This often means you have to take a proactive approach to your property, in particular with the managing agent, who in most cases is appointed by the property owners (that’s us landlords), to look after the communal areas (lifts, carpets) and communal facilities (water supply). If you have a lazy agent, it could prove fatal to your dealings with your tenant. If you have a hands-on one, it could mean a blissful relationship.
Take a recent episode at one of the cornerstones of the Millard empire, namely one of my bijou apartments within a block of 23 flats in east London (I call it City borders). Thanks to a water-pressure gremlin, my tenant, a City person, had to shower underneath something akin to a child’s watering can.
And City people are mad on power showers. They like the water so strong it gives them bruises. Rather than leaving, however, he sent me an incredibly polite e-mail. I dispatched my plumber. He couldn’t do anything. I hoped the issue would go away. It didn’t.
So I contacted the Avenue Agency, our managing agent. The Avenue had already had water pressure complaints from other landlords. One had already lost his tenant, another City person. No landlord wants to lose a City person. They are perfect tenants. They never default on the rent and appear to have no domestic needs. They get up early and arrive home late. They never cook. But they must have a decent iron and a working power shower. Which ours certainly was not. So, panic on the power-shower front.
We called in Thames Water. They pronounced the pipework “impeccably installed”, and recommended we fit an independent water supply. From where? The Thames? A mad idea, that would cost thousands.
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Then, a masterstroke. The Avenue sent someone down to inspect. Two hours later, a pump was found in the bowels of the building. It looked as if it had been turned off. Or never turned on. Jubilation all round.
The Avenue’s Miranda Zdan-Michajlowicz then contacted Grundfos, the makers of the pump. They sent someone round, who told Mrs Z-M that we could turn the pump on, but on our own heads be it if we all got Legionnaire’s disease. “A-ha!” said Mrs Z-M. “I know of a company specialising in water hygiene, Lynton Services Mayfair.”
Someone came round. The pump was cleaned and the tank inspected. Everything was switched on. Gasps of pleasure as water spurted from every shower in all 23 flats. City employees leapt underneath the powerful spume of water that now flowed from their formerly weedy showers. (I’m not sure about that last bit, actually.) However, I am sure our tenant is now very happy, and very clean.
Only one problem remained: the pump makes a hideous noise. “Apparently it’s the bearings grinding, because it hasn’t been used for so long,” says Mrs Z-M. “We will replace them.”
Perhaps we could make the developer who had converted the block from a Victorian warehouse seven years ago pay for that. I called the NHBC (the National House-Building Council), which provides 10-year warranties for new and newly converted homes. “Your warranty began in September 1999,” says a woman in the claims department. “If problems with this pump had been reported within the first two years, then it would have been covered.”
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A 10-year NHBC warranty will cover many things in the first two years after the building has been finished, because there are bound to be teething problems, known as “snagging”. But seven years on, the only problem my warranty would touch were things concerning load-bearing structural parts; the foundations, floor and roof trusses.
This cautionary tale has two messages. One is to pay attention to complaints from your tenants. The second is to employ an efficient managing agent — namely one prepared to go hunting in the foundations of a building for a malfunctioning pump, and also has an existing contacts book of companies that will come and sort out issues like putative outbreaks of Legionnaire’ disease. Unless you want to spend hours on the internet trying to hire someone to sort them out yourself, that is.
“It all boiled down to common sense,” says Mrs Zdan-Michajlowicz, “lots of phone calls, and a good glass of wine.” My view entirely.