Set the OMC up right before the first unit sells.
The first budget, the apportionment, and the lease schedules are decided at design and sales stage — and the development lives with those decisions for decades. This service gets all three right from day one, then carries that straight into the selection of the first managing agent.
The first budget
A realistic year-one budget, line by line: insurance, utilities, cleaning, maintenance, management fee, sinking fund. An artificially low launch budget sells units — and then blows up at year two, with the developer's name attached. A credible one protects the scheme and your reputation.
The allocations
Apportionment percentages and unit weightings designed to match the actual unit mix — apartments, duplexes, houses, commercial — and built to stay fair across phases. Get this wrong at drafting stage and it's near-impossible to unwind once units are sold.
The lease schedules
Working alongside your solicitors so the schedules match the physical reality of the scheme — estate-wide, block-only, basement car park, commercial — and so the budget, the leases and the service-charge demands all tell the same story.
Then put it to work: appointing the first agent
The first managing agent shouldn't be whoever's nearest. The budget and schedule work feeds directly into a competitive Managing-Agent Tender Process — so the appointment is benchmarked, documented, and defensible when the OMC is handed over to its owner-elected board.