Managing agent change leads

Cities with a housing-maintenance code require owners of multi-unit buildings to register annually and to name a managing agent, the company or person responsible for the building day to day. The registration is public, and so is every change to it: a new agent, a lapsed registration, a first-time registration on a new building.

The record carries the building, the registered owner, the managing agent with a business address, and the registration dates. Where an agent manages a portfolio, one change can touch every building on it at once.

The registry names the agent company, not the person there who awards contracts. Matching the agent to its portfolio, then to the property manager or director of operations who signs vendor agreements, turns the change into a lead.

• NYC HPD registrations. Owner and managing-agent contacts for every registered multiple dwelling, on NYC Open Data, refreshed as registrations change.
• City rental registries. Seattle RRIO, Washington DC basic business licences with a registered agent, and other rental-registration programmes that name a manager.
• State licensing boards. Community-association and property-management licences in states such as Florida and Nevada, which name the managing firm.

The first sixty days of a takeover. A new managing agent audits the contracts it inherited, replaces the vendors it does not know, and sets up its own maintenance programme. Reach the agent in the month the registration changes; a year later the vendor list is settled again.