Anyone tried being or are currently serving in Joint Management Body (JMB)/Management Corporation (MC) of their Condo building?

Can anyone shed some light on some of the duties of being a committee member? Does it take a lot of your time?

My condo's AGM coming up, thinking maybe to try be a committee member?

The duties of JMB are as below:

a) Maintain the common property and keep it in good serviceable repair;
b) Determine an impose charges for maintenance of common property;
c) Insure the building;
d) Comply with notices and orders by local authorities;
e) Prepare and maintain a register of all purchasers;
f) Ensure that the Building Maintenance fund is audited and provide financial statement to purchasers;
g) Enforce House Rules;

Tough and thanks less job, often get accuse of mis-appropriation and when vendor selected seems to be by your friend/relative ... even if they are good and fairly priced.

get ready for politic/gangster/favouritism/

Part of the jobs :-

1. Select the preferred vendors and buy a lot of things or services from them.
Enjoy the kick back.

2. Gang up with other committees to massage the accounts and transfer to money to own pocket.

3. .....

thats what i suspect also coz even with sinking fund not enough to paint whole bldg, owners have to top up

Serving the neighborhood also like doing a charity job..

Keep an eye on the costing of maintenance works,
try to maximum the dollar value from the collections.

You will be dealing many selfish ppl like the owners as well as the other committee members whom has private agenda..

The major costing of a condo management were the water/TNB/security.

Repaint the building is last job to considered becos still got others like lifts maintenance especially when the buildings were nearby 10 years old and above.
Many things are going to breakdown...especially the E&E equipments..they are very costing.

Is there any salary for committee member or chairman?

My condo are pratising change the lighting to T5 instead of LED..The costing of LEDs are the most expensive one,we just used it for spot lights.

T5 is more effective in costing& energy saving. They can bring down about 40% from normal TNB bills.

LEDs are expensive 2~3 times but lifeband is slightly 20% higher than T5..

They are serving as a charity workers to the neighborhood...So is FOC

Some condos may have small meeting allowance or office bearer allowance.

We are doing more neighborhood friendly steps to encouraged more owners to get known to their neighborhood.

Announcement /notices are in three languages.Managements or owner meetings also in three languages.

Because many banana ppl using English only to prohibited others languages ppl to take participate so they can doing their own private interest agenda.

generally no but very often already discreetly covered by suppliers whether in ca$h or in kind (eg. spa/massat/f&b/gift/voucher). keep an open eye on cheque signatories as well. allowance if any, is just peanut compared to those kasi by suppliers.

There is salaray for committee member but better to endorsed it 1st in AGM

Even if the committee were doing their job well and no corruption involve, well there is among resident will 'cucuk' with false story and claim the committee are bad and not doing their job well.

interesting topic.
perhaps it is a wise choice after all for government to impose only qualified property managers to maintain buildings.
and let the property managers answer to the board.
at least get reputable property managers and you would safeguard 50% of the problems already.

Based on my knowing,
there are not enough qualified and professional property managers around for so many highrise building around.

I involved in JMB/MC before, the cost of employ a professional building management, aka they supply a onsite manager, clerk + handyman, come at a cost of around 9K-11k.

Even employ the property manager, JMB/MC still need to take in charge of many issues as well.
Just those daily and routine job may be be well taken of.

JMB/MC still need to be actively involved to ensure the building is well taken of, financially being well controlled etc.

The best way is to employed a management company to take over daily jobs instead of JMC/MC,The Committee rules is to monitoring and decision maker.

Many mid or low cost condo/apt get to zero reserve fund problems are due to committees want to cut cost and kick off management company ,they themselves involved in daily jobs by hiring clerks to make the daily collections and supplies payment.
But corruption happened or miss use public funds...left out a lots shits ,they sold out their units..

Bye bye chaos!

Not 100% correct ...you mean reputation property management company also not guarantee.


KJ was wellknow before but they send rubbish ppl to handle your condo and charge you higher rate..

Three of my condo already kicked them off last year after so many times warning issued.

Your guys must beware of KJ. Their service standard getting poorer after the founders sold out their stakes ..

from the accounts, i see the highest cost item is staff salary and allowances at about RM230k

seems a lot to me

My condo site is paying $5000 management fees +
20K staffs salaries/allowance fixed...any OT fees incurred were bear by the company.

My condo has 7 blocks with 16 floors..Total units is 902. 10 years old.

The management company give us 2 floor desk clerk + 2 executies[account + admin] + 3 handymans + 1 technician + manager.

JMB or JMC is like do charity. You do it, and yet alot of other residents take it for granted. In this world, we cannot make everyone satisfy, just do your best. And becoming a JMB committee is for the good of your own living place. Make it better so that you can live in peace.
Salute all committees of JMB!!!

Anyone is committee member?

security guard is most headache problem.

How to get good guard with reasonable rates?

Anyone have tried employ guard/warden under JMB payroll?

My place the main gate car security system always fail every other day. I wonder how much money we have given to the supplier. Sounds like permanent sucker !

This post has been edited by puchongite: Dec 19 2013, 04:50 PM

Please raise to JMB immediately, change new system better than maintain.

Haha that's a new system.

haha.. really fainted then

Wonder anybody can setup a database on good vendor.

They put a big screen (either 32 inch TV or LCD monitor) show the car plate number ( is there a need for it ?) and other electronics in the open air.

The water proofing is bad, and it's raining season. I think they got zapped every now and then.

This post has been edited by puchongite: Dec 19 2013, 04:59 PM

Many legal and insurance issues involved ,so better outsource to a licensed scurity company to handle.

By the way, our condo is paying $5.30 per hour rate to the company,we deployed 11 guards per sheet.

If you want like the desa park city quality guards ,min rate is,$8~9 per hour.

So our condo security cost is about 40k per month..

At least there are guards.
Nowadays thieves and robbers aim for those unguarded taman, easier target.
Security in Bolehland so good that we have to rely on security guards of our own.

My advice

Try to get into committee, if you are new, just keep silent at first ,observed the management office ppl handling the jobs and the others old committee members...

Try to get as much infos and attend the monthly meetings then after about 6 months later,you roughly figure out who is the hantu..and who are helpful ppl.

Yah, good idea.
Should setup a thread in LYN, so that people can refer to good vendors.
For example good security company, good refuse collector, good condo management company and etc...

Many hantu in committee...especially those banana ppl control committee..80% have hantu inside the committee...look after their private pocket not the community interest.

My POV is not good idea to hire directly under JMB payroll. Don't expect the JMC Chairman/person or members to supervise them. Not mean impossible, but very2 challenging.. they already shoulder enou responsibilities without geting pay la!

If interested, pm me ur PIC name and contact, I can introduce one security company for u. Not the best, consider good only. We have been using this company since 2009.

Even you are paying high rate to security company not mean you can what you need most becos they are human being..

So my experience you condo if have budget must also buck up your condo CCTV and door access system...because machines are more trustful than human..also can be traceable.

Nowadays many condo have break in cases...90% are insider job

+1
Agree!!
Insider job lagi jia lat!!

i got myself nominated in AGM elections but lost due to some of the owners holding many proxy votes voting for their members only thus 2 members are always there.

apparently, these 2 fellas always corner several tenders with high price

seems like a lost cause

Agree that it is best that JMB does not hire guards directly. I know of one JMB which was fined ~RM10k for hiring a foreign guy as security guard. Don't know the exact details.

Hi,

I am in the JMC, second term now. It is good to be involved if you can spare some time to help out in check & balance on the managing agent and to ensure procedures etc work out to the best of the interest of all residents.

It's not easy as we've had very high staff turnover of MO staff & change of security company and unreasonable owners /residents. It's an uphill task for us but nevertheless we are still trying our very best.

It would be good to share & learn from one another here, on issues we face daily in the JMC.

We do not have anyone in our payroll. I understand that i's not easy to get our own building manager or head of security but sometimes I'm very tempted to suggest that as those under our employment, at least I think we may have a better control. I've heard of success stories of condo running on their own & not via any agent.

Our agent fees also 5k & we outsource our security too.


This post has been edited by Gami: Dec 28 2013, 09:04 PM

Well done! Good for the community and urself.

If everyone in JMC has their day job to meet the end need, try to avoid having to put too much times to manage direct reports.
For 5k management fee, mind to dhare how many units 4 ur condo/aprt?

Hi...

Welcome on board ...sharing infos...

My advise..

Try to be neighborhood friendly ..use 3 languages in condo bulletin notices..

Keep the residents informed , let them getting interest into knowing things JMC are doing.

Condo is around 290 units, small land size with basic facilities, just pool & gym, small playground for kids.

Our problem is managing agent, for the past 3 years, I think we have had 5-6 building managers and it seems we are the training ground for them. Besides that, it's the same with the rest of the staff. With that price, we are given 1 building manager, 1 building exec, 1 clerk, 1 technician and 1 handyman. Most of the time, we have been shortchanged as the agent moves his people around to cover other sites, we suspect.

Communication is a problem for us as residents as we hardly know what's happening & most of the time even as JMC members too.

They are not pro-active most of the time & need to be told what to do, etc.

Any of you have a blog or updates via the internet ? Effective ?

In most pratice, not necessary apply for all, the management (agent) fee is fixed fee pay to Management Company and staffs cost is reimbursed with 5-10% markup.

Just to chk, the building mgr, buidling exe, clerk, technician, and handbyman are dedicated on-site resources, or shared resources but based at Management's (Agent's) office?
Also, interested to know how u manage the procurement and budget. Who is managing the account payable and receivable, and bank account?

Yup, management fee is fixed and contractual amt for staffing. It is supposed to be based in our MO as agreed. Procurement, the JMC has to approve above a certain figure and we set the budget too besides annual budget. We help in evaluation of suppliers or products too.

We outsourced our accounting with the software installed in the MO and the accounting firm provides us monthly reporting and attends our JMC meetings as well to answer any queries and brief us / advise us.

I have noticed that the best condo management is actually with a JMB member (which is also a resident) in the management office. All decisions by the management's office must go thru this member. This means the JMB is running and hiring their own staff.

Pretty hard to get a full-time or part-time JMB member nowadays which can sit in office and overlook the management.

Very useful link for JMC members

Building and Common Property(Maintenance and Management) Act 2007Act 663
http://www.hba.org.my/laws/building/bcpAct2007.htm

Not exactly..

Hire third party management to handle the daily jobs..
MC/JMC members are not suppose to involve in directly because of interest of conflict issues.

My condo have 7 blocks with about 900 units.
We have one basic swimming pool, tennis court,children playground,multipurpose hall with badminton courts inside.

We paid 5k management fees monthly plus about 23k fixed for staff salary.Staff OT allowances are borne by management agent company.

We are given 1 BM+1Admin+1 A/C+2 front desk clerks+ 1 chief tech+2 handymans.

According to the COB and the law of building and management.

Elected members are maximum 3 years/terms of service.

Thanks alot for sharing.

Wow, quite a number of staffs in Management Office.
Mind to share which company your condo engaged?

Although we are facing defict yearly but with give and take consideration.

We are giving out basic 1 month incentive[ purata] + 1 month performance incentive to selected staffs for their 2013 year performance.

We kick out KJ in 2012 Nov due to poor performance and costly staffs allowances.

We are using Focus Management,they are very low profile chinese run management company.But with certain numbers of condos managed so can sharing resources and experience among their sites .

Another of my new condo with higher standard of facilities,they also Kick out KJ after 1 years occupied.

I also giving advice/experience to the JMB members recommended to use this reasonable offer from Focus.

Unfortunately they given the excuse that they are high class condo so must use high class area like MontKiara or KLCC management agents.

So I immediately sold out this new condo even with 5 months occupied.

thanks for the info. i'll relay it to a friendly JMC member and see if they infringe

Another little advice,

JMC/MC can appoint your legal advisor, the monthly retainer just only $1.5k.

Your legal advisor duty is to attend monthly meeting/AGM//EGM or any important legal advice meeting call upon by JMC.Answer or handling any legal query regarding condo matters like sending letter of demand to those overdue unit owners.

Also handling condo subsale consent.

This all included not extra charges.

JMC only need to pay the legal fees first when the overdue case bought to courts in legal process.

If your condo have budget,can consider pratising it.

Deficit? Sound like paying rate is low?
How much per sqft for maint fee?

Most cheaper $0.15 in the neighborhood.

With tennis and badminton courts,swimming pool,
24 CCTV and each block with guard.

Most owners rejected the first increment proposal of 3 cents or $30/50 per unit last year AGM.

If this year increment proposal reject again. I am going to walk away and selling this condo.

Good idea.
With a lawyer on board the JMC, committee can seek legal advice (especially when dealing with defaulters)
Anyway, thanks for sharing all these info.

Another useful advise,

Even you are paying high rate to security company not mean you can what you need most becos they are human being..

So my experience you condo if have budget must also buck up your condo CCTV and door access system...because machines are more trustful than human..also can be traceable.

My condo 24 CCTV system is given a comprehensive 3+2 years service contract when we reinstalling our CCTV.

Take example, 20 new cameras+3 set monitors,we are paying fixed $1k montly retainer.The CCTV service provider cover the cost all repairing jobs & insure new cameras.This mean new E&E equipments installed under 1 year warranty.They will immediately replaced another function equipment to our condo when send back to repair the faulty ones.

If any of our old existing not done by them found faulty in the period then we only paid the repair jobs.If we want replace new ones,we paid for the new camera and add on $50 per one into the service contract monthly for warranty.

After the new 24 CCTV system was up in 2012.With cooperation from security company.

Our condo break in case managed to archive 90% rate of catching the insider jobs.

If break in cases are done by same of group of ppl,we
can easy trace their jobs if they repeat again.

Sad to said,90% of break in cases are chinese,all tenants living in the neighborhood.They formed a criminal gangs and go to rent out several condo to do the jobs.

They are keeping the stolen things in same block of break in unit after 2~3 days they swift out to different condo where they rented.

This was all told by the police when they successful catch the suspecteds.

The break in cases suspecteds all dressed like renovation workers wearing cap.

They make cases usually in daytime 9~11am or 2~4pm in weekday.

The break in units 90% didn't lock their wooden door lockset.The owners just simply locked and chained their grille only.

All the cases owners are staying in quiet floor which mean this level floor neighbors don't get in touch with others.

Thanks for all the alerts!!
Curse these thiefs!! Insider job are more difficult to prevent.
Sigh....

is it better to engage management co set up by the developer especially the developer have build many phases/projects in the same area?
eg sunrise in MK
i think this type of mgt co will try best to maintain the condo since they want to build good reputation for future projects.

Budget is main problems.

1.Good management agent come first because they have ample resources of back up team or sharing infos among their sites.

2.A good Building Manager, he/she has the abilities of supervising your condo.

One of problems you will be facing if selected developer management agent.

They will fully utilized your maintenance fund..

Cost saving is your problems not theirs.

Like said..monthly collection(excluded sinking fund) 100k..they will try their best to used up with many good excuse.

Do understand, your hard work won't be appreciated. Everyone is out trying to milk money from JMB funds. And some owners may accuse u of corruption. Worse case, they report u to MACC and PDRM. After that, lawsuits here and there. End of the day, u really need to sell yourself for the job. If your background is auditing and currently working in a large audit firm, u may gain some respect. If not, prepare for screaming fest.

Ya..agree..

So appointed a legal advisor to sit on board monthly meetings.

All major repair jobs above certain amount must have at least 3 quotations..

If the JMC are following the SOP or guidelines ..you are protected by The COB or Strata Titles Acts.




This post has been edited by cpng75: Jan 11 2014, 03:29 PM

Make sure the SOP is ready and get management co to strictly follow. All approval for procurement and spending money must approved by JMC. Any claim/bill whithout JMC will be born by management co....
more importantly, the bank cheque signature only by JMC and at least two to three depend on amount..

Talk/complaint only type of people every where also got la... living in strata ttitle property... u need to have peoples who willing to contribute... the more the marrier..

.

What you worried was miss used of funds.

What I mean is more higher standard way..

They will given expensive quotation let you to choose...If JMC members are not aware of the comparison cost..especially those E&E and Plumbing jobs.

That's why sometimes it is beneficiary to have experienced person or person related to various industries in the committee.
Let the meeting to be more open, invite all resident, proprietor owner to come to meeting, whom may feed back some good suggestion in between.

Engage a proper, more honest property manager/management company to run the show also can help out.
As those experienced manager already knew roughly how much a particular job should be cost.

I refer to both actually.
If the quotations price provided is not reasonable.. the JMC members will get involved to call quotation and ask the management co to execute.. 1-2 times.. they know being monitored and tracked, they will behave... if not fire them

People generally like to complain, but when really need to do the job time, or ask them to join into committee to contribute, all keep quiet, MIA, lot of excuse (no time etc).

Committee generally won't be appreciated by most resident, just get use to it.
But you need people to sacrifice in order for the overall benefit or for the sake on the building.

Whether the committee member trying to milk money or not, actually can be seen or spotted easily.
Just vote out the member if showing such a sign.

If all done according to SOP and strata title act available, there is nothing to fear about the screaming fest or not.
Every major decision is made through AGM/EGM, and hire management company to carry the task, whoever not satisfy, object the resolution, or vote out the current committee member, don't need to shout.

Due to high demand, getting honest property manager/management company is not easy.. lots of bad apples in the market... if not careful enu.. alll funds will be gone in short period..

I have on board for the third year,we have been doing the jobs to let the owners more awareness on their neighborhood.

Try to fixed or set up procedures or SOP, to minimize the miss of funds..maximize value of our collection.

Ppl bought their properties 500k or even more million...if they don't bother it...I can't imaging.

I am selfish also, I want my properties value increased ,this was my first intention to get involved JMC.

Step by step..starting from a silly observer member,spend sometimes trying get infos for those quotation.

Recognized & analysis the problems and persuade helpful ppl joined,get support became one of the JMC office bearers.Kick out the selfish private agenda members.

Because I believed anythings made by JMC will eventually impact to your valuable properties.

Absolute agreed! and I can see u hv done a good job!

I am still learning..great to have this kind of topics,we can sharing and exchange views & ideas.

Any senior or experience JMC outthere welcome to share.

That why JMB/MC must put some "control" on the hired management company.
Any spending (apart from petty cash that range few hundred buck), must get the consent from JMB/MC.

Management company run the routine daily work, ensure daily basic necessity issue is run properly, while JMB/MC is the one decide what to spend.

From experience, there are some good property manager/management company, while there might be some that not that professional.

You do not need to have those top notch one, as whether how well the management a lot of time run depended largely on the JMB/MC.

Simply throw everything to management company and let the management company to decide is a big no no.

is it a good idea to set up a facebook account of JMB so all owners know all the activities, happending in condo/surrounding. quotation, tenders, costs etc

i have a a few condo which has FB account and i found it is very informative.

but some JMB refused to have FB coz it will expose their wrong doing or negative thing about the condo eg break in, poor maintenance etc and affect the value of the condo.

your comments?

my condo got cctv but they say every few months kena lightning strike/surge spoilt the whole system including car entry/exit system. apparently insurance paid until don't want to insure anymore??

Install surge protector to prevent lightning strike directly..

Almost everything related we installed the protector..

But need to keep monthly maintenance, replace the protectors after any incidents..

We have management office staffs to handle daily ,we didn't pratising the FB cos eventually we got nothing but scolding and blame..

The lobby floor got a big notice board written in 3 languages..

i think nowaday people prefer to read notice /comments via social networks..
who wanna to spend time, stand and read the notice board??

my condo has FB page and i dun see people scolding and blame, some residents just want the management to improve, they will also upload some photos so the office can rectify the problem asap. public /resident involvement are much efficient to pin point the defects.
some resident also compliment/praise (or like) the office if they managed the resolved certain problems at once.

i think majority minded residents will ignore unreasonable /non constructive , blaming comments. (if any)

http://www.thestar.com.my/News/Nation/2014...ondominium-CBT/

Condominium management chairman charged with CBT amounting to RM320,000

this is a good thread..
i've been looking for this..hehe
i'm 1 of the JMC..and we're in the midst taking over from developer..
so we are now evaluating quotation from several management company..
such as: KJ, JL & Hartanah...
have you guys came across this company?
appreciate if you can give some feedback..

Thanks

"Qualified Property Managers" are rubbish. They also in the take from the suppliers. Worst bcoz they do not own the property, any project is "good" go. And another important fact .... just bcoz they are qualified property management from Valuer Board, they price is calculated by the square feet.

They charge exorbitant fees but hired low class building managers ... so these managers cari makan on the side lor....

I had been in JMC for first 5 years. Retired for the last 3 years.
Experience tells me ALL management companies are the same devil.
My advise: permanently hire a GOOD Building manager & staffs to run your property.
It's cheaper and easily control.

Management Companies only hire cheapo building manager to make more profit.
And you cannot control who the Building manager is....
Bcoz most important factor of a building manager is PR and trustworthiness.

i notice rahim and co did quite a decent job in one of the building i visited lately.

+1.
Many cari makan management companies and managers out there... need to be careful when engaged them... also need to close monitor the managers' activities ... they know all the jalan to take adv!

Not easy and cumbersome to direct manage Building manager & staffs... avoid this path when possible..

As the JMC, u hv a say for the build manager to be place at ur management office la! U can ask to join interview and decide the candidate, and decide how much 4 the salary... pay peanut get monkey lor!

for good manage property, the credit shld go the JMC first, then to management company. Many bad apples even with good name.

+1

Yup...JMC/MCs came first, Building manager the 2nd,the last one is Management agent.


JMC/MC members must not have private agenda first...

Management agents and the building managers are cari makan...correct...market pratising it all the while.
But my our condo experience »» as long as you response quickly and get the jobs done perfectly, we don't mind pay a little bit higher if our members not familiar with the areas involved.

Another infos regarding fire insurance sharing

As our property value increasing significantly during the decade especially in klang valley.But most of our
condos fire insurance covers remained the same from the starting when we are occupied it

So what I mean the fire insurance policy you have were underinsured.

Take my condo for example,our condo have triple the values.

So we based on the valuation suggestion from the insurance brokerage house, we are increasing our insured amount 10% annually to meet the market value according.

The fire insurance are divided among the oweners,
Management office will rebilling to individuals according so not extra cost for it.

We chosen insurance brokerage house not engaged the insurance company directly, we can get more quotantion among them which the brokerage proposed.Extra benefits maybe the premium much lower and the claims rate & processes definitely fast and higher.