2012 certainly is a very different & exciting year for the team White Mountain. In the first 3 weeks of the year, we are adding an incredible 21% more properties to manage. If the trend continues, we will be looking for more staff to join the existing team of dependable, committed Property Managers, Negotiators & Rental Advisors.
Its been a slog getting to this point, to the point where people chose to talk about our service & come to us from word of mouth. Starting with nothing but an idea, passion & a strong committment to serve our clients, White Mountain Property is now one of the more trusted Property Management & Real Estate companies in operation in Romania.
Kieran Dundon, a client I met over twitter first of all, himself manager of a successful IT business in Romania & property owner described us thus “Meeting White Mountain Property was like finding a gold nugget, it’s rare now to find someone so trustworthy and as keen to get you the value for money.” Kieran D (Dublin). We practice that ethic on every task, for every cleint. This is why people say we are their favourite Property managers & Real Estate resource for their property investment.
When we began, we didn’t even have example-setting competitors to model ourself from, in the market in which we operate. There were pleny of ‘show’ companies hung over from the rich profits era of 2005-2008, where money was to be made by overcharging foreign investors with hyped up projects & I despise all that were part of that. Some clients were locked in to mediocre PM & Rental agents or companies, tied to unsuitable & expensive furnitire packs, bound to expensive propfessional or legal service providers for help that is often always required to buy the property. Those clients are still picking up the pieces. I have at least 7 clients who were Royally stitched up with wrong advice by putting their property & land into a company, costing several thousand Euros in unecessary asset tax each year, having a redundant accountant to keep the ‘company alive’ & some risk paying TVA on the sale of their property, which is a lot higher than it would have been had they paid TVA on the purchase price, not least because it has risen from 19% to 24% int he past few years.
Many of the people I have worked with that bought through some of the British intermidiaries were at best, stung. Only by cutting lose did they finally stand some chance of putting their fragile investment onto a positive footing.
I have seen everything from unachievable yield promises to Sales Agencies uisng dileberately misleading names or site descriptions. Example, stating an apartement block (that was in fact built in Voluntari – North Bucharest, a run down, high unempoyment, working class district) was in the expensive, exclusinve Pipera, even including Pipera in its title which is nothing short of misselling. You can’t call a property in London, ‘London Heights Fulham’ when it’s in East Ham, but here, that is exactly what happed simply because it is located 3km from Pipera.
Another example is Forest View in Mihailesti, which infact has no view other than grey baron flat wilderness, but the brochure used a picture of stunning Poiana Brasov, 230km away! Can you imagine a Milton Keynes (UK) developer using pictures of Lake Windermere in his sales brochure for a site along side H7 called ‘The Sails’? or of a Reading tower block being names ‘Mountain Heights’ & using Snowdonian shots in the brochure? Yet in romania, all that was the norm a few years ago. Shocking.
Many agents claim to perform Property Management but when the tenant becomes problematic, the washing machine fails, or the boiler fails on Christmas Eve, thats when you seperate the wheat from the chaff. All the excuses on earth but few solutions. Foreign owners of romanian property feel trapped because they feel they don’t have another option. Show me genuine testimonials for a PM company & I will eat my words, but I haven’t seen to many. I even know of big, established agents in brasov who actively advertise in Brasov that they manage property, coming out top of a google search & yet they have not a single property in their portfolio, & it takes years of expereince to learn the ropes. Even just obtaining tenant references is a professional process almost no one in Romania follows, yet it is essential.
For those that would like a confindential, no obligation review of how we can help, just drop me a line personally.
We have added to our portfolio this month:
- Property Management in Brasov civic centre
- Property Management in Bran/ Rasnov/ Cristian
- Property Management in Pipera & Voluntari
- Property Management in Predeal/ Poiana Brasov
- Property Management in Constanta/ Mamaia
- Property Mangement in CityLights Pipera, Bucharest
Please feel free to contact us to see how we can help you.
