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Hello CondoGuy1;
Based on your e-mail it appears your board may be taking on too much, and while I am not privy to the language in your management contract, I question why your board is creating RFPs, negotiating with insurers and handling your own tax grievances. I am also concerned about the qualifications of your board to engage in these tasks. I have close to thirty years experience in the industry, consult for self managed and professionally managed properties and have an informational website for board members, and may I tell you that RFPs if written for the express purpose of what they are designed to do have some very technical language, consist of many pages in some cases, have reference to mediation standards, industry standards, and are the corner stone of a good contract. The RFPs I have written are very substantial tools.
Insurance policies are underwritten, sometimes even manuscripted and placed in the commercial market for pricing by your insurance broker or risk manager, in this regard, I am not sure how or why your board is negotiating directly with insurance companies, as they only discuss underwriting and premium with licensed insurance brokers.
The tax grievances should be handled by a certiorari attorney who would then be compensated based on a predetermined percentage which is determined by how much he saves your building community.
I believe this brief forum may not have afforded you the opportunity to fully represent the dynamics of your board's role and relationship with the property manager and how your particular management contract effects this whole situation.
If you would like, you can e-mail me directly or respond back on this board, and I will try to get a better idea of what is happening in your situation.
In summary, most management companies do not ordinarily try to extract fees for work that is included in their contract, but your situation appears to have a little more going on. Let's discuss it.
Good morning CondoGuy1:
As I have not formerly introduced myself, as the instructions for this forum request, my name is Margaret Bernato, I own and operate the website askthepropertymanager.com. We are a website predominantly geared to boards that prefer to self manage their buildings or communities but do require advice from time to time regarding best practices about certain matters that they choose to inquire about as opposed to working with a management company, thus avoiding the types of relationships which your post suggests you do not want, and of course saving money on the management contract fee.
Most management companies are professional, dedicated and committed to providing a satisfying client experience, however, if your whole board embraces the same philosophy that you do, your board would probably be best served self managing the building and not having a property manager.
In this regard, your building would probably need a maintenance manager or "Super" super with good organizational and mechanical skills, and your own bookkeeper or bookkeeping service, the latter of which your accountant could help you decide.
I wish your board much success as you interview companies, and possibly consider self management. Please let me know if you have any further inquiries.
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Our insurance broker pre-dates our managing agent. I caught our managing agent just paying bills, so I beat up on agent, make them get quotes, question coverage. I also go around agent to get quotes and see who will quote. I am ok with the Managing agent also doing it. But I am keeping both insurance agent and managing agent honest.
Same with RFPs, managing agent can do them but if it is big ticket we do our own due dilergence. Sometimes agent is right sometimes not.
The board also directly hired the tax lawyer. Got a law firm that never does small buildings, did ours at a big discount and agreed to collect individually from unit owners. My managing agent wanted a fee to manage process, then we pay lawyers directly then refund owners. That is putting our money at risk. The buildings lawyer and CPA also report to the board. Buildings lawyer is a different one from Tax lawyer
We never hire friends or family, always beat up anyone we hire, no conflicts of interest. We really just want a managing agent to manage building not to talk to us or hold hands.
My building has never had an assessment in history of building and has good reserves. We are interviewing managing agents right now and they almost all have projects they want to do, folks to hire, ways to raise fees, maint etc.
There is a lot of add on services I notice, when we say we have no interest in most if they cost extra they seem to lose interest.
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