Four weeks' notice and thirty blocks
One of your experienced property managers has resigned. They manage thirty blocks, some for many years. In their last weeks they try to write handover notes, but there is only so much time, and the notes end up as a few lines per block.
The new property manager starts, and for months they find out things the hard way: the director who expects a call before any letter goes out, the leaseholder whose complaint was settled on terms that were never written down, the promise at the last AGM to look at the car park lighting, the contractor who must not be sent to one particular block.
Why the knowledge was never written down
Most of what makes a property manager good at a block is not data your system holds. It is context: relationships, history, promises, quirks. It builds up in emails, calls and site visits, and there is no natural place to put it.
Asking staff to keep notes rarely works, because it is extra work with no immediate benefit. So the knowledge accumulates in one person and leaves with them.
What it costs when they go
Clients notice. Directors who liked their property manager are already uneasy about the change, and every mistake the new person makes confirms their worry. Promises get broken because nobody knew they were made. Disputes restart. Your firm's reputation for continuity suffers, and some management contracts are lost at exactly this point.
The living block file we build
We build a block file that fills itself as far as possible from normal work, and makes adding the rest quick. It lives alongside your block management system.
- Key facts: each block has a short page for contacts, access, directors' preferences, known quirks and standing instructions, prompted for when the block is set up and reviewed periodically.
- Email digest: a language model reads the property manager's correspondence for each block and proposes notes on commitments, disputes and decisions, which the property manager accepts or discards with one click.
- Meeting notes: notes from directors' meetings and AGMs are summarised into actions and commitments on the block file.
- Open items: open jobs, claims, consultations and requests are pulled in from your trackers, so the file shows what is live.
- Handover view: when a block changes hands, the new property manager gets a single view of facts, commitments, open items and recent history.
- Review prompts: stale facts are flagged for the current property manager to confirm, so the file does not rot.
| Knowledge | Usually lives in | Captured by |
|---|---|---|
| Director preferences | The property manager's head | Key facts page, prompted |
| Promises made at meetings | Handwritten notes | Meeting summaries into commitments |
| Dispute history | Email threads | Proposed notes from correspondence |
| Access and site quirks | Memory | Key facts page |
| Open work | Several trackers | Pulled in automatically |
What a handover looks like after
The new property manager opens each block's file and reads its history before their first call with the directors. They know what was promised and to whom, who is in dispute and why, and what is open. Directors notice that the new person is already up to speed.
The same files help day to day. Cover for holidays and sickness becomes easier, because a colleague can pick up a block without phoning the absent property manager.
Signs you are exposed to this
- Handover notes when a property manager leaves are a few lines per block.
- New property managers learn about promises and disputes from angry directors.
- Holiday cover means calling the absent property manager.
- Some blocks depend entirely on one person's knowledge.
- You have lost clients soon after a property manager left.