Property management used to be a simple process of collecting rents for landlords and paying porters to look after blocks of flats. Now it is about service charges, reserve funds, lease extensions and freehold enfranchisement, leasehold valuation tribunals and no end of statutory provisions made under successive Landlord & Tenant Acts and health & safety legislation.

Landlords have now given way to residents’ associations and resident management companies who either own or control their estates and have the power to appoint their own agents. Commonhold is on the way.

All this means that the management of blocks of flats can no longer be trusted to amateurs or your local estate agent. Without the training and experience they are simply not equipped to deal with what has become one of the most legislated of all service industries.

If you serve on a residents’ committee or board of directors you might well congratulate yourself on a first class external decoration carried out at the most competitive price. However, if your agent failed to serve the required notice in the correct form and neglected to follow the proper consultation procedure, you will not be able to legally recover all the costs through the service charge. Faced with a potential loss of thousands of pounds you look to your agent for recompense … but is he insured? Does he keep your service charge funds in trust accounts that are separate from his own and other clients’ accounts?

What if the paint starts peeling after six months? Does this mean that the specification was faulty? Was it drawn up by an experienced building surveyor or just cobbled together by the agent for a 10 percent fee? Was there proper supervision to ensure that windows were not being painted in the rain? Was a sufficient retention taken against latent defects?

There are important questions to ask when selecting a managing agent. Like most choices you are not really buying the house or the car or the service. What you are buying is the difference between one and the other. The same applies to your choice of managing agent.

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