Views on Concept Managing Agents

[hollywooder]

Hello Forestdalers,

Our little community on Forestdale are in the process of possibly letting Concept become our Managing Agent.

We understand that Concept manage a number of addresses in this lovely area, so we thought that it would be a good idea to do a little survey on people who have had dealings with them.

What we would like to know are your own views?

[simes]

Apart from forgetting to invite us to the tri-annual meeting, promising to repair paths but not delivering and being unable to generally live up to their promise I suppose that they are ok.

[bowenwould]

You might want to check the thread on this subject in Estate Issues. If the Administrator is reading this, can these messages perhaps be shifted so we only have one Thread per subject?

[tanya]

I have heard that concept are still a relatively new establishment. Not sure if they have enough of a history for substantiated comment to be passed about them.

I personally can't comment on their performance versus other managing agents since they are the only managing agent I have ever dealt with.

It does, however, seem as though the feedback about them is very mixed indeed from talking to other residents on the estate.

The best approach would probably be to contact directors on the parts of the estate who employ concept and ask them.

[cpm]

Perhaps "simes" above would make different comments if they were better informed. The company secretary sends out TAGM notifications and can only do so once the directors have called the meeting.

I think this is another demonstration of the commonly held mis-belief that managing agents have the final say on all works. This is not the case, we can only work under the direction of the estate directors, who may choose to delay path repair works or similar for a variety of reasons.

[tanya]

I would have to agree with cpm on this point. I won't be mentioning any names, but I have recently stepped down from a board of directors on the estate because the chariman (as far as I am concerned) has his own agenda (disregards all the other board members) and that is to have things done when and how it suits him and not to mention as cheaply as possible whithout much regard to quality of workmanship or whether works would be done within the bounds of the law etc.

It is the Board of directors who have the final say as to whether the Managing Agents can go ahead with maintenance or not. They also help determine how much our monthly maintenance fee will be. The maintenance charge on my part of the estate is not particularly high, but it also means that the budget is tight so at the end of the day we are compromising.

We had a three yearly meeting in november last year and if I remember correctly less than ten people bothered turning up. Although reading previous posts, perhaps not everybody was invited.

[bowenwould]

Sad story, Tanya. Speaking as a Chairman myself, it does happen that most problems come to the chair first and you have decide what can just be dealt with and what needs discussion with the other Trustees first. This is bound to go wrong sometimes and I can only hope my fellow trustees will call me to heel when it happens. If they let the chair just run the show, they only have themselves to blame. Owners should not let them get away with that. Appreciate it is not easy but there should be rules in place to put in place new trustees if the owners as a group are not happy with the current ones and there are new ones willing to take over. Talk to your neighbours and let the word spread from there.