Property managers (syndics): organising daytime phone reception for co-owners

Article 18 of the French law of 10 July 1965 on co-ownership, in the version in force since 11 April 2024, requires the professional syndic to offer secure online access to the digital documents relating to the management of the building or of the lots managed, unless the general meeting decides otherwise by the majority set out in article 25; this access is differentiated according to the nature of the documents. Service-public (the French official public information website) lists, among the syndic’s duties, the provision of a secure online portal.

This portal is specified by decree no. 2019-502 of 23 May 2019, which came into application on 1 July 2020 according to the Institut national de la consommation (INC, the French national consumer institute). It distinguishes the documents accessible to co-owners in general (the co-ownership rules, the summary sheet, the maintenance log, the current insurance and syndic contracts, the minutes of the last three general meetings and, where applicable, the works quotes approved at them), those specific to each co-owner (account statement, calls for service charges) and those reserved for the co-ownership council (conseil syndical).

Decree no. 2015-342 of 26 March 2015 introduced a standard syndic contract. According to the ANIL (the French national housing information agency), it distinguishes an annual flat fee, which pays for day-to-day management, from specific services drawn from an exhaustive list. According to the same source, the contract must state the working days and hours on which the syndic carries out its duties and the arrangements for in-person or telephone reception of co-owners.

In practice, each firm therefore sets its reception hours in its contract. What matters for managing the phone is to stick to them and to tell co-owners clearly, including on the answerphone and on the website, when and how they can reach the firm.

The recurring questions can be identified: how to log in to the online portal, where to find the latest minutes, when the next general meeting is being called, who to contact about a non-urgent claim, which manager follows the building, where a call for service charges stands. Some of these requests can be settled with a simple pointer, provided that reception has up-to-date information.

Requests that need an open file, such as a dispute over charges, a challenge to a decision or a specific quote, fall to the manager. They belong in a qualified message that gives the building, the lot, the subject and a call-back slot. This treatment applies to the working day; night-time emergencies follow a different logic, which is not the subject of this article.

The CNIL (France’s data protection authority) points out that the syndic cannot refuse to give a co-owner a document to which the law gives access by invoking the GDPR, but that it should favour consultation over handing over copies, in order to limit risks to privacy. It also specifies that passing the council the documents it asks for is a legal obligation which the syndic cannot avoid.

On the phone, caution is called for: you can explain where the documents are and how to access the secure portal, without reading aloud information about other co-owners. A request for an account statement is directed to the requester’s personal area rather than dictated aloud to someone whose identity has not been verified.

A useful co-owner message contains the caller’s name, the building and lot concerned, the nature of the request (portal access, charges, meeting, works, non-urgent claim), a call-back number and a time when they can be reached. With these elements, the manager prepares the answer and opens the right file before calling back, instead of asking identification questions at the start of the conversation.

This format also serves the co-ownership council, whose members sometimes call to follow a specific file. They have access to documents that other co-owners do not see, as the INC describes, and their requests deserve to be spotted as such.

A co-owner who reads the reception days and hours in the syndic contract, then reaches a silent answerphone during those hours, notices a gap. The greeting message, the firm’s website and the online portal do well to announce the same hours as those written in the contract, and to say whom to contact when reception is closed.

Announcing your hours is more useful than promising continuous availability. A greeting message that gives the hours of presence, the address of the online portal and the usual call-back time can defuse some of the repeat calls.

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