PA (California)
Posts: 17
Posts: 17
Posted:
I'm on the board of a ~300 unit condo complex in the SF Bay Area.
Recently, I've been getting quite a few complaints from fellow homeowners about the PM's service and responsiveness. Maintenance requests take too long to resolve. Requests/inquiries are not responded to for weeks at a time (including mine!), and things only get done after multiple reminders. A few of the Board packets have been incomplete, exec sessions are missed, and to top it all off - I've gotten a few inconsistent instructions re: the HOA and our legal obligations to the residents on a couple of different issues. At one meeting I'm told one thing, and at another meeting I'm told something completely different. Bottom line - too many things are, "slipping through the cracks", and it's impacting the quality of life for our residents.
To make things worse, over the course of the last 2 years, we've had 4 different agents from the PM that are responsible for our property!! The turnover rate at the PM seems to be VERY high! This is giving the homeowners a sense of inconsistency and instability if they need to reach someone for a question or issue because they don't know who to talk to.
So as a board member, I feel obligated to get as informed as I can before I make such a major decision as changing our PM. I saw a separate post that listed some excellent actions/documents to have transferred over to a new PM, but we're not at the transition point yet.
Here are my questions to the forum:
First - (broadly speaking) is it normal in the PM industry to have such a high turnover rate? Is it normal for one person to last only 6-8 months with a PM company? This is an average that goes over a 2 year period in our case.
Second - what's a good way for a board member such as myself to get accurate information on a reputable, and reliable PM for the community. I'm basically looking for consistency, a good response time to homeowner requests/concerns, and consistent compliance with our CC&R's. In other words, I'm looking for an "epinions.com" of PM's... what a Board's experiences are with their PM, what the homeowners experiences are, how responsive they are, etc.. I need a starting place to do my research before I initiate this discussion with other Board members, and before I can make any specific recommendations on who to switch to.
As an aside - I've already talked to our current PM on a few different occasions about the needs of our community, and they've assured me that they've brought on additional resources to provide a higher level of service. That was before the office manager quit, and the lady that was helping us (the added resource) quit too. Now we're back to square one!!!
Any help you guys can offer is appreciated!
Recently, I've been getting quite a few complaints from fellow homeowners about the PM's service and responsiveness. Maintenance requests take too long to resolve. Requests/inquiries are not responded to for weeks at a time (including mine!), and things only get done after multiple reminders. A few of the Board packets have been incomplete, exec sessions are missed, and to top it all off - I've gotten a few inconsistent instructions re: the HOA and our legal obligations to the residents on a couple of different issues. At one meeting I'm told one thing, and at another meeting I'm told something completely different. Bottom line - too many things are, "slipping through the cracks", and it's impacting the quality of life for our residents.
To make things worse, over the course of the last 2 years, we've had 4 different agents from the PM that are responsible for our property!! The turnover rate at the PM seems to be VERY high! This is giving the homeowners a sense of inconsistency and instability if they need to reach someone for a question or issue because they don't know who to talk to.
So as a board member, I feel obligated to get as informed as I can before I make such a major decision as changing our PM. I saw a separate post that listed some excellent actions/documents to have transferred over to a new PM, but we're not at the transition point yet.
Here are my questions to the forum:
First - (broadly speaking) is it normal in the PM industry to have such a high turnover rate? Is it normal for one person to last only 6-8 months with a PM company? This is an average that goes over a 2 year period in our case.
Second - what's a good way for a board member such as myself to get accurate information on a reputable, and reliable PM for the community. I'm basically looking for consistency, a good response time to homeowner requests/concerns, and consistent compliance with our CC&R's. In other words, I'm looking for an "epinions.com" of PM's... what a Board's experiences are with their PM, what the homeowners experiences are, how responsive they are, etc.. I need a starting place to do my research before I initiate this discussion with other Board members, and before I can make any specific recommendations on who to switch to.
As an aside - I've already talked to our current PM on a few different occasions about the needs of our community, and they've assured me that they've brought on additional resources to provide a higher level of service. That was before the office manager quit, and the lady that was helping us (the added resource) quit too. Now we're back to square one!!!
Any help you guys can offer is appreciated!