Building strategies on your terms.

Property management is mostly unglamorous work performed correctly over long periods, and its quality shows up in the accounts about four years later.

For residential holdings this means tenant selection and relations, rent adjustments tracked against the reference interest rate rather than left to drift, service charge accounts that reconcile, and the handling of departures without the ritual argument about the state of the parquet. For PPE holdings it means attending the assemblies, reading the administrator's budget before the meeting rather than during it, and voting your interest on renovation votes that will bind you for a decade.

Across everything we run a planned maintenance programme, because the alternative is an unplanned one. Contractors are tendered and supervised, insurance is reviewed rather than renewed by default, and cantonal obligations on building energy performance are dealt with before they become deadlines.

You get one person who knows the portfolio and answers the telephone. The rest of the machinery stays out of your view.

Manus Management services

• Tenant selection and referencing, at a depth proportionate to the property
• Lease administration, with rent adjustments tracked against the reference interest rate rather than left to drift
• A forward lease event diary, so break options and expiries are acted on well before they arrive
• Rent collection and arrears escalation, handled before the matter becomes a legal one
• Service charge budgets prepared annually and reconciled in a form a tenant can check
• Planned preventative maintenance programmes across every holding
• Out-of-hours response, coordinated by someone who already knows the building
• Contractor tendering, appointment and site supervision, with the tender documents shared with you
• Entry inventories, exit condition reports and the negotiation of dilapidations on your behalf
• PPE assembly attendance, with voting positions agreed with you in advance of the meeting
• Insurance placement, annual review and claims handling from first notification to settlement
• Cantonal compliance obligations, covering fire safety, lift certification, energy performance and building notifications
• Utility and supplier contract review, retendered rather than rolled over
• Oversight of vacant property, including seasonal checks on second homes and estates
• Household staff coordination where a private residence employs its own

This is the part of the work that changes numbers.

The annual asset plan.

Every significant holding gets a written plan each year. This blueprint contains everything; current income against what the building ought to produce, condition, lease expiries mapped forward, capital required and our recommendation. We walk through each property before writing about it. The plans are short, and the argument in them is the point.

Repositioning.

A building's current use is frequently an accident of what somebody needed in 1987. Manus Management identifies these purpose redundancies, models the alternatives honestly and manages the transformation from feasibility through to the letting of the finished space. In Geneva that means knowing exactly what LDTR consent will permit before an architect is instructed, rather than discovering it afterwards, and being realistic with the client about the rent that can be charged once the works are done. For international assets, we consult with local advisers to determine the optimal solution.

Capital works.

Where a plan requires spending, we direct the programme and report against the budget monthly. We have stopped projects mid-design when the numbers stopped working. It is easier than stopping them mid-build.

Hold, refinance or sell.

Every year, on every asset, we say which of these we think it should be. Sentiment about a building is legitimate and we do not argue with it, but the owner should at least know what the sentiment is costing.

Manus Management services

• A written asset plan for every significant holding, refreshed annually
• Physical inspection of each property before that plan is drafted
• Income analysis against achievable market rent
• Lease restructuring and regear negotiation ahead of expiry
• Vacancy strategy, letting campaigns and agent selection
• Feasibility studies on change of use, subdivision or reconfiguration
• The LDTR and permit position established before an architect is instructed
• Appointment and management of the design team, with the brief written by us and approved by you
• Specification, tender and contract administration for capital works
• Monthly reporting against the works budget, including the variances nobody wants to raise
• Energy retrofit planning mapped to cantonal deadlines rather than to sentiment
• Appraisal of unused plot ratio and development potential within existing holdings
• Benchmarking of each asset against comparable stock in the same market
• An annual hold, refinance or dispose recommendation on every property, with our reasoning attached

Property wealth is usually reported by whoever happens to hold each piece of it, in whatever format they prefer, at whatever time of year suits them. The owner ends up with eight documents and no picture.

Manus Management consolidates. Holdings, entities and currencies come into a single reporting pack containing income, expenditure, debt position, capital committed and how each of those compares to what we said would happen. Budgets are set annually and monitored monthly. Cash is managed so that a large works programme does not arrive at the same moment as a tax instalment and an amortisation payment.

We coordinate with your bankers, fiduciaries, notaries and tax advisers, and we do the chasing. Where a family holds property through several structures across borders, we keep the paperwork in a state where any of those advisers can be brought up to date in a single afternoon.

The pack is written in plain language. Anyone in the family should be able to open it and understand how the year has gone.

Manus Management services

• Consolidated reporting across properties, entities, ownership structures and currencies
• Annual budgets set per asset and at portfolio level
• Monthly reporting against budget, with variances explained
• Cash-flow forecasting that anticipates works programmes alongside tax instalments and amortisation
• Debt monitoring, covering maturities, amortisation schedules, covenant headroom and fixing decisions
• Refinancing preparation and lender liaison
• Rental income collection, banking and treasury oversight
• Expenditure authorisation controls, with approval thresholds agreed with you
• Preparation of annual accounts in conjunction with your fiduciary
• Assembly of the annual data pack for cantonal and foreign tax filings
• Coordination with bankers, notaries, lawyers and tax advisers, including the chasing
• Capital account tracking by entity or by family member where holdings are shared
• Audit and inspection support
• Records maintained to a standard that allows the next generation to take them over without us

Wealth attracts deal flow. Most of it is not worth the hour it takes to read.

Manus Management advises on acquisitions from first look through to completion. This comprises sourcing, including off-market situations that come through people we have known for years, alongside valuation work, technical and legal due diligence run with our own advisers, and negotiation. For non-Swiss buyers, the Lex Koller position is established at the outset rather than assumed, which has saved more than one client a great deal of wasted expense.

On disposals we prepare properly. A building with a resolved lease position, a settled dispute and a full technical file sells for meaningfully more than the same building sold in a hurry, and the preparation is often a twelve-month exercise. We run it, and we run the sale process itself quietly, approaching a defined list of buyers rather than advertising a family's affairs to the market.

We are also willing to tell you that the answer is to do nothing at all. We say it fairly often.

Manus Management services

• An acquisition brief agreed in writing before any search begins
• Off-market sourcing through relationships built over many years
• The Lex Koller position established at the outset for non-Swiss buyers
• Underwriting and valuation analysis on every opportunity taken seriously
• Technical and structural due diligence run by advisers we appoint and instruct
• Legal, title and servitude due diligence coordinated with your notary
• Offer strategy and negotiation, conducted without disclosing more about you than necessary
• Management of the notarial process to completion
• Debt sourcing and negotiation of terms across Swiss and international lenders
• Structuring input alongside your existing tax and legal advisers
• Portfolio review across concentration, currency exposure, liquidity horizon and debt profile
• Disposal preparation, including lease resolution and settlement of outstanding disputes
• Targeted sale processes run to a defined buyer list rather than to the open market
• Transition of newly acquired assets into full management, with no gap in oversight