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The core business of Bluegrass is the management of community schemes, in the sectional title and HOA space. We manage a wide range of community schemes, ranging from a 2-unit commercial sectional title scheme to a 131-unit residential sectional title scheme. Our portfolio also includes a 108-unit commercial office park and a 111-unit HOA. We have approximately 50 schemes, predominantly situated in the north-western suburbs of Johannesburg under management. Our business has been in existence since 2007 and has been in the managing agency space since inception. We believe that being a smaller business enables us to adjust our services to meet the requirements of the client, instead of the client having to fit into a rigid managing agency business model. We truly believe that we are “Small enough to care, big enough to matter”! We offer our clients a complete management solution unique to the requirements of the community scheme. Our ability to understand the needs of the homeowners as well as the scheme executives (the language used in the Community Schemes Ombud Service Act) of Bodies Corporate and Homeowners Associations alike, go a long way towards ensuring that community living is as trouble-free as possible. We believe that we have the people, the skills, the experience, the support of a panel of reliable service providers and the technology to make a positive contribution to your scheme. We consistently embrace the many technological enhancements that are available in the community scheme management industry. This embrace has its roots in the understanding that scheme executives often have business and family obligations that compete for their time. To this end we use a cloud-based issues management system that enables the teams we work with to approve quotes, invoices, access and even pets with ease. Our accounting system portal can be opened to scheme executives who (with certain constraints) are able to view the accounting in real time. This system also permits owners to download their own statements if they need to. It also serves as a store for conduct rules, minutes of meeting and forms. Each owner that lands on the landing page of the scheme can see the key indicators – debtors and bank balances. Scheme executives can click their way through to individual accounting entries where, in the case of expenses, the supplier invoice is embedded in the transaction. Our preferred methodology, regarding banking, is that each community scheme has their own banking accounts with a financial institution of their choice. We are very flexible in respect of cooperative (with scheme executives) double handed release of funds from scheme bank accounts. The Bluegrass team has, very deliberately, surrounded themselves with a wide range of service providers that can attend to the needs of the community schemes we manage. These service providers include several emerging black entrepreneurs who, with our help, are making the transition from being employed to becoming a business owner. We, more deliberately, do not have our own maintenance teams of act as intermediaries for the service providers. Our management software enables us to send the same specification to prospective service providers at the same time. Our debt management process uses the services of the Community Schemes Ombud Service. We find this to be effective and far more flexible and affordable than conventional lawyers. We believe that our fees are competitive in the industry. Our fee philosophy recognises that “free” annual general, and trustees’ meetings are calculated into the price of the monthly fee. We, in the deliberations about the cost of services, offer scheme executives a basket of fees from which to pick what is needed for their scheme. In recognition of the dynamics of scheme executive changes at annual general meetings we offer a yearly revision of the basket of services to suit the needs of the new board of trustees. What this means is that if there is no need for us to attend the scheme executive meeting there is no cost to the community scheme.
