Do you actually need a managing agent?

Almost everyone who ends up running their own building started by asking one nervous question: can we really do this ourselves, or do we need the professionals?

It’s the right question, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a sales pitch. So here’s a straight look at what a managing agent actually does, which parts of the job a resident company can realistically take on, and why the sums increasingly point towards self-management for smaller blocks.

We’ll be even-handed about this. Managing agents do real work, and self-management isn’t the right answer for every building. But the picture has shifted, and it’s worth understanding why.

What a managing agent actually does

Strip away the jargon and an agent’s job falls into a handful of areas.

Money. Setting the annual service charge budget, issuing demands, collecting payments, chasing arrears, and producing year-end service charge accounts.

Maintenance. Arranging repairs, organising cyclical work like decorating, getting quotes, appointing and supervising contractors, and handling day-to-day problems when something breaks.

Compliance. Keeping the building on the right side of its legal duties: fire risk assessments, health and safety, insurance, and the growing stack of building-safety obligations.

Administration. Company filings at Companies House, insurance renewals, keeping records, dealing with leaseholder queries, and running meetings.

A buffer. Less tangible, but real. The agent sits between neighbours and the awkward conversations. When someone hasn’t paid or objects to a bill, it’s the agent that chases, not the person in flat 3.

None of this is mysterious, and most of it isn’t difficult. But it is relentless. It doesn’t stop, and some of it carries real consequences if it’s missed. That’s what you’re paying for: not genius, but consistency, and someone to hold the responsibility.

What you can realistically take on yourself

Here’s the honest split. Some of the agent’s job is genuinely easy to bring in-house. Some is harder, and worth thinking twice about, or buying in piecemeal.

Straightforward to take on:

• Collecting service charges and keeping the money transparent, especially with a system that shows everyone what’s been paid and spent.
• Keeping records (leases, certificates, insurance, minutes) organised and reachable.
• Routine communication and decisions among residents.
• Companies House filings, which are more routine than they sound once you know the dates.
• Getting quotes and choosing contractors for ordinary repairs.

Worth buying in, or approaching carefully:

• The fire risk assessment and building-safety duties. You don’t do these yourself, you appoint a competent professional, and you must get this right.
• Complex or major works, particularly anything triggering the formal Section 20 consultation process.
• Difficult arrears that end up heading toward the tribunal.
• Year-end service charge accounts, if your leases require a certified set. An accountant is often worth the modest fee.

The pattern is clear. The day-to-day running of a building is very much within reach of organised residents. The specialist pieces (safety, big projects, formal disputes) are where you buy expertise in, whether or not you have an agent for everything else. You don’t have to choose between “full agent” and “entirely alone.” Many self-managing buildings do the routine themselves and pay a professional for the few things that genuinely need one. Our guide to the first 90 days of running your building walks through the routine parts in order.

Why small blocks increasingly go it alone

Here’s the shift worth knowing about, especially if your building is small, say under ten or fifteen flats.

The annual job of running a building is broadly the same whether you have five flats or fifty: the same compliance checklist, the same filings, the same insurance. But an agent managing fifty flats spreads that work across fifty service charge contributions, while an agent managing five spreads it across five. The maths doesn’t work as well for the small block, so either the per-flat fee is high, or the agent would rather not take it on at all.

And that’s exactly what’s happening. Agents themselves report that the options for small blocks are in sharp decline. Not because agents are unkind, but because the compliance burden has grown steadily (the Fire Safety Act 2021, the Building Safety Act 2022 and the Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024 have all added to the annual checklist) while the economies of scale that make a small block worth managing simply aren’t there.

For a small building, then, self-management isn’t only a way to save money. It’s increasingly the practical option, because the professional market is quietly stepping back from blocks your size.

There’s a genuine upside beyond cost. In a small block, everyone knows each other, decisions can be made quickly, and residents often get better value and more attentive care running things themselves than they’d get as a low-priority client on an agent’s large book.

The honest counterpoint

It would be a poor guide that only made one case, so here’s the other side.

Small blocks aren’t automatically easier to run. When there are only a handful of flats, one person’s unpaid bill or one objection to a quote lands harder. The disputes feel personal, because they are. Neighbours managing neighbours can find disagreements awkward in a way a distant agent never does. That’s real, and it’s the single biggest reason small-block self-management sometimes struggles.

But it’s a reason to be organised, not a reason to pay someone else. The awkwardness comes from money and decisions being murky: who owes what, who agreed to which spend, where the money went. When all of that is transparent and on the record, the heat goes out of it. Nobody’s chasing anybody in a personal capacity. The system holds the facts, and everyone can see them. If you want the practical version of that — how to head off disagreements early, and what to do on the rare occasions you can’t — we’ve written separately on resolving disputes with your neighbours.

So, do you need one?

If your building is large, complex, or has significant building-safety obligations, a good managing agent earns their fee, and there’s no shame in valuing that.

But if you’re a smaller block, the kind agents are increasingly reluctant to take, at fees that increasingly don’t make sense, the honest answer is that you can very probably run it yourselves. Not because it’s trivial, but because the routine parts are well within reach, the specialist parts can be bought in as needed, and the thing that makes small-block self-management hard, the personal awkwardness of money between neighbours, is exactly the thing a transparent, shared system is built to take away.

That’s the whole idea behind SavvyPlace: to give a resident-run building one place to collect service charges openly, keep records straight, stay on top of the dates that matter, and make decisions everyone can see. It doesn’t replace the professionals you genuinely need, and it never touches your money. It just makes the parts you can do yourselves calm, transparent, and a great deal easier than they sound.