Berkley Supplement

Berkley Property Management

Celebrating 10 Years

World class customer service with

boutique charm

Supplement to the CondoBusiness Magazine

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The Little Firm th With a growing condominium division and a dedicated staff, Berkley Property Management delivers world class customer service with hands-on, boutique charm

F

rom the moment you step foot inside the modest operations office of Berkley Property Management at Jane and Steeles in North York, Ontario, you get a pretty good sense of what the company is all about. Everyone seems grounded, connected. There’s an “all for one and one for all” mentality about the staff that can’t be mistaken for anything but job satisfaction.

“The company is very familyoriented,” said Wilma D’Souza, a property manager with Berkley for just six months. As the newest addition to 4

Berkley Property Management Inc.

the thirty-member staff, D’Souza said what struck her most about her new working environment was the amiable and positive attitude everyone seemed to exude. And it didn’t take her long to realize these were more than just first impressions. They were values, rooted deeply in the core of the company and attached to every service they delivered.

“The people are very friendly and helpful, and they extend that courtesy to their clients. Being positive and getting the job done...it’s the Berkley way,” she said.

Building a “politics-free” work environment When Paul Chisholm and Paul Melady formed Berkley Property Management in 2002 it was because they wanted to get back to the business of managing properties. By then, both had climbed up the corporate ladder at Greenwin Property Management and they felt they were losing touch with the reasons they fell in love with the profession in the first place—having that handson connection to the buildings and the ability to directly influence their customers’ satisfaction.

hat Grew “We were both working at Greenwin, a large management company, and we were dealing more with employees and internal management than we were with our clients,” said Chisholm.

“We wanted to be smaller—a boutique company. That’s why we left Greenwin and formed Berkley.”

The ‘we’ he refers to includes long-time friend and Berkley Vice President, Paul Melady. The two met in the eighties at Highmark Properties—a small Torontobased property management firm that grew under Chisholm’s leadership into the third largest of its kind in Canada.

It had a portfolio in excess of 25,000 residential units. Chisholm was a partner there, and Melady, a young property manager. Chisholm recognized in Melady a valuable, hardworking employee and took him along when he left to begin his latest business venture.

“We are both big family guys. We like our evenings and our weekends,”

said Melady. “At the time Greenwin was managing 55,000 units and it had gotten to the point where it wasn’t fun anymore. Forming Berkley gave us a chance to scale back and start over.”

And starting over with the right people was just a matter of time. It only took reaching out to some of the workers and colleagues they’d already known over the years—colleagues who were like-minded in their ideology and dedicated and co-operative in their working style. Colleagues like Shanaz Usman who came aboard as their Director of Condominium Operations in 2002.

“Most of us have known each other for a long time, from previous companies,” Usman said. “We’ve all had paths that have intertwined and somehow we’ve ended up together.

We’ve become like family.”

One of those family members is Roshni Bastani, long-time administrator

and nerve centre of the operation. After eight years of active phone and business administration duty, leaving Berkley to explore new opportunities just isn’t an option. “I think I’ll retire here,” she said.

The Recipe for Success What began as a modest portfolio of six buildings and 1,900 units has blossomed into 120 properties and 9,000 units (3,500 condominium, the remainder rental) spread across Ontario. But the company vows to remain small; to stick to its ‘boutique-mentality’ by offering world class service with hands-on attention to detail, a specialty that’s helped them stand out from their competition since the onset.

“We like our size and we want things to remain stable. In other words, to not grow too quickly,” Chisholm said. “It’s important. It’s what our clients have come to expect. The first thing we do is hand over our cell phone numbers so our Supplement to the CondoBusiness Magazine

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Top: Antibes Drive, Toronto Bottom: Frith Road, Toronto

Berkley Property Management Inc.

clients can reach us at any time. Our door is always open.

We may be successful but we will never be too corporate.”

“It helps that we have extremely small portfolio to manager ratios, in the 500 unit range,” explained Melady.

“It means our managers aren’t on the road all day rushing from one location to another. It’s very, very hands-on with a lot of board time. On the administration side, we are right up to speed on the Condominium Act and we have a good relationship with condominium law firms. Plus, we have all the bells and whistles of the larger management companies, with 24-hour support.”

On the financial side, Berkley’s system is streamlined and masterful. In 2003 Richard Jaikaran arrived on as the new Vice President of Finance, overseeing the internal accounting system and all accounting staff—from financial reporting and budgeting, to forecasting and ensuring complete fiscal order and cost controls. For him the big test lies in finding and hiring the right employees to keep the company’s boutique ideology in place.

“The challenges always come from growth. You want to make sure you are bringing the right people aboard, the ones who are going to fit in with the company values, and that’s been a little tough at times,” he said. “We just want to preserve what we have. We are a family-based company, we are very personable. No matter how big we get, our relationships with staff and our clients are what count.

We’re growing but we want to keep that friendly, serviceoriented atmosphere in place at all times.”

Senior Property Manager, Maria Stavropoulos, is someone who fits the bill of the ideal Berkley employee.

With a long, lustrous career in hospitality and property management, she said she joined the growing team in August of 2012 and hasn’t looked back since.

“I started out at a small property management firm, and from there I went on to work for larger companies like Minto, Menkes and Brookfield, and I found that I really enjoyed the condominium side. When Berkley had this big project coming up, they approached me and it all just came together.”

The project she is referring to is called King West Condominiums—a 1,200-unit development by Plazacorp in Toronto’s Liberty Village due to open its doors in the spring of 2013. “It’s probably one of the largest projects in Ontario,” Stavropoulos said. “It’s more like a small city.”

But thanks to the management style at Berkley, she said she hasn’t fallen victim to the enormous stress imposed by the task at hand. “The two Pauls are the most friendly, down-to-earth guys and they don’t micro manage. I love that. They allow me to take all my experience from the

Photo courtesy of LibertyVillageCondo.com

restaurant industry, plus my knowledge from the other property management companies and apply what I think is best.

“I find that educating the board of directors is really the most challenging part of my job,“ she said.

“You need to make them aware of their liabilities.

When I think about this new condominium and the fact that there will be three towers and more than 5,000 residents living there, it can be overwhelming.

Educating them and communicating with them— and doing it properly—is critical.”

Stavropoulos said she achieves this successfully by tackling issues in bite-sized pieces. At every board meeting she’ll set out to educate the members on one small section of the condominium act. “You can’t bombard them with a thousand pages of rules and laws. So whatever happened that month, I’ll find a section of the act that’s applicable and then I’ll educate them on that—what’s the best way to deal, how we stay out of the courts, how to work as a team, etc.”

^

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Chisholm and Melady are also true believers in the power of communication as an essential part of effective property management. But—they warn—you get what you pay for, and they advise future boards to be wary of who they entrust with delivering their message.

“Condominiums can be massive investments,” Chisholm said. “You could have a condominium worth 35 or 50 million dollars. Management fees are only a small portion of their annual operating budget and what a good manager can do for you can be so great.

There is utility management, people management, bringing in trades that are qualified and reputable, clear and ongoing communication. It’s all good value to the owners.”

One of the problems today, Chisholm noted, is that condominium

managers don’t have to be licensed.

He was enthusiastic to report that The Condominium Act is currently being revamped, and soon property managers will have to qualify for a designation. In the meantime there are a lot of sketchy, second rate managers out there wasting owners’ time and money—and to a large extent, hurting the industry. “You could have a guy with a computer working out of his basement calling himself a condominium manager and running your building,” he said. “And this is bad for everyone.”

Berkley Trade Secrets Like any message, communicating it is always easier when you know you are delivering positive results. “There’s nothing the boards hate more than getting the budget every year, especially

one that keeps going up in terms of increasing rates,” said Chisholm. “But we’ve achieved great cost savings in some of our condominiums— we’ve saved massive utility costs and reduced trade costs by making recommendations, particularly on some capital expenditure work. We oversee a large volume of capital projects across our portfolio in terms of renovations done to lobbies, to balconies, windows, garages, and these are fairly significant costs,” he said.

Berkley also isn’t locked in to any one trade, which is why they are able to get the best job done for the right price. “While some larger management firms have associated companies that they bring into buildings for various services, we are strictly 3rd party,” said Chisholm. “We know which of the trades are significantly

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better for repairs and upgrades and we are able to use them. We use our trade power to get the best prices. We have worked with most of the large and reputable trades in the cities and know what pricing should be and they are aware of our quality expectations. There’s a bit of a problem when you have a management company that also owns the concierge company that owns the painting company that owns the retrofit company. It’s unfortunate for us when we are competing for new business but they can go in with a low rate on their management fee proposals because they know they are going to get all this extra stuff.”

“In addition to trades,” said Melady, “our small size allows us to bring our experience to bear on any major issue rather quickly. We don’t have a whole bunch of vice presidents and a layer of middle management to battle through—we’re just clean and efficient. We have brilliant, timely reporting. Our books are

Conserving Energy Where it Counts Berkley knows that energy conservation is top of mind with all condominium and building owners, and promoting responsible usage is part of their mandate. Whenever the company assumes management of a new building, one of their immediate tasks is to look at the overall utility consumption and determine whether it is normal for a building of its size. If the consumption seems high, they will investigate.

“We send flyers to owners on management takeover to remind them to conserve on utilities,” said Chisholm. “We also promote recycling in all our buildings, and we promote sub-metering of hydro to ensure owners only pay for their own usage.”

Berkley retrofits to low flow toilets and carries out heating plant retrofits to mid- or high-efficiency boilers. “We look at getting into utility contracts if they are more favourable. We have saved our clients millions of dollars in utility costs over the last ten years,” said Chisholm.

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9

Paul Chisholm President

perfect so auditors love us. When they get their files from us they know they are going to be organized.”

Accounting for Every Dollar Dealing with money matters is something the Berkley team doesn’t take lightly. It helps that Chisholm himself is a Chartered Accountant and personally oversees all corporate

“

Wilma D'Souza Property Manager

Paul Melady Vice President

comes to financial reporting, we take the common sense approach,” Jaikaran said. “Numbers can be intimidating and we’re not all finance people. We don’t talk down to the board members or present them complicated financial data. We benefit more when everyone understands what’s going on. The numbers don’t lie, there are no secrets.

That’s why we keep the financials as

Numbers can be intimidating and we’re not all finance people. We don’t talk down to the board members or present them complicated financial data. We benefit more when everyone understands what’s going on.

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Berkley Property Management Inc.

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investments and transactions. He and Richard Jaikaran, the VP of Finance, know how to maximize the interest return on condominium reserve funds and are sticklers for balancing the books accurately.

“We realize that for most people, it’s not only an investment—it’s their home,” said Jaikaran. “When it’s their home, you cross that line between business and personal and it takes that extra level of care. We give them that service.”

Both Jaikaran and Chisholm recognize that what they find easy to understand, might be like trying to decipher a foreign language for others. “When it

simple as possible. And we work with Yardi, our property management software company to create a custom set of financial reports for every board we work with.”

Jaikaran said that being flexible with their reports, having data available that makes sense to each individual condominium board makes everyone’s life easier. “We show them a sample set of financials. We ask them, does this work for you? If not, what do you want changed? Tailored formats help make the financial process better for us all.

“Our goal,” he continued, “is to get business reports into our clients’ hands

on the tenth business day of every month. We are very up to date. We see it as important to be up to date. The information is there so it should be shared. It is a function of management to deliver this service.”

An important part of maintaining financial order lies in properly allocating the funds. The Berkley policy is that each condominium corporation must have two separate accounts—one for the reserve fund and one for operating costs. “Ensuring the reserve fund and the operating fund are distinct from one another helps the condominium get a clean audit,” said Jaikaran. “Good property managers will do this, have two separate accounts and never let them cross. That way when the auditors come in it’s clean no matter what. We always make sure our accounting is clean of arrears and that there has been no mixing of funds. We work to ensure that everything is the way it should be.

Nice and clean so everyone is happy.

Our financial statements reflect the financial position of the corporation on a timely basis.”

Technology’s Helping Hand When asked what’s changed the most about business operations over the past decade, the two Pauls cited advances in technology. While on the one hand, new technology has helped smooth the path to improved customer satisfaction by making communication with staff and residents easier, on the other hand, it has increased people’s expectations

Shanaz Usman Director of Condominium Operations

of what is considered an acceptable response time.

“It used to be you got a letter and you’d have two weeks to write one back,” Melady said. “Then you got a fax and you had two days to return it. Now if you’re not responding on an email within ten minutes, people start wondering what’s going on. The nice thing about having a Blackberry, of course, is that you are on top of everything and you

Richard Jaikaran Vice President of Finance

can handle more work. But it’s on 24-7.”

And, in an industry where communication is everything, being able to access and relay information expediently is more than just an asset— it’s an essential tool.

“We can communicate quickly and update our building websites daily,” said Chisholm. “Now residents can book amenities online and we can post or send a message notifying them

Maria Stavropoulos Senior Property Manager

when the water is going to be down or repairs are being done. Because the communication is better, people can anticipate and make arrangements and then they don’t get as upset. We also try to get their email addresses and communicate that way.”

Coming this summer, Berkley is proudly launching a new, state-of-the art company website. The website will offer users of all types—residents, future

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residents, boards and condominium owners—an easy, streamlined experienced, whether they are simply seeking out information or looking to pay their monthly fees.

“We are one of the few managers to offer Condo Café,” said Jaikaran. “This allows our condominiums to request status certificates via the website anytime they want. Residents can log into their account and see balances and make payments online. For condominium owners who wish to have their unit rented, we can setup rental pools and use our online application process to fill the unit. In addition to overseeing the condominium as a whole, we can also protect the unit owner’s investment in their units.

“And if boards are in agreement,” he continued, “we will setup a link from our website to showcase the condominium and its features. Of course, we can also update individual condominium pages with news and events as they happen.”

The next ten years... and beyond Though Berkley is experienced and up-to-speed at managing all types of buildings, from industrial and commercial to townhouses and massive towers, the company is looking to expand their condominium management division.

“A building is a building, the mechanical systems and building structures are similar for the most part,” said Melady. “So, in so far as managing the structure it doesn’t matter if it’s rental or condominium. But the legislation is different. The reporting

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Back: James Chisholm, Richard Jaikaran, Paul Melady, Roshni Bastani, and Paul Chisholm Front: Shanaz Usman, Maria Stavropoulos, and Wilma D'Souza

structure is different. You’ve got more satisfaction making improvements to a condominium because you have an owner living there. There’s collective ownership so everyone cares.

Everyone has a stake in the success of the building.

“Furthermore,” he continued, “there are patterns to owners’ lifestyle, and you can see them. For instance in the Liberty Village condominium, the owners are very progressive. They are the new

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thirty-somethings taking over downtown. They want health clubs, restaurants, entertainment.

They don’t dream of suburbia and white picket fences. They want to be right where the action is, even if it’s more expensive. And they don’t care about parking because they take subways or they walk to work.“ “There’s such a resurgence of new condominiums, especially in Toronto,” added Chisholm. We see the opportunity for new management business in this area more so than on the rental apartment side. For those reasons we are looking at expanding our condominium division.”

Condominium, rental, high rise or low, one thing Chisholm and Melady know for certain is that the success of their company rests with their dedicated employees, and for that, the future looks bright.

“Our managers are really, really great,” Chisholm declared. “We have just come through the annual review process and everybody ranked well.

Everybody does the job, everybody gets along, and everybody appreciates each other and the role they play within the organization. It’s a pretty nice place to work.” ■

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