Co-ownership trustees: the urgency to act

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Relations between co-owners and trustees are often marked by suspicion. While the National Housing Council has just created a working group on the future of the profession of trustee, Henry Buzy-Cazaux, founding president of the Institute of Real Estate Services Management, considers it necessary to look into the economic model of this profession.

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In the heart of the confectioners’ truce, the subject made the front page of the Dépêche du Midi, referring to a thick editorial file inside the daily. Of the co-owners Hundreds expressed their all-round dissatisfaction with their trustee, the French leader in co-ownership management, accused in particular of poorly controlled growth. Incidentally, the article pointed out another large brand, number three nationally, also very active in its acquisitions of independent firms. Yet another episode in the never-ending saga relating to relationships between co-ownership trustees and their clients. We could smile about it or at least accept it if the role of these professionals was not so major. Without them, the environmental renovation of collective buildings will not take place. Without them, the obsolescence of the residential and business heritage of our cities will condemn them to gradually devitalize. When the legislator does not charge the trustees to denounce the sleep merchants from the top floor or the domestic violence that all the neighbors modestly keep silent about. Disenchantment does not fit well with the responsibilities that the legislator and in fact society attribute to them.

Moreover, while the law authorizes co-ownerships to do without a professional trustee in favor of a voluntary trustee90% of them choose the path of delegation to a professional agent. The reason is simple: the complexity and weight of the mission dissuade co-owners from self-administration. In addition, a community needs an arbitrator and his authority – enforcing compliance with the co-ownership regulations is not the least of the trustee’s tasks – also depends on his independence.

Suspicion in relations between trustees and co-owners

Despite this awareness that the trustee needs some sort ofesteem and recognitionfoundations of moral and professional credit, the situation does not evolve and the stakeholders readily classify themselves into two subsets who stick to their positions: the supporters who maintain that the trustees are blameless or almost and bear the brunt of a orchestrated demolition company, and the opponents who decry them without much kindness or nuance. The relationship holds and the co-ownership moves forward on these unsanitized bases. It is not a question of marketing the basic customer relationship and seeking to warm up the bond, but of wanting it not to be constantly threatened with rupture by dint of being woven from suspicion. Because there is suspicion, where trust is essential.

Certainly, surveys are flourishing which confirm that the overwhelming majority of co-owners are satisfied with their professional trustee… Their origin weakens their credibility a little, we cannot hide it, and reverse studies are marked with the same seal… What remains is what we must not neglect: the fama, the opinion, the café of commerce if you like, and as Brassens sang, the trustees are all the same tempted to admit that “in the unpretentious village (they have) a bad reputation.”

The economic model of trustees needs to be questioned

This year will be celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the law which established the co-ownership regime in France, promulgated on July 10, 1965. It also created the trustee and specified its missions, which have evolved a hundred times since then and led to alterations of the original text. At the same time, evidence of suspicion has multiplied, such as obligations for greater transparency or even more fluid competition. For foreign countries, our legal co-ownership appears to be exemplary and many were inspired by it. But then what’s wrong? No doubt the feeling that when a trustee fails to fulfill his obligations he is neither controlled nor sanctioned, that the training of managers is neglected without further consequences.

On the trustee side, the economic model needs to be questioned : the fees are miserable, between €15 and €20 per lot and per month on a national average to manage the most valuable heritage element of the French, and no one sees a problem with it. As a result, in most firms, the balance is painfully stabilized by entrusting managers with a large number of lots and co-owners, which is difficult to reconcile with the tailor-made attention to be paid to each building. The logic of the lowest bidder dictates the choice of trustees, when that of the highest bidder would otherwise be more effective. This is also where we must look for a cause of the race for size, which generates profitability based on massification. It would be less frantic if the profitability of the activity was better ensured by a good level of remuneration.

A working group on the future of the trustee profession

Faced with this situation, professional organizations are helpless. They act, of course, but do not find the solution and play defense to use a sporting metaphor. The subject of discipline, with a commission provided for by the ALUR law of March 24…2014 which is not appointed by the State because the three unions are not clear between themselves with their representativeness and the number of seats that ‘they aspire to occupy. We can understand the issue, but it compromises major progress in the eyes of the public: the possibility of recourse in the event of difficulty. It also supports the thesis that the profession does not want rapid internal justice to exist. In this context, the National Housing Council, at the initiative of the previous president, Lionel Causse, inspired the creation of a working group on the future of the trustee professionconfirmed by his successor, Annaïg Le Meur, deputy for Finistère. He will have to propose without taboo, before the State gets involved.

The idea of create a professional order, that the president of UNIS more willingly appoints a High Authority to avoid a dated word which could frighten the profession, stands out. The legal concept is the same whatever the bottle: the State, under its leadership, would mandate the profession to organize itself, to train itself and to operate its own discipline, with the power to sanction or even exclude. We also noted when such an organization was put in place, as for the auditors when they wanted to differentiate themselves from the chartered accountants in 1969, that their fees were in fact reevaluated, as a virtuous consequence for the economic health of the profession. One thing is certain: if the profession, in a burst of conscience, does not propose anything to the public authorities, they will do so, and perhaps without discernment. The time for collective responsibility has come.