MIH is 3

MIH is 3. Prior to writing this blog, we thought it would be prudent to look back at our previous birthday blogs and having gone through the terrible-twos we are proud to have reached our 3-year birthday. Although to be honest, our milestone date may have passed us by due to the break-neck speed that this year has gone by.

Tripling our client base

We started our previous blog talking about our expectations being exceeded, however, we don’t think anything could have prepared us for the doubling and tripling of our portfolio and client base, an office of 9, and thoughts of whether our current office space is going to contain us for the next two years!

Aside from 2019 going by like a flash, we have seen our first MIH baby, a complete restructure of our staff with the team now boasting around 60 years of experience and still have found time to continue training our existing staff with two team members sitting their IRPM in February. We have even found time for a friendly rivalry with a local management firm and we are definitely betting on our team to trump theirs in the exams!

Core services continue to grow

With our expanding team and our combined experience, our portfolio has diversified and aside for our core business of block management, our commercial property management continues to grow.

We are extremely proud that having taking over a mixed usage building in March of this year from an established firm of surveyors we were able to get the building fully rented within 3 months.

Previously two of the offices had remained vacant for 6 months. Lucky for us we found another like-minded firm to let the offices who totally got the ‘make it happen’ ethos. The only down side has been for our client who keep phoning up to check up on the property only to find that our proactive management means that we are constantly one step ahead. Thanks to Richard in particular in our accounts team who had sent over the finances prior to our even getting down the stairs to ask about it.

Impact of Brexit

Our AST management has been somewhat quieter but we think this is because of the dreaded word Brexit as we have noticed a slow down on buy to let purchases for our clients. In many cases this has meant that the existing tenants haven’t moved from their flats however we would prefer to think this is because their flats are so well managed, they don’t want to.

Where tenancies have changed, our clients have been lucky to have their void periods minimised. We believe that this is as a result of our ties to local agents who work in tandem with ourselves to ensure that the “right” tenants move into the property and that both their expectations and our own are managed. We are always happy to deal with issues in flats quickly and effectively when required.

This doesn’t mean that our core business has suffered, indeed this has seen the biggest growth and you can’t imagine how Sarah’s heart swelled with pride (and yes we are being dramatic but then again so is Sarah – just read’s Joe’s blog) when she was told that she had a great team around her on a block that we haven’t even started managing yet. Eerily, this block has suffered a major flood prior to handover (much like the one that was suffered at the beginning of 2018 at one of our other blocks) and in our usual inimitable fashion we have already made great inroads on dealing with the insurance side for the client.

It seems to us that the 2019 and third year of trading has built on the MIH tenets that we strongly espouse, again we have seen our major works projects come in on time and under budget, we continue to work with our clients, freeholders, and management companies alike to ensure that they are getting the best value and although we often suffer “the joys and torment” of management, we have tried to use the torment as a learning curve in how we at MIH can do better, whether this is justified or not.

A growing property management company

We appreciate that as we grow it may be harder to ensure that we are covering all basis and that at some point we are likely to find someone who doesn’t believe in MIH and part of our trying to combat this has been to ensure that we always have the team to manage the appropriate number of clients.

Although we have named property managers for our properties, we are pleased to say that there we really do follow a team ethos at MIH and that all of us work really hard to ensure that our clients are satisfied.

Recently, Levi had to be almost frogmarched from the office to the Doctors as she was so worried about letting the rest of the team down. Sarah thought she was really on trend when she suggested that Levi had “FOMO” only to be told that no one knew what it meant. Sarah’s learning curve is to go back to the Urban Dictionary!

As with our second anniversary blog, we think it is too early for us to consider what lies in store for MIH in 2020 and our fourth year but we can say that if it shapes up to be anything like 2019 we will be very happy. Notwithstanding this, we do know that we will be continuing to Make it Happen in 2020!

Our Services

Residential Management

Block Management

Commercial Property Management