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m9.concerned.owners@gmail.com

Please specify in your email your Marinella unit’s number (e.g. T2-2B), as well as your social media contact details (if available).

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The DMC Manager is Teamer Property Management Company (“Teamer”), a subsidiary company in the K. Wah Group. Teamer has delegated the property management of Marinella to Chissay (Property Management) Limited (“Chissay”), another subsidiary company in the K. Wah Group. In turn, Chissay has entered into a contract with Jones Lang LaSalle Management Services Ltd. (“JLL” or “management subcontractor”) to subcontract the property management of Marinella to JLL. The net result is that day-to-day management of Marinella falls into the hands of parties with whom the Owners have no direct contractual relationship. Teamer has consistently refused to disclose the subcontract between Chissay and JLL (see here), rendering it impossible for the Owners to hold the management subcontractor accountable for longstanding property management problems, such as routine cleaning services, ground level traffic control, and swimming pool management etc.

JLL refused to provide contact information of Owners to the OC – all communication from the OC to the Owners must be approved by JLL in advance before being sent out via JLL’s platform. In January 2021, JLL Senior Director Wesley Lau and Marinella property manager Ronny Lee bypassed the OC secretary to organize an OC meeting on 30 January 2021, where certain OC members were guided to initiate a resolution to convene an Extraordinary General Meeting to remove Mr. Kan, the OC chairman (see OC meeting notice). Three senior managers from the K. Wah Group were also invited to attend for the very first time. In effect, the OC was ambushed by JLL, a party with whom the Owners have no direct contractual relationship. Such an act of ambush by the management subcontractor seriously disrupted the smooth functioning of the OC, which was first established only 6 months earlier. Details of this meeting can be found in the approved pre-meeting record of the 30 January 2021 OC meeting and minutes of subsequent OC meetings, which can be obtained from the OC directly (marinella.oc.mail@gmail.com).

On 23 October 2021, 55 Owners co-signed a formal complaint letter (See here) , in which 13 specific problems of substandard property management were identified, and asked the OC to forward the complaint letter to Teamer. Teamer failed to reply to the Owners; instead, JLL the management subcontractor sent a non-committal response to Ms. Lu as the Owners’ representative (see here) with substantial items unaddressed (see here). After the Owners applied further pressure, Teamer itself finally responded by citing certain legal provision in the DMC as justifying that the earlier message from JLL to Ms. Lu was a sufficient response to the formal complaint letter co-signed by the 55 Owners, and that in the future Teamer would liaise only with the OC “on all matters” (See here).

Deprive owners of the right to access the OC meeting minutes by providing only the English Version (see here). Creation of a Marinella mobile phone APP was meant to facilitate Owners’ access to information on property management and OC’s deliberation. However, each Owner is required to submit a signed paper application before being allowed to download and open the APP. Since many Owners don’t live in Marinella themselves, and with other Owners who live here being away from Hong Kong in the Mainland or overseas due to the pandemic, no effort is made by the management subcontractor to enable convenient access by the disadvantaged Owners. OC meeting minutes emailed by the management subcontractor are set in a format that does not allow the Owner to open and read any attachment of interest by simply clicking the relevant link. Significant Owners’ complaints are regularly whitewashed by the management subcontractor into something more innocuous. For example, the formal complaint letter addressed to Teamer was re-characterized by the management subcontractor as “a letter of request”. “Failure to perform their oversight duties” was translated by the management subcontractor into “unable to carry out their work”. With the numerous small steps taken by the management subcontractor, it is inevitable that the Owners will always be kept in the dark. 

Substandard maintenance of the Common Parts of the property and long period of neglect by the management subcontractor has turn Marinella into a place full of eyesores wherever one cares to look, with the original tasteful design of Marinella totally unrecognizable today (see here). Defects during the construction phase now manifest themselves in quality problems inside Owners’ units (such as uncontrollable water leakage). Teamer failed to raise these construction defects with the developer in a timely manner in order to seek timely and effective remediation and indemnification, leaving the unfortunate Owners in endless distress. The construction warranty given by the developer to the Owners will expire in a few years’ time. As a subsidiary company of the developer, Teamer is in a serious conflict of interest position—we cannot expect Teamer to take the initiative to follow up on construction defects with the developer proactively. Once the developer’s warranty has expired, the Owners will suffer not only a sharp drop in the property’s market value due to a failure to rectify the construction quality issue, but also the high cost of repair that should have been the developer’s responsibility.

The observation and feedback from a number of Owners indicated serious breach of code of conduct by certain personnel appointed by the management subcontractor JLL. Although the management subcontractor knew about the breaches for a long time, it failed to take any action to address them. After repeated pressure from a group of concerned Owners, one problem personnel has been removed from Marinella, but other problem personnel still remain in Marinella.

rices for routine household repair services are exorbitant (see price list)—charging $1,000 for replacing a light switch that cost $300 if a repairman from the outside were used, and charging $100 for a $10 light bulb, etc. Household repair and maintenance regularly cost thousands to tens of thousands. Despite the joint complaint of substantial Owners, the management subcontractor makes no change but continues to blindly refer such work to outside contractors without doing any due diligence on price and quality (see the latest proposal). The goal of a property management company should be to help residents to enjoy living in Marinella, but the reality is that Marinella residents now live in constant distress caused by all types of household repair and maintenance headaches.

With the management subcontractor repeatedly interfering, disrupting and undermining the work of the OC, leading to the resignation of both OC chairman and secretary, silencing the voice of Marinella Owners has become a reality. Who will represent the voice of Marinella Owners? How will the voice of Marinella Owners be heard by the DMC Manager and the management subcontractor in the future? These important issues have been swept under the carpet.

With the resignation of both OC chairman and secretary, the only communication channel left between the OC and the Owners is the official email address of the OC, while other channels are controlled by the management subcontractor. As a result, the several social media groups set up by the former OC secretary have become the only uncensored channels for Owners to express their concerns about the substandard property management of Marinella. The remaining OC members rarely participated in the social media group’s discussion. Fearing that their voice didn’t reach the remaining OC members, the Owners presented a list of concerns and complaints about substandard property management at the Annual General Meeting held on 5 October 2021. Unfortunately, 4 months have passed and yet no OC member has reached out to the Owners to understand their concerns and complaints.

55 Owners took the initiative to communicate with the OC directly, by co-signing and sending a “Letter of Thanks and Petition” (see here) to the OC. In addition to thanking the OC for their hard work in the past, these Owners petitioned the OC to commence urgently an evaluation of the property managers appointed by the management subcontractor. Teamer has already committed to the OC that the DMC Manager would honor such an evaluation by the OC in order to improve the performance quality of the management subcontractor (see OC meeting minutes). After receiving the “Letter of Thanks and Petition”, the OC stayed quiet and failed to take any action to follow up – OC’s formal reply only acknowledged the Owners’ “letter of thanks” but didn’t mention the Owners’ “petition”, which was effectively “filtered” and “extinguished” by the OC.

During the final stage of the negotiation with the DMC Manager, the OC failed to proactively seek the input of the Owners, to ensure that the commitments secured from Teamer truly addressed the concerns of the Owners about substandard property management. Conflict of interest issue was disregarded by OC member. The OC made no effort to arrange the agenda of the Annual General Meeting in such a way as to elicit Owners’ views and concerns about substandard property management. The issue of the Two Letters (the Letter of Serious Demands and the Letter of Thanks and Petition) co-signed by 55 Owners was not addressed in the first OC meeting’s agenda after the AGM (see OC Meeting agenda) notwithstanding the rare attendance of Mr. Vincent Yeung from Chissay. Finally, after further pressure from the Owners, only the Letter of Serious Demands was included in the second OC meeting after the AGM as the last (16^th) agenda, which the OC spent less than 7 minutes to go over without any discussion among the OC members about the problems presented in the letter, such as the divergence of the management’s proposal from the owners’ demands.