How to choose a managing agent
There is currently no mandatory qualification to be a residential managing agent in England. Anyone can set up tomorrow and take on your building’s money. That is the single most important thing to understand before you start comparing quotes, and it is why the questions below are worth asking properly.
What the law already requires
Two things are compulsory, and an agent who fails either should be ruled out immediately.
Redress scheme membership. Since October 2014, anyone carrying out property management work in England must belong to a government-approved redress scheme — in practice The Property Ombudsman or the Property Redress Scheme. Membership means a leaseholder who cannot resolve a complaint has somewhere independent to take it. Part 6 of the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 extends the same requirement to freeholders who manage buildings themselves.
Client money held properly. Service charge and reserve funds are held in trust under section 42 of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1987. They belong to the leaseholders collectively, not to the agent and not to the landlord. Ask which bank the money sits in, whether the accounts are designated to your building, and what happens to it if the agent goes under.
What is voluntary — and why it still matters
Everything beyond those two is a choice the firm has made.
The RICS Service Charge Residential Management Code, now in its fourth edition (published 17 March 2026), is approved by the Secretary of State under section 87 of the Leasehold Reform, Housing and Urban Development Act 1993. That approval has teeth: a tribunal may take a failure to follow the Code into account when deciding whether a charge was reasonable. An agent regulated by RICS is bound by it and audited against it. An agent who is not can still choose to follow it — ask whether they do, and what happens if they do not.
Membership of The Property Institute is the other common marker. Be precise when you ask: an individual employee holding TPI membership is not the same as the firm being a TPI member firm, and the two are often blurred in marketing.
Where regulation is heading
Worth knowing, because you will see it referred to as though it has already happened. The Regulation of Property Agents working group reported in 2019 recommending a licensing regime and mandatory qualifications. It has never been implemented. The current approach is narrower — mandatory qualifications overseen by designated professional bodies — and in May 2026 the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee rejected even that in pre-legislative scrutiny, calling instead for an independent regulator with power to fine and to revoke licences. The Housing Minister has said this is not the final step.
So the honest position today is that the sector is unregulated at entry, reform is coming but unsettled, and in the meantime the burden of checking sits with you.
The questions that actually separate firms
Most tender questions get the same answer from everyone. These do not.
How many buildings does each property manager look after? This is the number that predicts everything else. A manager carrying sixty buildings cannot visit yours, and unvisited buildings are where compliance actions go unfunded.
Show me a real service charge budget and a set of year-end accounts — anonymised, from a building like ours. You learn more from one set of accounts than from any brochure.
What is your fee, per unit, and what is charged separately? A management fee that looks low next to an unpublished schedule of extras is not low.
When did you last have a section 20 consultation challenged, and what happened? An agent who says never has either not done many or is not telling you.
How do you handle the fire risk assessment action list? Commissioning the assessment is easy. Funding and closing the actions is the job.
Who answers the phone at 2am, and are they your staff?
What insurance commission do you or any associate receive, in cash terms? They are already obliged to disclose this — see our guide to buildings insurance commissions.
If you have a recognised tenants’ association
You have a statutory foothold most leaseholders do not. Under section 30B of the Landlord and Tenant Act 1985, a recognised tenants’ association can require the landlord to consult it before appointing a managing agent — including being told the proposed agent’s name and the obligations they will discharge, with at least a month to comment, and a fresh notice at least every five years.
Before you sign
Read the management agreement, not the proposal. Check the initial term, the notice period, and whether it renews automatically. Note that a contract running more than twelve months may itself be a qualifying long-term agreement, in which case appointing the agent can require section 20 consultation if any leaseholder would pay more than £100 a year under it.
Ask us about your building
We will tell you honestly whether changing agent is likely to help. Sometimes it is not — sometimes the existing agent is being asked to do a job the budget does not fund, and moving will not fix that. If you are ready to compare, our fee schedule is published in full and our guide to changing managing agent sets out how a handover should run.