Who is the real owner of apartment houses?

Do you use electricity, water and do you like to return home after long rainy day? Most of the people in the world live in apartments or private houses and use these resources. During the years the property deteriorates and the necessity is to take care of and fix them regularly but in order not to have worries, you have to choose professionals who can do that.

We want to introduce you with our new Latvian enterpreneur of the house management field – GatisBīlands, the interview about house management industry and his daily routine in enterprise ‘NamuAttīstība’.

Could you tell a little bit about the origin of your entrepreneurship? How did you get the idea about “Namu Attīstība” Ltd.?

We came to ‘Namu Attīstība’ gradually. Before that together with colleagues Osvalds and Mārtiņš we had tried our forces in several business directions. Of course, there were projects which succeeded and which not. But it was an excellent school of life what taught keystones of the business. Previously carrying out different business ideas, we came to ‘Namu Attīstība.’ Working for a while in this field, I came to conclusions that this is what I am interested in the most. Since then,already 3 years, I am aware of this business keeping learning and developing persistently.

Why did you get involved in the field when there is so high competition nowadays?

I don’t consider that the competition in Riga is enormous, however I have to add that it is very difficult to capture market share. Due to unfair house management, people have lost their belief in house management, especially for those who are new one’s.In order to receive possibility to prove yourself, you have to get a huge credit of trust and you have to justify it. This is the greatest vicious circle which you have to interrupt. Unless you prove youself, you haven’t been given the second chance. The second factor why someone rarely chose to work in this field is the specifics because it is quite narrow field but still the amount of knowledge of the field is huge. In my opinion, in this business as well as in others there are two components – knowledge or experience and success. But more knowledge you have, less fortune you need.

Howdoyouestimate legislation about house management field or, in your opinion, is it in order?

In this field legislation is in order only partialy and unfortunately it doesn’t give ambiguous answers to many important questions as well as sometimes legislation doesn’t explain mutual relationships of involved parties, but I believe that it is matter of time. I have to mention the fact that since retrieval of independence there weren’t  methodology, judicial or legal practice which we could use as a background.

A huge contribution in arrangement of  this field was from ‘Residental housing management law’, became valid in 2010, and ‘Residental property law’, which became valid in 2011. There are determined main guidelines but they are not sufficient because there are questions where you have to look broader, using Civil law, Regulations of Cabinet of Ministers, etc.

What are the main duties of house management?

I consider that the main duty of the house management is to be accurate owner who takes care about a foreign property the same as about his.

Are there often problems with forehanded payments of invoices? How do you deal with such problems?

The discipline of the payments is very essential questions which influence a lot the flow of money and availability of money.There are properties, which I personally know, which have an excellent disciple of the payments and there are no debtors for several years. On average there are 5 % of the debtors, in the worst cases up to 10 % from the whole house. In the beginning our enterprise usually tries to contact and understand the causes of the debt because it has been proved that there are different reasons but mostly they aren’t evil-minded and solution can be found agreeing mutually. In case it is impossible to agree and it doesn’t help, the only way is litigation.

Is it possible to regain unpaid bills in litigation?

Work with debtors is an inanlienable part of everyday life which is included in the duties. In litigation, of course, it is likely to regain both your and other owners’ means though it can be influenced by many factors and in reality the whole amount can be regain partially or not at all. Personally I think that the litigation should be used as utmost.

Have you had some interesting, non-standard cases in your practice?

In this field of the business there are often non-standard cases which happen so frequently that they become routine. But you have to be ready to solve non-standard situations. As an example I could metion the first year when ‘Namu Attīstība’ had recently started to work. It was a hard year for a new entrepreneur because we weren’t so experienced as at the moment.

Then the moment had come when we had so much work that we couldn’t deal with work with existing resources. Then we woke up early in the morning and helped our employees who worked hard from early morning untill late evening, mowing grass, cleaning premises and doing other jobs. In addition, if we have to meet unpredicted situations now, we aren’t afraid of hard work and take part in management work. For us as the entrepreneurs the quality is very significant and it is essential that ourclientsaresatisfied.