© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
© 2025 News On The Block. All rights reserved.
News on the Block is a trading name of Premier Property Media Ltd.
Just when I’m about to drown in the sea of petty troubles of Seagull Towers, I see a lifeboat on the horizon. Managing agents! At last we’ve had our AGM and the choice of agent has been unanimously endorsed by all the residents. My fellow director, Jim Austin, did not resign, and Brian Thorogood, ex-director, ex-company secretary, ex-treasurer, serial resigner and prophet of doom, said nothing in opposition – despite the times in the last six months when Jim has told me anxiously ‘Brian says you’re going to have a battle on your hands – the residents will never agree’.
I therefore had to do almost all the work of corresponding, interviewing and assessing agents myself. It was odd, really, since Jim and I had obtained the residents’ agreement in principle at the previous AGM; I can’t help thinking short-term memory loss is half the problem at Seagull Towers. It wasn’t even the first time we had come to this decision and announced it to residents. We had done all that four years ago, but the rest of the board had changed their minds afterwards. Never again, I vowed.
Encouragement
Fortified by the encouragement of my ancient mentor The Old Bill, the cantankerous but shrewd ex-director upstairs, I set to work. I downloaded the ARMA/ARHM/LEASE booklet on appointing managing agents from the Leasehold Advisory Service website and wrote to three, two long-established local firms and one newcomer to Gullscliff, a big regional chain. I prepared an impressive table into which to enter all their attributes: membership of RICS and ARMA or not, surveyor on staff or not, number of staff, frequency of visits, banking arrangements, basic fee, additional charges, size of works on which extra percentage charged, whether secretarial services were undertaken and so on.
It took me a long time to make progress. This was partly because they were sometimes slow to come back to me, but mainly because I kept waiting in vain for my colleague Jim to give his views on my reports or join me in meeting the agents when they visited the block. I would post through his door copies of information I had gleaned but receive no answer. Could we have a meeting? No, no, too busy…
Decisions decisions…
It was in fact quite hard to decide between them. The first two are of very longstanding in Gullscliff – one of them managed Seagull Towers 30 years ago. The proprietor and surveyor have retired; the current proprietor, a surveyor with two assistants making up the full-time staff, was knowledgeable though rather laid-back. The other firm has a reputation for being efficient though perhaps slightly pushy on the percentage-earning big works, and its proprietor is a brisk and rather bossy woman. The third, the branch of a company new to Gullscliff, seems fine but one cannot gain information from the flats they manage on the grapevine as with the others. Using the LEASE guidelines I asked to chat to directors of similar blocks and that was invaluable, even though the agents naturally selected blocks where they expected good reviews.
While I was still thinking about those three, a keen young man appeared having heard we were looking for agents, urging us to take him on as he was better and cheaper than all the established firms. I did spend some time considering him but his enthusiasm so far outweighed his experience that I found myself advising him on the newly-required summary of tenants’ rights and obligations. ‘Oh, I don’t think you have to worry about that sort of thing when you have a good relationship with your clients!’ he answered. I imagined how The Old Bill’s apoplexy and Brian Thorogood’s panic attacks would be triggered by this casual approach, and told him that he wasn’t yet ready for the demands of a fairly large block with the flat-owners sharing the freehold.
In the end the bossy lady, Sandra Spender, got my vote and after a nail-biting month in which he insisted on belatedly consulting various golf-club friends, Jim’s vote too. He agreed to meet her and her senior surveyor when they visited the block and they sent a very efficient letter afterwards, outlining what they would expect to have to do in the first year, which clinched it. Best of all, she came to the AGM and put in an outstanding performance answering residents’ questions on finances, maintenance, new legislation – everything. The Old Bill forgot his hearing aid, which cramped his usually combative AGM style, but he was quite impressed.
I shan’t feel truly rescued until we’ve done the first budget in a few months time and all my secretarial and financial duties are transferred, but I am no longer sinking.