service. She said some of her clients were property owners who were unable to travel to Kamloops due to COVID, and she was helping them vet tenants while they couldn't be there in person.
"They didn’t require a full time property manager they just needed someone to find them new tenants during a turnover," she said on Feb. 12.
A punishment more severe than this order would be detrimental to the public interest, the document reads, due to the length of time required to complete an investigation or hold a disciplinary hearing.
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