Mainstay - good or bad ?

propertyboss

Am choosing new managing agents and am being steered towards Mainstay - anyone got anything good or bad to say about them ? Am not so interested in their people on the ground, as these can come and go, am more interested in their ability to deliver good customer service, be transparent and excellent management.

tim123456789

a quick google gives you this:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/1007571

Having said that, it is the only advers comment

google the names of some of the competitors and you get 100s

propertyman

propertyboss wrote: »

Am choosing new managing agents and am being steered towards Mainstay - anyone got anything good or bad to say about them ? Am not so interested in their people on the ground, as these can come and go, am more interested in their ability to deliver good customer service, be transparent and excellent management.

I would suggest that you haven't really understood as two important factors in ( the nebulous waffly )

"good customer service, be transparent and excellent management"

are a low turnover in staff AND understanding that the quality of the PM service is highly reliant on the quality of the PM.

Irrespective of systems and processes it is overall a people centric and not issue/process driven business.

RupertTheCat

Mainstay manage a property I own in Birmingham. The service charges are horrendous though that is partly down to the location, but they still hike them up quite substantially every year.

I have several properties all with different management companies. Mainstay are one of my least favorite - they aren't quick to respond when there is a problem with the property.

What annoys me most about Mainstay however is that I pay my service charge monthly. And they insist on it being done through a credit agency for which I have to pay interest which costs me about an extra £15 a month. No other management company I deal with does this, they are all very happy for me to pay monthly and don't charge me any interest at all. Plus Mainstay's billing system is bewildering to say the least - their service demands (I love that word "demands") lack detail.

So I have no liking for Mainstay at all. But most management companies I deal with cause me to roll my eyes fairly often, so I'm not sure there are any very good ones.

welshberk

we have just sacked mainstay from our site in Cardiff. They did have a good foothold on many developments. Over time, the truth became obvious that they were not a caring professional group as they make out. They have no interest in your property, your maintenance or your investment. They are just there to bleed money from you. Mainstay have no developments in Cardiff at all now. They have bits and pieces in fringe areas of southwales but word has spread like wildfire throughout the country.
There was a popular group on facebook called "mainstay sucks" and the stories being posted were similar throughout the UK. They also had bad reviews on Reviewcentre.com, which had an incredible amount of bad entries. Both pages have been taken down but yet someone somewhere has re-created both pages to start again.
I have had personal bad experience of mainstay. Do not listen to the sales pitch by them. Take recommendations by word and mouth only.
Feel free to contact me and i can try and put you in touch with other people who have replaced mainstay. Depending in what area your in of course. I have leads in other parts of the UK.

Birmingham_Landlord

We have a number of flats which we let in Birmingham. Recently the one of the freeholders transferred the management agency of two of them to Mainstay and our experience has been appalling. They are the most error prone and difficult agent we have dealt with in 15 years. They claim they have not received letters; even when they have cashed the attached cheques! They try to charge additional costs for delay when they have sent letters to the wrong address; claim that previous letters advising the correct address have not been received and try very hard to browbeat people into paying incorrect claims. The leaseholders at one of the developments were collectively so frustrated that they formed a residents and owners committee and successfully used the Right to Manage legislation to transfer management to a far superior company. The short term improvements on site have been quickly apparent and for the longer term the new agents are now preparing sensible plans for maintenance and upgrades for the next 5 to 10 years.