When starting to offer our services as syndic, we had one goal in mind :
CLIENT SATISFACTION
Indeed, satisfied clients allows for long term collaborations, and that is the best way for us to spend most of our time doing what we actually care about: working on real estate challenges and continue building our expertise in the field, rather than spending time and energy growing our portfolio. This is especially true as we strive to grow organically, through positive reviews.
However, client satisfaction is a slightly more challenging goal when your client is a whole building, which itself counts many "hidden" clients: its owners. Now we do not only need to satisfy on client at the time, but all of them, at all times.
As we were reflecting on how to best achieve this goal, we asked a sample of owners what could change in the way their syndic was working to improve their overall satisfaction.
Here are some typical complains we heard on the behalf of other syndic businesses :
Lack of satisfaction on works carried in the building
"Due to a water damage in the appartment above, my terrasse had to be repaired. The syndic never came to check out the works. Now and only a few years later, we experience similar problems."
"Some works were decided in the yearly general assembly for a higher budget. The closing bill was paid by the syndic, without them coming to check the works realized."
Frustration on the day-to-day management
"Our intercom is disfunctional since months, repairers are send regularly, but with no sustainable solution. However, we continue paying these interventions."
"First the heating system had to be repaired several times. Now, and after several interventions, it appears that the system has to be replaced."
Viewing the syndic as a bottleneck
"I have had a water damage months ago, and I still have not received a reaction fo the syndic on the insurance refund for the repairs. This is delaying the rental process of my appartment."
More on this topic here : (FR) What is the procedure if I have a damage in my apartment?
"I would like to install and EV charging point on my parking spot, but the syndic tells me it is impossible. However in my son's property they already have it."
More on this last topic here: an EV charging point on your parking spot
How do we plan on not having that sort of reviews ?
It would be easy to simply say "by being transparent, proactive and rigorous", but let me give a bit more context to jump back on the above examples.
Generally we strive to manage other people's affairs just like we would our own.
Therefore, you can expect us to be present on-site at the start and in the end, any time important works are realized. We will also make sure that the scope and expected result are detailed beforehand. Finally, we most certainly do not pay bills "blindly", the agreement on the quality of the final works will either be the result of an open discussion with the condominium's council or at the very least the result of an on-site visit.
It does take a lot more time to work like this, but it is the only serious and transparent way to manage expectations on the quality of works collaboratively for a condominium.
Secondly, and for minor interventions, we do make sure to keep track of what is happening, and certainly want to be able to communicate at all times on what all the interventions were. Either by getting the report of the intervention or calling the intervenants. Again, just like anybody having a repair done at its own place would logically do.
It is certainly possible that a device's breakdown requires multiple interventions, it is also possible that a technician can't find the cause of the problem right away because they are forced to work with a trial-and-error type of procedure, but you may certainly expect us to have the transparency to disclose the details and to be rigourous on what is acceptable or not.
Finally, we noticed that some procedures may seem obscure to the owners. I would risk it to say that some syndic businesses deliberately leave things vague when it could potentially be in their best interest to avoid time-consuming procedures. Especially at a time where real estate is in the political spotlight, with a lot of new regulations imposed which syndic's are not always completely familiar with yet.
We strive to be proactive, to continuously and strategically keep on developing our knowledge, adapting to what is new and informing our clients regularly on those changes. Therefore we consider the oblligation of regular participation to trainings for real estate agents to be one more occasion for us to inform our clients.
This reflexion finally brought us to define what qualities we wanted to focus on : transparency - proactivity - rigor and flexibility.
- Transparency on your building's management
- Proactivity in adressing the bigger challenges
- Rigor to deliver quality at all times
- Fexibility to adapt to our clients