Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Looking for new reviews of property managers

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Apr 19, 2023, at 1:10 PM, Stephen Jenks via Cohousing-L <cohousing-l [at] 
> cohousing.org> wrote:
> 
> We have been doing our own self-management since we began in 2006, but are 
> considering the pros and cons of property management companies. I’ve looked 
> through the Cohousing Listserve archives and have found a number of reports 
> that were less than positive. I’m wondering if there are any more recent 
> reviews, and have any communities had good experiences?

We have had a management company since the beginning, in 2000. We have gone 
through 4 or 5 companies and at least 10 different reps from those companies, 
plus the various people in their accounting departments. I remain negative. 

We still have to monitor payments because bills are unpaid, checks are not sent 
on time, etc. When one thing goes wrong in a month, you have to watch all the 
others. The management company will hire a young person who learns the software 
and does what they _notice_ needs to be done. They don't notice if a utility 
bill has not been paid in 3 months or if they were supposed to receive an 
invoice and never did. If they don’t know what to do with something, they will 
most likely do nothing or put it on someone else's desk.

We have often canceled the management company on the facilities side. Just as 
we get reps educated they leave. I was once told the average staying time for 
property management people is 2 years. That’s not long enough for them to learn 
the job. And we are too small to be worth their time. And we actually ask 
questions. We have a focused facilities team they have to deal with; not a 
board of people who have not a clue about how things work or what needs to be 
done or ever asks a question.

The property manager's associations consider a small cond to be 400 Units. 
Cohousing communities are far below that obviously. 

To afford an onsite person would require at least 100 units.

BUT having a management company makes many people feel safe. They believe that 
at least we have emergency backup. Others believe it is a huge amount of work 
and wouldn’t even consider not hiring a company. I’ve been watching this for 23 
years and believe that on the whole, they add work.

The area in which they can be very helpful is when they can assure us that a 
particular cost is typical or that the length of time we can hold off 
maintenance is normal. BUT that depends on the experience of the person 
assigned to your community. We have been assigned people who had less 
experience than we have. 

In terms of facilities, one of the most helpful was a woman who had her own 
company and handled only 8-12 buildings and had years of experience. She came 
to our Facilities Team meetings and actually talked to us. She answered 
questions and went over bills with us to be sure they were correct. (A previous 
company had paid a $4,000 bill when we had specifically said don’t pay this and 
we never recovered the money.) But she became ill and we weren’t notified until 
things had gotten out of hand.

We have had good facilities teams and I think our property is very well 
managed. But not because of the management companies. The current team has 
several people who have been responsible for supervising staff and have really 
focused on training our management company reps. They felt that the problem was 
that we had not been using the management companies well. They have really 
focused on supervision, performance reviews, and clear expectations at a 
professional level. I have not seen any difference in performance. 

What we need is the knowledge and advice that an experienced property manager 
and experienced bookkeeper could give us. I think the best help would be a 
person who manages a “real” condo who just attends facilities meetings and a 
professional bookkeeper who oversees our books. But it is harder to find those 
people than it is to contact a management company. 

Many people only trust companies — it seems to be related to believing that 
they are insured if they do anything wrong or something. That it protects us 
from liability.

Sorry to be so negative. This is not in any way a criticism of my community. 
How happy people are with our management company is proportionate to how much 
people feel comfortable with a budget and a building the size of ours. But for 
big things, we hire consulting engineers anyway — like replacing all the 
balconies or fixing water drainage problems. And we do regular audits.

I keep hoping that we could find a hands-on person who manages rental 
properties and small condos themselves. Someone with lots of experience who 
knows who to hire.

In the end, doing what your community feels comfortable with may be worth as 
much as you will save from not hiring a company.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org