Archer Property Management

January 1, 2007. The first day of our initial contract with Archer Property Management. This past January, without hesitation, we signed our most recent contract.

Our site manager prepares an agenda for each board meeting. Agenda items include, but are not limited to, shareholders in arrears, financial position and expenditures for the month, old business, new business, any issues presented by shareholders, and bids from contractors for work to be performed at the co-op. At budget time, the board is presented with a proposed budget for the following year based on historical data compiled by the office staff. Each budgeted line item has the prior year's expenditures provided as documentation.

Archer maintains strong business relationships with a number of competent, professional contractors that can be called upon in the case of an emergency.

Speaking of emergencies, we have had two since Archer became our managing agent. The first was four years ago. A gas leak in the
street caused by Con Edison, resulted in the shut down of the gas to half our co-op. During this time, our site manager provided updates to
shareholders on the status of the situation. Access to all the affected apartments was required by Con Edison a number of times during
the gas outage and our site manager ensured that shareholders were aware of the scheduling. As quickly as possible, we needed plumbers and general contractors to do the required work before Con Edison would replace the gas lines and turn the gas back on. Archer coordinated with the contractors, Con Edison and the local building department inspectors to get this work completed in a timely manner.

The second emergency was during Hurricane Sandy. A tree on a neighboring property became a victim of the heavy winds and it ripped
out our electric, phone and cable lines on its way to the ground. Archer had a landscaping company at the property the morning after the
storm to clean up all the downed trees so that the utility crews could access the electric lines - our first priority. Due to the fact that utility
poles were destroyed as well, Con Ed was unwilling to restore our service on a temporary basis despite pleading from our site manager.
When our superintendent managed to get the attention of an out-of-state utility crew, our site manager was able to get an electrician to our property in one hour to work with them to restore power to our buildings and boiler.

Eventually, we received a reimbursement check from our insurance company. It was for appreciably less than our expenditures for repairs so our site manager pursued this matter until the insurance company relented and made a fair settlement.

Archer instituted a direct debit plan and an internet enabled method for maintenance payments. They also established a protocol for shareholders who wish to do renovations. Prior to Archer, a shareholder could hire contractors without proper licensing or insurance. That is no longer the case. Plans must be submitted to the board for approval and proper permits must be obtained from the local municipality's building department.

Our site manager is smart enough to know that a good superintendent is his/her eyes and ears. Since it is impossible for the site manager to be at the property 24/7, reliance on the superintendent is important. Our superintendent may make purchases of small items to be used in the day to day operations of the property. He may also purchase gasoline for the tractor, snowblower and other gas driven grounds maintenance implements.

Visits to the property are made weekly and more often, if necessary. Our super and site manager inspects any work that is being performed. Anything of concern is brought to the attention of the site manager by our super and together they walk the property regularly.

Archer is no longer managing our co-op. He was terminated August 2012 after one year on the job.

When we hired Archer, our Board was emphatic about what it wanted Archer to do. We wanted an evaluation of our superintendent with write-ups if he was not performing. We wanted at least three competitive bids for the many projects needed. We wanted Archer to evaluate our financials and suggest ways we could improve efficiency. Finally, we wanted Archer to effectively communicate with shareholders.

We received nothing that we asked for. Our property agent was a lost cause. She was arrogant, wrote very poorly and failed to communicate with the shareholders. Instead of evaluating our super, she made our super the top dog, giving him free reign to purchase goods through vendors, all without informing the Board. We asked for monthly financials and a budget and were stonewalled for the first 3 months –they refused to give us information about how they were spending our money!

Archer gave the super complete control. Why? I believe Archer wanted to reduce his workload and move quickly onto his other co-ops. Our experience was that our property manager would drive by only once a week and speak with the super for a half hour outside of the building. She didn’t even bother to go in and personally inspect our building. Meanwhile, the building’s physical appearance suffered.

Regarding the evaluation of the super, which was so badly needed and specifically requested of Archer…nothing was done. One can only guess why Archer failed to write-up our consistently non-performing super, even when his obvious performance failures were brought to Archer’s attention by members of the Board. Archer supported the super when the assistant super, who had a far better work record, was falsely accused in a security issue. Archer threatened the assistant super with a “suspension” from his duties.

With regard to competitive bidding, we never received the promised three bids on any project.

Archer was a failure in financial planning. The bookkeeper made several errors including overcharging the co-op $50,000 for insurance. The books were kept on a cash-only basis; one would not know our actual financial condition until the year-end outside audit was completed. Archer had no expertise in constructing an annual budget. Shareholders were charged late fees because maintenance payments were misallocated.

A shareholder was at first denied access to current financial reports even though the proprietary lease permitted such access. The STAR credit was not credited according to the custom established in our building – once, in total, during the month of December. Archer never even asked the Board what had been the customary practice before he split the payment over two months – December and January.

The superintendent staff was forbidden to speak to the shareholders about anything but immediate repairs to their unit. All communications had to go through the property manager, who we later discovered, did not tell the Board of all the complaints or requests she received from the shareholders. We learned five months’ later that a shareholder’s request to review the monthly financials had never been communicated to the Board. This created the impression that the Board was non-responsive to shareholders, when it was the property manager who had failed to meet her duty to the Board.

Needless to say, shareholders consistently complained that our property manager was often non-responsive and had a negative attitude.

In summary, Archer failed in all of his duties to manage our co-op.

DO NOT HIRE ARCHER.

See review by "Steve" from White Plains, NY, too. His description of their experiences with Archer are nearly identical to the experiences this building had. Archer broke most, if not all, of the promises they first made when hired. Property manager came in once a week for a half hour and never walked the building to personally check the status, relying completely on the word of the superintendent for the status. Superintendent had other motives; staff was forbidden to speak with each other and could only communicate with property manager. Property manager also could not write English, spell it or use spellcheck. Archer tried to prevent shareholders from looking at financial statemnts. STAY AWAY FROM ARCHER..

Archer manages our co-op building; in White Plains NY, has done so for several years and from this owner’s point of view is an absolute waste of monthly maintenance fees. It feels like we’re being robbed every month we pay our maintenance fees.

Our account manager is functionally illiterate and seems either unable or unwilling to master the written word, despite inundating owners with poor quality fax communications. English is the native language of our account manager, so we’re not dealing with an individual struggling with a second language, simply a person who lacks the skill and will to improve their ability to communicate.

Archer seems dedicated to ensuring building owners have a complete lack of transparency into the business of our co-op and in 2010 was accused by one owner of attempting to block all owners from reading our own co-op board meeting minutes. Apparently the building’s legal counsel had to remind Archer they could not prevent owners from viewing our own meeting minutes.

Archer, via instructions to building staff, on at least one occasion attempted to limit police access to security footage when investigating a building robbery and only relented under threat of criminal obstruction charges. Yet freely uses these same security surveillance cameras to spy upon building owners and residents for the purpose of issuing harassing and threatening letters.

Archer has issued warnings and threats of fines and penalties to at least one owner for fire code violations that never existed. One owner was issued a formal and, like all Archer communications, condescending and disrespectful threat of fine for a fire code violation which when checked with White Plains Fire Department turned out to be absolutely false. There were no violations anywhere for the building in the inspection report as Archer claimed.

This was truly an example of Archer’s harassment of owners and exceedingly poor building management as it is not a simple mistake – there was no fire code violation anywhere in the building. When confronted about this our building account manager maintained there was violation and added to the owner, “…It sounds like you don’t believe me?” The owner targeted was forced to obtain a copy of the inspection report.

For some time Archer’s yearly financial audit for our co-op was grossly inaccurate – with several thousand dollars of missing co-op revenue from parking fees. Archer did not embezzle or defraud the co-op they merely did not collect the proper fees from several owners yet reported everything as fine in yearly financial audits. There are not that many parking spaces and how hard can it be to add the monthly fees together and check the actual revenue collected verses how much revenue we should be collecting. It’s not exactly rocket science.

Overall the sense one gets with Archer management is that co-op owners are an inconvenience in constant need of being “got around,” lied to, mislead and kept ignorant about the very building they own. Archer seems content if not enthusiastic in projecting a corporate personality that appears to this owner one of slovenly mismanagement from a shady group of people who seem more interested in developing an adversarial relationship with building owners than actually performing any sort of service for the building.