The contract, not the brochure
The Veridia Standard
You should not have to trust your administrator. You should be able to check. This is what we commit to, by when, and what you do to verify it.
Almost everything a managing agent advertises is a claim about itself. That it is approachable, that it is transparent, that you will have access to the accounts. You cannot check any of it until you are a year into the contract, and by then changing costs you another year.
This document is written the other way round. Every line says what we commit to do, by when, and what you have to do to check that we did it. If a check fails, you will see it before we do. That is the point.
Why we do not say we are transparent. Because everyone says it, including whoever runs your community today, and the word has stopped meaning anything. A claim nobody can disprove is not a guarantee. It is advertising. We would rather give you a list of things you can try to check this week.
The five areas
Running a community breaks down into five. Each one has its commitments, its deadlines and its checks.
- The money. Where it is, what it went on, and who approved it.
- Problems and repairs. What stage yours is at and who has the next action.
- Works and special levies. What has been collected, paid and built.
- Running the community. What was decided, who does it and by when.
- Suppliers. What they signed and what they have actually done.
The money
What really upsets an owner is not how much something cost. It is who decided it, and when. So every payment comes with its full chain, right back to the decision that approved it.
| What we commit to | Deadline | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| The accounts are checked against the bank statement, and every difference is explained. | Every month, closed on the 10th | The president downloads the statement with their own login and compares the balance. |
| Every payment comes with its invoice, its supplier, its budget line and the decision that approved it. | In that month's report | Pick any ten payments from the statement and ask us for all four documents for each. |
| Budget against real spending, with a written explanation of every difference. | Every month | Compare the difference column against the budget the meeting approved. |
| A list of every live contract, with the date notice must be given. | First 30 days | Take any regular payment from the statement and find its contract on the list. |
| Three comparable quotes on the same written brief before any major renewal. | Before signing | Ask for the comparison table from the last contract over 3,000 euros. |
Problems and repairs
A repair cannot just stop at «we have passed it to the insurer». You have a right to know what stage yours is at, who has the next action, and by when.
| What we commit to | Deadline | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| You get an immediate acknowledgement and a first reply from a person, not from a machine. | 1 working day | Look at the time of your message and the time of our reply. |
| Every problem gets a named owner, a stage, and a next action with a date. | 2 working days, updated weekly | Ask about yours. We should tell you the stage, who has it, and by when. |
| One person owns the case. If an insurer, a contractor and the community are all involved, we coordinate them. | While the case is open | You should not be chasing three companies. If you are, we are failing. |
| Photographs carry the date and the place, and we keep them after the case closes. | From the first report | Ask for the history of something that was closed six months ago. |
Works and special levies
This is the exact moment people stop trusting an administrator: you pay a large extra amount, the money goes into a contractor, and for months you see nothing. While a levy is running, its state takes a full page of the monthly report.
| What we commit to | Deadline | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| Collected, paid and outstanding, in euros, with the contractor named. | Every month while the work lasts | Add up the payments on the statement for the work and compare them with the report. |
| Progress, the next milestone with its date, and the running difference in euros. | Every month | Compare last month's announced milestone against what this month's report says. |
| Under the figures: the quotes compared, the contract, the invoices, dated photographs and the minutes that approved the work. | Always available | Open the minutes and check that the approved amount matches the contract. |
| No repair closes a defect until the community's own surveyor confirms it. | Until closure | Ask for the surveyor's written confirmation before you accept a closure. |
Running the community
A president is not afraid of losing a vote. They are afraid of committing the community to something without knowing it needed a meeting, and being left personally exposed.
| What we commit to | Deadline | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| The president can ask us anything before committing the community, free and without limit. | Written answer in 1 working day | Ask before you request a quote. We will tell you what majority it needs and what has to happen first. |
| Notice of the meeting 15 days ahead, in both languages. The law asks for 6. | 15 days before | Look at the date of the notice email and the date of the meeting. |
| A voting sheet explaining each point, the majority it needs and what abstaining does. | With the notice | Read it before you give someone your proxy. If a point is unclear, we have not done our job. |
| Minutes and a summary in both languages, saying what each owner now has to do. | 7 days | Count the days between the meeting and the email with the minutes. |
| A register of decisions with an owner and a date, carried from one meeting to the next. | Always available | Ask for the register and see which decisions from a year ago are still not done. |
Suppliers
You do not judge a supplier on how you feel about them. You judge them on what they signed and on what can be checked, which is also the only version that holds up if anyone disputes it.
| What we commit to | Deadline | How you check it |
|---|---|---|
| A sheet for each supplier: what they do, how often, at what times, who is responsible and at what price. | From the first month | Ask for the gardening sheet and compare it with what you see outside. |
| A signed worksheet for every visit, which the president can see at any time. | Every visit | Pick any week and ask for that week's worksheets. |
| Suppliers are rated on facts, not opinions: deadlines met, average response time, jobs reopened. | Twice a year, with the president | The figures come from the worksheets and the repair log. You can work them out yourself. |
| A diary of notice dates, so no contract renews itself because everyone forgot. | Always available | Ask for the diary and check the next notice date. |
How this reaches you today, in plain words
All of the above arrives in a monthly report, closed on the 10th, and in a permanent document store, in English and in Spanish.
There is no live online dashboard yet. There will be when the number of communities justifies it. Until then we would rather tell you than show you a sample screen from somebody else's community.
We say it because it is exactly the kind of thing this page invites you to check. If we published a dashboard that did not exist, the first check you tried would catch us.
Two things you will not see, and why
Who owes what. The president sees unpaid fees flat by flat, because the job requires it. Owners see the total. We do not publish who owes what in any general document. The community can know who its debtors are for the purposes of a meeting, but that is not the same as a permanently open list.
A score out of ten for each supplier. An opinion about a named company is a complaint waiting to happen. We publish facts you can check: deadlines met, average response time, jobs reopened. If anyone disputes the rating, the facts stand on their own.
What happens when we fail
Some of it will fail. A commitment with a deadline and a check also records the misses, and that trade is what makes the rest believable.
When we miss a commitment, it appears in that month's report, explained in writing, without you having to chase it, and the meeting decides. We do not wait for someone to notice at the next meeting.
One distinction worth keeping. We commit to response times, not to repair times. How long a leak takes to fix depends on the contractor, the insurer and sometimes the court. How long we take to reply, to put a name on it and to tell you where it stands depends only on us, and that is what we answer for.
What Veridia does not guarantee
- We do not guarantee that a developer or builder will repair anything. We guarantee the claim is made in time, in writing, with proof of delivery.
- We do not guarantee the outcome of any vote. The general meeting decides, and sometimes it decides against our advice.
- We do not guarantee that a legal deadline survives if the information reaches us too late.
- We do not audit accounts. We reconcile bank statements, which is a different thing, and we call it by its name.
- We give no tax advice and no legal representation. We work with lawyers and surveyors billed directly to the community, with no margin for us.
The checks, on one page
If you are comparing agents, take this list to every candidate, including the one you have now. The questions work for anybody.