On 7/25/2015 at 9:06 AM, KittenKong said:

 

What a nightmare condo management is here, especially considering how small the budgets usually are. It's hard to comprehend how so little money can generate so many problems. My building's yearly budget is less than my yearly revenue used to be when I worked for myself. And I had no staff and even found time to do my own accounts. Yet our building needs 3 people to run the office, plus an external management company for the accounts and general legal work, and still they cant get the most basic things right.

I'm often tempted to sack our management company and employ a competent manager. I think that if this was done the important thing would be to have good outside accountants who report weekly to the committee and to never let the manager ever have any access to bank accounts or chequebooks or cash, apart from paying in the daily takings.

There are dozens of cases here of badly controlled managers walking off with millions of Baht, though this often happens even when a management company is employed also as many of them seem to have no idea how to monitor staff.

But another problem I find in our building is the very high level of apathy and general stupidity of the co-owners. Few seem to be interested in the way the building is run, none of them seems to know how to read a spreadsheet or understand a cash-flow report, and in fact hardly any of them ever look at any building documents at all. If they do think about the building it only seems to involve stabbing other people in the back and generally complaining without offering any useful input. We also have more than our fair share of retired people who will happily tell you that they used to do this and that important job, and used to chair this and that committee, and then five minutes later they will tell you exactly the same thing, and again a half hour later. I would be unhappy about having such people on a committee that had to directly oversee a manager and all the finances. In fact I would be unhappy about having such people oversee a family picnic on the beach.

 

Super write-up!!!!    Been involved in this for many years. Major mistake! Love the part about owners.  Could write books and make movies! Pattaya really attracts the creme de la creme.....MS>

On 7/25/2015 at 9:06 AM, KittenKong said:

 

What a nightmare condo management is here, especially considering how small the budgets usually are. It's hard to comprehend how so little money can generate so many problems. My building's yearly budget is less than my yearly revenue used to be when I worked for myself. And I had no staff and even found time to do my own accounts. Yet our building needs 3 people to run the office, plus an external management company for the accounts and general legal work, and still they cant get the most basic things right.

I'm often tempted to sack our management company and employ a competent manager. I think that if this was done the important thing would be to have good outside accountants who report weekly to the committee and to never let the manager ever have any access to bank accounts or chequebooks or cash, apart from paying in the daily takings.

There are dozens of cases here of badly controlled managers walking off with millions of Baht, though this often happens even when a management company is employed also as many of them seem to have no idea how to monitor staff.

But another problem I find in our building is the very high level of apathy and general stupidity of the co-owners. Few seem to be interested in the way the building is run, none of them seems to know how to read a spreadsheet or understand a cash-flow report, and in fact hardly any of them ever look at any building documents at all. If they do think about the building it only seems to involve stabbing other people in the back and generally complaining without offering any useful input. We also have more than our fair share of retired people who will happily tell you that they used to do this and that important job, and used to chair this and that committee, and then five minutes later they will tell you exactly the same thing, and again a half hour later. I would be unhappy about having such people on a committee that had to directly oversee a manager and all the finances. In fact I would be unhappy about having such people oversee a family picnic on the beach.

Damn lol, you just described my condo exactly. 

On 7/27/2015 at 10:33 PM, KittenKong said:

Interesting comments. I suppose yours is a relatively small building?

We at Chateaudale/Thabali  has the same  structure..144 condos. Excellent committee,manager and staff

On 7/25/2015 at 3:08 AM, ThaiBob said:

QPM manages a lot of condos here.

Yes they are good