Tenants take charge, lower costly property fees

By Xu Fan (China Daily)
Updated: 2009-11-23 08:11

The first group of Beijing residents to take control of their building management is calling on other communities to follow their lead.

Shao Liting, general manager of Beijing Sanzi Pinge Community Service Center Corporation, said residents saved money and felt more responsible for their neighbors after deciding to self-manage their 16-floor building in Haidian district in 2006.

Tenants take charge, lower costly property fees

Dai Jing, a property owner in Beijing Sanzi Pinge Community, outside his property. The community has become the first group of residents to take control of their building management in Beijing. [Wang Jing]

"It's our company, so we try every method possible to save on management fees," said Shao.

"We are capable of operating and maintaining the community by ourselves. We should not push the management problem on to local government."

Shao said residents currently pay just 1.6 yuan per sq m in management fees, which is down from 2.74 per sq m in 2007.

Residents also saved money through hiring fewer employees to maintain the property, recycling rainwater for use on gardens and restricting the number of working elevators during off-peak periods.

"We used to pay 200,000 yuan for the electricity of the elevators and now we only pay 45,000 yuan," said Shao.

"More than 90 percent of home owners are paying management fees now, whereas only 41 percent paid them before 2007."

Under the current system in Beijing, the developer hires a management firm to handle security, cleaning and other issues associated with the daily management of a residential building. Residents pay a fee to the management firm, but have no control over the selection of the company.

In some instances, resident committees can try and find a new management company but it is a slow and difficult process.

Since Pinge community took control of its management in 2006, more than 140 community groups including 38 from outside Beijing have traveled to the area to see how it operates.

Wu Gang, a professor of Beijing Administrative College, said small communities of less than 200 households could easily self-manage, but it would be more difficult for communities containing thousands of families.

Shao said the former management company left because of a financial conflict with the developer.

The residents then organized a meeting to discuss a solution and selected Shao, the former general manager of a sugar plant with 60,000 employees, to take control of the building management.

"As we needed receipts and official seals to collect management fees, I decided to register a company that was owned by all the residents," said Shao.

In 2007, he registered Beijing Sanzi Pinge Community Service Center Corporation, the first property management company owned and managed by owners in Beijing.

Guo Rongjie, an elderly resident who has lived in Pinge community since 2005, said: "We pay less but get better service now and residents are more responsible for our community."

Zhang Daling, a property owner of Yiran Jiayuan or Happy Homestead in Fengtai district said his community was not satisfied with its property management firm and hoped to copy the Pinge experiment.