Macintosh Village

Macintosh Village is comprised of three separate developments; Green Building, The Foundry and River Street (apartments and townhouses). They all have to operate under one residential management company for the whole village, so the challenge is to make three completely separate developments function under the one umbrella management company.

The story

What is it with developers not handing control of developments to owners? It’s a common story. We first met with some owners from Macintosh Village at a Manchester City Council forum meeting in 2010. The story goes all the way back to when the first stages of the village were built in 2002 and the developer appointed the previous agent but retained control of the management company. The owners were supposed to have received shares in the management company but this didn’t happen and owners had no control. Each part of the village had its own particular issues but common to them all was a lack of financial accounting that had left them without service charge accounts for seven years. The relationship between owners and the managing agent had broken down, particularly because of poor communication from the agent.

The solution

Revolution assisted the owners in forming legally recognised residents associations. Whilst this was on-going Revolution negotiated with the original developer to amend the Memorandum and Articles of Macintosh Village into something more workable. Memorandum and Articles are the rules that the company has to abide by. The redrafting of these enabled a staged handover of power to take place from the developer to the owners. Today under Revolution’s management each development operates independently, they each have their own budgets and bank accounts with everything clearly defined. Each development has its own board of directors with its own planned maintenance schedule.

Summary

The Macintosh Village story shows how a quality group of developments can suffer through poor administration. With Revolution’s help historical problems have been resolved and the finances are now in good shape for the future. Block management has to be about structured processes, clear answers, accountability and working together in the interests of the development. Macintosh Village now runs smoothly and is finally living up to the owners expectations of city centre living.