The Grid

Tag: council meeting

  • 10 Questions to Ask When Interviewing a Managing Agent

    Managing Agent Checklist

    Hiring a managing agent (MA) is a bit like hiring for a job. You wouldn’t pick a candidate without asking questions and comparing answers, and the same goes for your MA. Price and past work usually carry the most weight, so they are on the list. But many councils stop there and choose after a short chat, then find out the gaps later.

    Council members are volunteers. Most of you have a day job, and few have ever interviewed an MA. Without a way to compare, the decision tends to come down to feel: who was friendlier, who spoke more confidently, who the last council used. A score gives you a more objective way to evaluate each prospect. It also gives the council something to point to when the members disagree.

    A score also helps when owners ask why you picked a particular MA. Some will question the choice, and “we felt they were the best” is a hard answer to defend. If you can show the questions you asked and the scores each MA got, you can tell subsidiary proprietors (SPs) that the decision was objective and not based on personal preference. Even owners who disagree can see how the council reached it.

    We’ve put together 10 questions you can ask each shortlisted MA. Rate each answer out of 10 and add up the score. Maximum is 100. Download the printable checklist (PDF) and bring it to the meeting.

    The questions

    1. Which similar estates do you manage, and can we speak to two of their council members? Which estates left you in the last 2 years, and why?
    2. What is your total fee, what does it cover, and what costs extra (for example AGM, EGM or extra site visits)?
    3. How do you track maintenance work and follow up on requests? What can the council see, and what is your usual turnaround?
    4. How do you check that completed work meets the spec, and who signs it off?
    5. What would you do differently from our previous MA? Please give an example.
    6. How do you plan long-term works, such as repainting or lift upgrades, and advise on the sinking fund?
    7. How do you handle an SP’s request or complaint from start to close? Who replies, and when?
    8. Who will be our building manager, and who covers when they are away? How do you evaluate them, and what if they underperform?
    9. How do you choose and evaluate vendors? Do you have any commercial relationship with them, and what if one underperforms?
    10. How and how often do you report to the council, and how do we get our records if we change MA?

    How to score

    Give 0 to 3 for a vague or generic answer, 4 to 6 for a reasonable answer with no example, and 7 to 10 for a clear process backed by a real example or evidence. If the MA can only say “we take it seriously”, that’s a 3.

    Have every council member at the meeting score separately, then compare. If two members score the same answer very differently, that’s worth a short discussion before you decide. The total won’t make the decision for you, but it will show you where the MAs really differ.

    Tips for running an MA interview

    Send the questions to each MA a few days before the meeting so they can prepare. Ask every MA the same questions in the same order. If the questions change from one interview to the next, the scores can’t be compared fairly.

    Ask for an example whenever an answer sounds general. “Can you tell us about a recent case?” is usually enough.

    Write notes on the checklist as you go, and score straight after each interview. If you wait until the end of the day, the MAs start to blur together and the first and last ones are remembered best.

    After the interviews

    Add up the totals and look at where the scores differ the most. A big gap on one question is often more useful than a small gap in the total. Call the references the MAs gave you and ask them the same questions.

    Keep the filled-in checklists. When owners ask how the decision was made, you can show them the questions, the scores and the reasons.

    MA-interview-questions-and-checklistDownload

  • The Light Stayed Broken for 3 Weeks. Then a Council Member Mentioned It.

    Daniel is a made-up owner, but if you’ve lived in a condo for a few years, you probably know him.

    Daniel’s corridor light had been flickering for three weeks. He’d reported it to the MA twice and got “noted” both times. Then his neighbour, who sits on the MCST council, mentioned it in passing, and the electrician showed up two days later.

    Daniel noticed that. Council members get answered faster, because the MA reports to the council. Work requests get looked at, the guards pay attention, and a dispute with a neighbour gets taken seriously.

    So when the AGM came around and someone asked for volunteers, he thought about putting his name down. Then he thought about everything he’d heard. The meetings are at night and run for hours. Every decision upsets someone. A neighbour who didn’t get his way may write nasty messages in the estate chat, and a few estates have even ended up in court. He kept his hand down. Most owners do the same.

    Here’s how it could have gone if Daniel had joined and the work lived in an app.

    The council meetings. Instead of booking the function room every month, the council meets on Zoom for the things that need discussion. Quotes and payments that used to wait for a meeting get approved in Basementgrid whenever Daniel has a minute, like on the MRT. The call is recorded, an AI tool drafts the minutes from the transcript, and the secretary signs off. The meetings get shorter and happen less often.

    MCST council meetings

    The money. Daniel’s biggest worry was signing off on something he didn’t fully understand. So the council sets the approval threshold to zero. The MA can’t start any job until the council pre-approves it on Basementgrid. Payment goes through a QR code generated by Basementgrid, tied to the approved amount and the vendor’s UEN, so the amount and the payee can’t change after approval.

    The proof. Before a payment, he doesn’t have to take anyone’s word that the job was done. The vendor clocks in with GPS verification and submits photos taken at the location, with no uploads from the photo library. The BM reviews the work and accepts it before the payment goes out.

    The neighbours. Remember the flickering light? Residents can now report faults themselves in Basementgrid, a bit like the OneService app for HDB estates. Every report is time-stamped, so nothing depends on someone remembering to pass it on. If a job stalls, Daniel can see where it’s stuck and who’s holding it up, and he can ask about it without guessing.

    The quotes. Two quotes for the same lift repair arrive, and they don’t line up. One lists parts and labour separately, and the other has a single lump sum. The AI quote check (coming soon) summarises each quote and flags the items worth questioning. Daniel still makes the call, but he’s no longer comparing apples to oranges by himself.

    The backlash. Eventually a neighbour complains, as one always does. This time Daniel doesn’t have to rely on his memory of a meeting eight months ago. The record shows who approved the job, when, which quote it was based on, and what proof of work came back. He can reply with facts. Some people will still be unhappy, but he isn’t defending himself from scratch.

    Being on the council still takes time, and you’ll still make calls that not everyone likes. But much of the tracking, chasing, and record keeping that made the role feel thankless can now sit in an app. These days you can book a ride or a stay from your sofa because startups took over the tedious parts. Hopefully Basementgrid can join that list, so you can manage your estate from your phone.

    Try it on one work order

    Daniel is made up, but the setup is real. A council member or building manager can create a workspace in about 3 minutes by setting the approval threshold and inviting the other council members. After that, run one work order from start to finish with a vendor you already use, and see how it feels before changing anything else.

    Fix the process, not the people.

  • The Other 30%: How a Self-Managed MCST Handles Accounts, AGMs and Minutes Without an MA

    The Other 30%: How a Self-Managed MCST Handles Accounts, AGMs and Minutes Without an MA

    In our last post we went through the 70% of a managing agent’s job, which is maintenance coordination, and why a system can do most of it. The other 30% is admin: the books, the AGM, and the council meeting minutes. This is the part people assume they need an MA for, so let’s go through it.

    Good news: none of it needs a full-time person. All three can be outsourced or largely automated, and the costs are lower than most councils expect.

    1. Accounting: hand it to a firm that does this all day

    This is the easiest one. Plenty of accounting firms in Singapore already specialise in MCST bookkeeping, for example WLP and STAC. You send them the paperwork, they keep the books and prepare the financial statements.

    It’s also what smaller MA companies do. A small MA doesn’t have enough clients to justify a full-time accounting staff member, so they outsource it too. The logic is simple. An accounting firm with dozens of MCSTs as clients can charge each one less, because the work is repeatable and they spread their overhead across all of them. A single condo, or a single small MA, can’t get that economy of scale on its own. So when you outsource directly, you get the same deal the MA would have gotten, minus the MA’s markup.

    As a rough guide, budget about $600 a month for the bookkeeping, plus about $1,000 a year for compiling the financial statements.

    The accounts also need to be audited every year, so include that in the budget too. For a 128-unit estate, the audit costs about $1,000 a year.

    2. MCST AGM: outsource the hosting, and budget for the paperwork around it

    An AGM has a lot of moving parts. Someone has to prepare the agenda and resolutions, host and chair the meeting, and write the minutes afterwards. Most volunteer councils don’t want to do all of that, and a chair who isn’t experienced can make a long meeting even longer.

    You can outsource it. For example, A4 International offers a service to conduct and chair the AGM or EOGM at around $1,000 per year.

    Read the fine print, though. That fee doesn’t cover preparing the AGM documents, distributing the AGM booklet, technical support, or the presentation slides. Set aside another $500 to $800 for those. So a realistic AGM budget is about $1,500 to $1,800 a year, and that’s for a fully outsourced meeting.

    3. Council meeting minutes: record, transcribe, let AI draft, secretary confirms

    This is the one that’s changed the most recently. Here’s the workflow:

    1. Record the council meeting and run it through a transcription tool such as myminutes.ai.
    2. Feed the transcript into an AI tool like Claude and ask it to turn the transcript into a formal set of minutes.
    3. The council secretary reads it, corrects anything that’s wrong, and confirms it before it gets sent out.

    Step 3 matters. The AI drafts, but a person still signs off on what goes on record. That’s the same check you’d want on minutes written by hand.

    What used to take an MA staff member hours of note-taking and formatting now takes a fraction of the time. The output is also arguably more consistent, because the format doesn’t change depending on who was taking notes that month.

    What it adds up to

    Here’s what the admin side costs per year when you outsource it, using the figures above:

    ItemCost per year
    Bookkeeping ($600 x 12 months)$7,200
    Financial compilation$1,000
    Audit (128-unit estate)$1,000
    AGM chairing and hosting$1,000
    AGM documents, booklet distribution and slides$500 to $800
    Total$10,700 to $11,000

    Council meeting minutes aren’t in the table because the cost is small. A transcription tool and an AI subscription cost far less than what an MA charges for the same job, and the secretary’s review time is free.

    Compare that total with what you’re paying an MA today. If the MA’s management fee covers more than this list plus the maintenance side, you have a clear number to bring to your next council meeting.

    Putting it together

    Between the 70% from the last post and the 30% here, there isn’t a piece of a managing agent’s job that a self-managed council can’t cover. Maintenance runs on a system, accounting and AGMs go to specialists you pay directly, and minutes take minutes instead of hours.

    Will it be the right call for every estate? No. Some councils really don’t have anyone with the time, and that’s what the MA option is for. But the choice should come from what your council needs, not from a belief that the law or the workload forces you to hire one.

    If you want to see how the maintenance side works, book a demo or get started here.