Property Landlord advice: Block Management: The importance of local services.

By Steve Roulstone

I have written before about why so many Block Management sites, when the existing site Managers are failing through the eyes of the site Directors, end up in the hands of local Letting Agents, who can quickly make the adjustments to carry out the role of Managers for a site rather than for a Landlord, especially where maintenance is concerned. This is one of the major advantages for local Agencies, because in the nature of their day to day business, they will have developed working relationships with the whole gambit of building craftsmen who can help cement the Agencies new Property Management work.

 Local services for Local people!

 It is also not just that by being a local Company it is highly probable that there will be some relationship either privately with the Leaseholders or just by the very fact that the people concerned live in the same location. In Stafford for example, one of my main ‘fix all’ contractors, lives looking over a site that we manage. The relationship that this has developed between the Directors, some of whom already knew the chap concerned and the Contractor is so strong that they now insist he carries out the annual balcony maintenance programme we organise for them. The trust in his work and the way in which he deals with both the problems that occur and the people living on site is the reason the relationship has developed in this way. I believe what helps make this kind of situation possible when dealing with local trades, is the fact that they are Neighbours. Everybody feels more comfortable than the unknown quantity of a visitor from out of town!

 Time is not a factor.

And then of course, there is the ability to react quickly to any emergency situation, and I have known many schemes that operate Nationally for Letting Agents to deal with those Emergency call outs (and I know at first hand, that the level of performance from Contractors attending through such schemes leaves a lot to be desired) All of whom do not react in the same manner as a Contractor who is not only going to start the job to hand, but probably visit again to complete it. Not to mention being the Contractor who will have visited before and will no doubt be needed to visit again! All of these things make the local chap the choice for me.

 Not just Contractors.

 Of course other services are needed through the offices of Block Management and white collar trades also benefit from knowing the area. I have witnessed myself how the local Solicitors have been able to give more appropriate advice when legal issues have arisen, even benefiting from staff living on the site, in this case being able to clear a very difficult recognition problem for us, simply because when typing correspondence, they were able to answer the issue through personal knowledge of the person we were trying to trace. A situation which ended up benefiting all of those concerned and avoided higher costs to boot!

 No comparison.

 So being looked after by a Local Company has many advantages and I cannot see how the largest of the many major City based specialist Block Managing Companies can compare, and even though they may not advertise such services initially, if I were looking in relation to any property owned on a Leasehold site, I would not hesitate to check the local options first. Of course, they must also have a clear understanding of how to run a site in the proper manner, both legally and financially, on behalf of the owners, but I still believe that most organisations in our trade, if they knew they could not do a good job, would say no from day one. But then we all have to start somewhere as did I when I took my first site on back in 2003. But then I had the advantage of being part of a National Company who could offer me both training and other Franchisees who were already undertaking the role themselves, as they say, you cannot beat knowledge!