Under Hungarian condominium law (Act CXXXIII of 2003) every building must have a common representative or a managing committee that handles its legal and administrative representation. Above 100 units the law requires a qualified professional in this role, and that threshold is no accident: in a building of this size the daily administration alone is a full time job. A management company fills this role under contract: charging and recording common costs, reconciling bank items, handling supplier contracts, organising maintenance, coordinating fault reports, preparing general meetings and implementing the resolutions adopted.
Tibor Zsolt Tóth, the founder of Merbo, lives in a 424 unit condominium himself, so he knows exactly what owners actually perceive of this work: where their common cost is spent, when the chimney sweep arrives, why the heating has not started in early September. Good management is not about never having problems, it is about problems being communicated on time, with names, dates and amounts, instead of vague promises like soon or in progress.
An important distinction: the manager does not own the building and does not decide on its behalf. The general meeting decides everything beyond day to day administration, from renovations to major investments and changes to the house rules. The manager prepares these decisions with professional documentation and implements them once they are made. Anyone expecting the manager to simply solve disputes alone will be disappointed, but anyone expecting precise, figure based documentation for every decision is in the right place.
Most of the daily work is invisible: receiving and verifying invoices, tracking the maintenance budget, closing fault tickets, sending notices to owners in arrears. This is the layer nobody notices in a well run building, until they ask.
If you are looking for a manager now, or simply want to understand the scope of such a contract, it is worth clarifying upfront what is included and what is not. Our next article covers this in detail.