Suburb after suburb after suburb...

Paulzx

Electric Sheep wrote: »

I am interested in how building management actually works in Ireland.

It doesn't

pilly

Electric Sheep wrote: »

Yes, I have, for 20 years - but in the US, not in Ireland.

"We are waiting for the signs to be made" - demand the contact details for the company that is making the signs, and get in direct contact with them to determine the reason for the delay, or find out if this is just an excuse. Same for any other excuses offered by management.

In Ireland in these situations, is there an actual building manager that is employed in a paid position? This is a genuine question, I am interested in how building management actually works in Ireland.

No, nothing as logical as a building manager. A management company who have an office somewhere unknown with a girl probably about 19 on the end of the phone who takes all the calls part-time.

Electric Sheep

pilly wrote: »

No, nothing as logical as a building manager. A management company who have an office somewhere unknown with a girl probably about 19 on the end of the phone who takes all the calls part-time.

So no on site manager? It makes a big difference if you can be physically present in the manager's office.

I would get the residents together to demand a designated employee at the management company with whom you will always deal, they may not be on site but they will be personally accountable. Threaten to change management companies if they do not improve the service. Work out SLAs that must be kept to for service, and if they are broken a genuine provable reason must be provided, and a time frame for resumption of the expected, paid for service.

Sometimes you need to be proactive.

seamus

pilly wrote: »

I'm simply pointing out that if Irish management companies can't run 4 and 5 floor apartment blocks what hope have they of running 50 floor blocks?

This is mainly because Irish people don't have a clue how the relationship works.

The amount of people you hear giving out about their management company, talking about suing them or withholding management fees is insane.

They just don't get it. They seem to think the management company is some kind of local authority or landlord who is trying to extract money from them and provide nothing in return.

Places where at least a few owners understand what the management company is and how it works, are ones that move along very well.

To address Electric Sheep - the issue in Ireland is more fundamental than that. People don't understand that they are part owners of the development with the power to fire a management agent. They think their management fees go to some kind of landlord against whom they have no comeback.

There would rarely be a manager on-site; developments aren't big enough to justify a permanent manager on site. Larger developments though will have a maintenance person on site during business hours.

Galway_Old_Man

I've been reading a bit about floating cities and think it really makes sense for Dublin to pursue this avenue. Imagine we started putting floating buildings and communities in the bay. We could alleviate the traffic chaos, house hundreds of thousands more people within a short ferry hop to the city centre, and in so building have Ireland become a world leader in such technologies.

Why on earth aren't the government looking at this?

Dr Crayfish

Never mind suburbia, my main gripe with planning laws and croneyism in Ireland is the Bungalow Blight that infects our countryside. People slapping horrible mansions all over Achill Island and West Cork and Kerry. It's disgusting.

In the 1970s, a book titled Bungalow Bliss topped Ireland’s bestseller list and the country’s built landscape has never recovered, so devastating was its impact. Lincoln Allison, Emeritus Reader in Politics at the University of Warwick and Visiting Professor in sport and leisure at the University of Brighton, brought his inquiring mind to Ireland recently and in The Irish Free Variable he cast a cold eye on the bungalow blight. Snippet:

“Booms come and go, but the permanent and negative legacy of the Celtic Tiger can be seen in its littered landscape. There was rash of building unaffected by any notion of planning or of a proper demarcation between town and country. In England we had the 1935 Restriction of Ribbon Development Act to stop farmers selling the country land next to the road to developers. In Ireland there are ‘Modernised vernacular dwellings’ everywhere: naff bungalows, in other words. Right opposite Yeats Lake Isle of Innisfree: bungalows. On the slopes of Carrauntoohil, Ireland’s highest mountain (which I climbed — a tough one): bungalows. At the end of the Dingle Peninsula where the Atlantic breakers meet the land, which should be a wild place: bungalows. Bungalows from which nobody could possibly commute, or shop, or do anything much except at extreme cost to the planet’s resources. Bungalows with no pattern to them, like gigantic litter.”

I think it's an absolute national shame that we allowed parish politics and favouritism and downright stupidity to ruin our once beautiful land.

NiallBoo

Galway_Old_Man wrote: »

I've been reading a bit about floating cities and think it really makes sense for Dublin to pursue this avenue. Imagine we started putting floating buildings and communities in the bay. We could alleviate the traffic chaos, house hundreds of thousands more people within a short ferry hop to the city centre, and in so building have Ireland become a world leader in such technologies.

Why on earth aren't the government looking at this?

1. Dublin bay is an ecological special protection zone. What you're suggesting would likely be detrimental to this and so is unlikely to be allowed.

2. Sure it can get fierce stormy out there.

(Btw, I'm not trying to dismiss your suggestion, just answering your question. If it weren't for the first reason there I'd suggest we build a sea-wall from Howth to Killiney and reclaim all the land to the East of Dublin - you'd more than double the space for the city and have a blank slate to build a properly planned and services city on.)

Earthhorse

If you fire the property mangers then you need to know you can replace them with something better. I think the problem in Ireland is the feeling that one lot are no better than the next lot. People won't fire the company until matters come to a head which they do sometimes.

c68zapdsm5i1ru

seamus wrote: »

This is mainly because Irish people don't have a clue how the relationship works.

The amount of people you hear giving out about their management company, talking about suing them or withholding management fees is insane.

They just don't get it. They seem to think the management company is some kind of local authority or landlord who is trying to extract money from them and provide nothing in return.

Places where at least a few owners understand what the management company is and how it works, are ones that move along very well.

To address Electric Sheep - the issue in Ireland is more fundamental than that. People don't understand that they are part owners of the development with the power to fire a management agent. They think their management fees go to some kind of landlord against whom they have no comeback.

There would rarely be a manager on-site; developments aren't big enough to justify a permanent manager on site. Larger developments though will have a maintenance person on site during business hours.

I understand very well the difference between a Management Company and a Management Agent. It still doesn't make things work particularly smoothly. The bulk of the communications are handed over to the Management Agents, and representatives on the Management Company are rarely contactable in person. The only time you get to express a view is at the AGM, which can sometimes turn into a bunfight eg between house owners and apartment owners, with the loudest shouters getting their way.

While it's very important that residents have a large input into how their estate is run, reps on a Management Company will often have their own priorities, views and interests. For example, a friend of mine lives in an apartment on an estate where demands by house owners were made at the AGM to reduce the cleaning of communal areas of apartments to once a month instead of once a week. After much rowing they got their way. How is that fair to apartment dwellers, still paying the same management fee but now getting a reduction to a very important service?

I don't have any solutions, I'll be honest. But I know the present system is unfair and complicated for many people to understand, never mind navigate.

dar100

Matt_Trakker wrote: »

Isn't the reason Dublin doesn't have many high buildings because the bedrock is weak?
I could swear I read that somewhere.

Basically the rock under Dublin isn't strong enough to allow the building of really tall buildings on top of it.

Which is a good thing in my opinion, means Dublin doen'st look the same as anywhere else.
All the central European cities look the same, city square, old inner city, nice buildings and obligatory former-Jewish quarter and then nasty legoland blocks as far as the eye can see

So they just got lucky building ballymun?

NiallBoo

dar100 wrote: »

So they just got lucky building ballymun?

Would you really call that high-rise?

Electric Sheep

seamus wrote: »

This is mainly because Irish people don't have a clue how the relationship works.

The amount of people you hear giving out about their management company, talking about suing them or withholding management fees is insane.

They just don't get it. They seem to think the management company is some kind of local authority or landlord who is trying to extract money from them and provide nothing in return.

Places where at least a few owners understand what the management company is and how it works, are ones that move along very well.

To address Electric Sheep - the issue in Ireland is more fundamental than that. People don't understand that they are part owners of the development with the power to fire a management agent. They think their management fees go to some kind of landlord against whom they have no comeback.

There would rarely be a manager on-site; developments aren't big enough to justify a permanent manager on site. Larger developments though will have a maintenance person on site during business hours.

Surely before buying an apartment a person should learn about and understand how the management of the building works and who is responsible for what? There is an element of buyer beware involved with any purchase, but the purchase of something as large as a home should be thoroughly researched prior to the buy, rather than after it.

Electric Sheep

Wyatt Little Home wrote: »

I understand very well the difference between a Management Company and a Management Agent. It still doesn't make things work particularly smoothly. The bulk of the communications are handed over to the Management Agents, and representatives on the Management Company are rarely contactable in person. The only time you get to express a view is at the AGM, which can sometimes turn into a bunfight eg between house owners and apartment owners, with the loudest shouters getting their way.

Why not call a meeting of the owners, identify the issues, then demand a meeting with both the management agent and company? It is not true that you can only voice your views at the AGM, though it may suit the agent and company to make you believe that.

seamus

Electric Sheep wrote: »

Surely before buying an apartment a person should learn about and understand how the management of the building works and who is responsible for what? There is an element of buyer beware involved with any purchase, but the purchase of something as large as a home should be thoroughly researched prior to the buy, rather than after it.

In Ireland you have to buy property at all costs. Don't bother checking if it's suitable for you, or if you afford it, or even doing some basic research into what's involved in maintaining a home, just buy buy buy and get on that ladder before you get left behind.

Earthhorse

Electric Sheep wrote: »

Surely before buying an apartment a person should learn about and understand how the management of the building works and who is responsible for what? There is an element of buyer beware involved with any purchase, but the purchase of something as large as a home should be thoroughly researched prior to the buy, rather than after it.

Your solicitor will do some basic work around identifying the funds of the management company but that doesn't mean they'll be responsive. A real estate agent may also give you details but likely only if there's good news to tell. Beyond that you'd have to call up people living there and ask about the situation which I doubt they'd appreciate.

Electric Sheep

Earthhorse wrote: »

Your solicitor will do some basic work around identifying the funds of the management company but that doesn't mean they'll be responsive. A real estate agent may also give you details but likely only if there's good news to tell. Beyond that you'd have to call up people living there and ask about the situation which I doubt they'd appreciate.

I would think that existing residents would be very happy to have a new neighbor that actually cares about the management situation.

Chuchote

Electric Sheep wrote: »

So no on site manager? It makes a big difference if you can be physically present in the manager's office.

I would get the residents together to demand a designated employee at the management company with whom you will always deal, they may not be on site but they will be personally accountable. Threaten to change management companies if they do not improve the service. Work out SLAs that must be kept to for service, and if they are broken a genuine provable reason must be provided, and a time frame for resumption of the expected, paid for service.

Sometimes you need to be proactive.

The cousin used to live in a big new apartment block. The management company were ****e. I asked why the residents didn't tackle it. Apparently the developer of the block had retained something like four flats to let out, and this gave the developer a majority stake in the management company, which the cousin suspected may also have been an arm of that company itself.

Electric Sheep

Chuchote wrote: »

The cousin used to live in a big new apartment block. The management company were ****e. I asked why the residents didn't tackle it. Apparently the developer of the block had retained something like four flats to let out, and this gave the developer a majority stake in the management company, which the cousin suspected may also have been an arm of that company itself.

It can't be a very big block if 4 flats gives a majority.

AndrewJRenko

pilly wrote: »

I'm not doing any whinging, I don't live in an apartment block? Not sure why the reason for the attack.

I'm simply pointing out that if Irish management companies can't run 4 and 5 floor apartment blocks what hope have they of running 50 floor blocks?

My friends complain daily whenever the lift is gone, the answer is always the same, we're waiting for the repair man to come out, he's very busy. Amateur hour.

SLAs for service response time are standard for any lift maintenance agreement.

You'll probably find that the management company have skimped on preventative maintenance, which is why the lift keeps breaking down.