SAY Works for You
By Richard Lewis
Managing property is so much more than maintaining bricks, mortar, and mechanical equipment. A Property Managers day-to-day varies as much as the weather but is far less predictable.
Leaseholders and Landlords rightly rely on Managing Agents to look after their buildings, their service charges and their money but coping under the pressure often means allowing cracks to appear, whilst others are being filled.
The reality is that the buildings we now live in are far more complex than they ever have been. The ability to manage and react quickly to situations mean that Property Managers are often stretched to breaking point as they work so hard to keep the spinning plates from crashing down.
But what happens if they do fall. Who is there to help pick up the pieces?
SAY Property have recently been instructed on several projects to assist their landlord clients with providing ‘on the ground’, operational support to Property Management teams.
The team at SAY is full of highly skilled Property professionals and this breadth of experience means they have the resource to plug the gaps before they break.
In nearly all these instructions, SAY has started the improvement process with a Managing Agent Audit. The results of these Audits are usually somewhere between commending well performing Agents to requiring a deeper dive into the practices of those that have experienced difficulties.
The next steps always start with SAY recommending a path to resolution. These can include improvements to; the services being delivered, the overall management of the Estate and/or the Service Charge administration.
The pathway that SAY provides can either be a straight road with a clear ending or there may be bridges that need to be crossed along the way. However, identifying the improvements to the flow of communication has been the consistent feature where SAY have been successful.
Debra Yudolph, Partner at SAY Property Consulting commented:
“We’ve been invited to provide support to the onsite teams on an increasing number of schemes, in all sectors. We are finding that the pressures on service charges and the pressures from Leaseholders and investors require a different level of Property Management than we have seen in the past.
Agents need to ensure that they are experts in everything. Being the ‘General Practitioners’ of the Property world is no longer enough. At SAY, we offer support that focuses our expertise in the areas of management that need it.”
To name just a few of the examples the team have been deployed to help with, SAY has; reviewed apportionments and written methodologies, advised on dispute resolution, given operational management support, led management change overs and reviewed service charge accounting.
If you are experiencing challenges regarding the management of your service charge, issues with estate management or communication with Leaseholders, contact SAY Property now for a confidential consultation.
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