Hey K4, did you ever have the thieving property managers dealt with?
What happened with all that? Sorry if I missed your update.
Hi GB. I'll be in Nica Dec. 16-26 and might or might not take care of it then.I probably shouldn't have described it as thievery. Here's what has happened: in two different instances, he has taken out money without asking me first for "emergencies" of people I don't even know, the latest being that he gave $250 to his girlfriend's brother's girlfriend who has a miscarriage and had medical bills.

In each case, he's told me that he did it, after the fact.
In addition, he sends me a weekly report on finances, showing what he's taken out (he has an ATM card for a rarely used account of ours in which I just put money for him) and what he has used it for. Twice he has misstated the amounts taken out, and once it took two times for him to fix it after I pointed it out. Could be innocent mistakes; could be trying to get away with something.
So, I have appointments to interview two other people for the job while we're there in a couple of weeks. But I'm not convinced we'll make the change. He does an excellent job with the guests we have and is able to take care of problems and find a "guy" for anything we need. And he is not a bad person. We were warned in advance by other ex-pats that when you take on Nica employees, you end up taking on their whole families--paying for gifts for their kids, kids school, etc. It shouldn't be a surprise. It's just an odd mindset to us as Americans.
The two people I'm interviewing are both American ex-pats, and one seems like she would be fantastic for this. Just not sure yet that I want to give up and go with an American when if we do we are essentially putting three Nicaraguans out of jobs (cleaning girl, property manager, and friend of manager who has become a friend of ours as well and does a lot of helping out). I might give him a chance to get through the high season and then re-evaluate. Also because we are very seriously considering buying a second property, we could possibly split the responsibilities between two people.
I think and worry about this damn thing all the time. :(