Where Loyalty Belongs

Should a body corporate stay with a managing agent simply because it always has? Loyalty is a good thing, but in a sectional title scheme it belongs to the owners' money and the scheme's rules before it belongs to any service provider.

Say the same managing agent has run a complex for many years. Everyone knows the portfolio manager by name, and she remembers which unit had the burst pipe and who always pays levies late. That history is genuinely valuable. But lately the monthly reports arrive later and later, the bank reconciliations do not quite match the levy statements, and the auditor's queries take months to answer. Trustees who raise this are told they are being disloyal to someone who has looked after the scheme for years.

That is loyalty pointed at the wrong thing. The trustees answer to the body corporate, which means all the owners together, and those owners pay levies on the understanding that the money is properly accounted for. A service provider earns loyalty by doing the job. The long history is a reason to have an honest conversation first, rather than a reason to avoid one.

Familiarity can feel exactly like faithfulness. The difference shows up in whether the numbers still add up.