Completion day, and a data room download
The purchase of a multi-let office building completes. The team inherits a data room download: scanned leases and side letters, a tenancy schedule spreadsheet, an arrears report, service charge budgets and part-year accounts, contractor contracts, and insurance details. The seller's managing agent is helpful but busy with its other clients.
Somebody now has to get twenty tenancies into the property management system, set up billing, tell tenants where to pay, pick up the service charge mid-year, take over contracts and set up lease events. Most of it is retyping.
Why takeovers take so long
The information exists but in someone else's structure. Leases have to be read. The tenancy schedule has to be checked against them, because schedules drift from the leases they summarise. Arrears and service charge positions have to be agreed with the seller. And your own systems need data in your shape.
- Lease bundles are scans, often with side letters out of order.
- The seller's tenancy schedule may not match the leases.
- Arrears and service charge apportionments need agreeing as at completion.
- Contractor contracts and building compliance records arrive in bulk folders.
- Tenants need a clear, trustworthy notice about the change of landlord and where to pay.
What must happen legally on a change of landlord, and how completion adjustments are worked out, are for your solicitor and accountant. The data work is where the time goes.
What a slow takeover costs
The first quarter's demands go out late or wrong. Tenants receive confusing messages and some keep paying the old landlord. Lease events due soon after completion are missed because they have not been set up. And discrepancies between the leases and the tenancy schedule, which matter for valuation and reviews, are found months later.
It also slows the business plan. If the building was bought to refurbish, relet or regear, the asset manager cannot start until the basics are in place.
The onboarding process we build
- The lease bundle is read with OCR and AI extraction into structured lease terms, with every field linked to its source page for a person to check.
- Extracted terms are compared automatically with the seller's tenancy schedule, and each difference is listed for your team and solicitor to resolve.
- Arrears, deposits and service charge positions are loaded from the handover reports and reconciled to the agreed completion figures.
- Clean data is loaded into your property management system or accounts system, and lease events are created in your tracker.
- Tenant notices about the change of landlord, with new payment details and contacts, are produced from your approved template and sent, with delivery recorded.
- Compliance records and contractor contracts are filed against the building, with expiry dates extracted for follow-up.
| Handover item | Usual approach | Our approach |
|---|---|---|
| Leases | Read and retyped | Extracted and checked against the source page |
| Tenancy schedule | Trusted as given | Compared with the leases, differences listed |
| Arrears and deposits | Copied from reports | Loaded and reconciled to completion figures |
| Tenant notices | Individual letters | Template, sent and tracked |
| Compliance records | Folders | Filed with expiry dates |
After the next acquisition
The building is live in your systems soon after completion, with a list of discrepancies already in front of the right people. Tenants know where to pay. Demands are right from the first quarter. Lease events are set up before any fall due. And the asset manager starts the business plan with a lease record they can trust.
The same process works in reverse when you sell. The data room is assembled from your records, with the tenancy schedule and leases already reconciled, which answers many of a buyer's questions before they are asked.
Does this describe your takeovers?
- Acquired leases are retyped into your systems.
- The seller's tenancy schedule is taken as correct.
- Tenants keep paying the old landlord after completion.
- Lease events have been missed soon after an acquisition.
- Compliance records from the seller sit in unsorted folders.