Managing agent: who decides, and who is only relaying it
The counter says the works cannot proceed. Whether that is a council decision or one officer's reading of it changes what comes next, and the two arrive in the same tone of voice. Asking which is not a challenge.
By Team Snowflake | Updated 8 Aug 2026
The office is a firm, and somebody hired it
The counter and the corporation are usually two separate parties. BCA puts the arrangement in a single line. A management corporation may employ the services of a managing agent to perform certain duties in respect of the management and maintenance of its development. The firm was engaged to do that work. It is not the body that engaged it.
BCA lists making the appointment among the corporation's own responsibilities, alongside keeping records, making by-laws and repairing common property. Its wording is that the agent assists in the day-to-day running of an estate. Assisting describes the shape of the role. Day-to-day describes the scale it was hired at.
How the firm arrived decides part of what it may do. BCA sets out two routes. A corporation can appoint an agent by ordinary resolution during a general meeting. A council can appoint one without a general meeting, where owners gave it that authorisation at the last preceding general meeting. Either way, the appointment traces back to something owners voted on.
The engagement itself is a contract. BCA describes engaging or terminating an agent as a private contractual arrangement between the corporation and the firm. An appointment runs for a fixed term rather than open-endedly, and BCA states a ceiling on how long that term may be. Performance has to be reviewed at every annual general meeting. The firm answering you today is not guaranteed to be the firm answering next.
Residents are meant to approach it. BCA says as much directly, that residents needing assistance on estate matters can go to the agent. Nothing in the arrangement makes the office an obstacle by design. The corporation itself, and the council standing behind it, are set out in what an mcst is. Two layers, kept apart here on purpose.
HDB sits outside all of this. A town council runs the shared parts of an HDB estate under separate legislation, and no equivalent firm stands between an owner and that body.
What can be handed over, and what stays with the owners
A corporation can give away a great deal of its own authority, and BCA is specific about how. It may, in writing, delegate to the appointed agent part or all of its powers, duties and functions. That delegation is made by ordinary resolution passed at a general meeting. The phrase worth sitting with is part or all.
How far it reaches surprises most owners. BCA states that the delegated duties may include performing the functions of the Chairperson, Secretary and Treasurer, or of the whole council. An estate can therefore run with the firm doing nearly everything a council would otherwise do. The person at the counter may be exercising real authority, and it is still borrowed authority.
Two limits are written into that. BCA says a corporation cannot allow its agent to further delegate those duties to anybody else. Nor can it hand over the power to make critical decisions or pass resolutions, on the corporation's behalf, that only the corporation may exercise.
The second limit is where a flat refusal deserves a second look. BCA's footnote lists what stays behind. Any matter that can only be settled by unanimous resolution, by special resolution, by ninety per cent resolution, or by consensus at a general meeting. Restricted matters, which the legislation reserves to a general meeting, stay behind as well. Those are owner decisions, and no service agreement shifts them.
Delegated acts land on the corporation too. BCA states that an agent's acts and omissions, done under delegation, are done on behalf of the corporation, and that legal consequences flowing from them apply to both. It adds that an agent exercising a delegated duty can be held liable for a contravention as though the corporation had committed it. Shared exposure is a reason to answer carefully, and caution at a counter frequently traces back to it.
| What the office is doing | Where BCA places it | What it changes about your question |
|---|---|---|
| What the office is doingApplying a condition already written down somewhere | Where BCA places itInside whatever was delegated in writing | What it changes about your questionAsk which document it comes from, not whether it is fair |
| What the office is doingHandling a routine day-to-day matter | Where BCA places itExactly the work the office was hired for | What it changes about your questionThe office is the right place to settle it |
| What the office is doingSettling something reserved to a general meeting | Where BCA places itOutside the delegation, whatever an agreement says | What it changes about your questionA record of owners deciding should exist |
| What the office is doingPassing on a position the council took | Where BCA places itThe council's decision, relayed by staff | What it changes about your questionAsk when it was taken and where it was minuted |
| What the office is doingReading an unclear clause its own way | Where BCA places itInterpretation rather than a decision | What it changes about your questionAsk for that reading in writing so it can be traced |
The agreement that records the split
BCA describes the service agreement as an instrument in writing. Both the corporation and the firm sign it. It records which of the corporation's powers, duties and functions the agent performs. BCA sorts those into four areas. Running the development, administration and secretarial work, accounting and finance, and operation and maintenance.
Owners are not normally handed that document, and asking to read it is a heavier request than most situations call for. Knowing it exists is enough. It means the question of whether something falls to the office or to the council has a documented answer somewhere, rather than resting on whoever is on duty.
Why a refusal can be caution rather than a rule
A firm carrying the corporation's exposure has every reason to answer conservatively. The safe reply at a counter is no, and no costs the officer nothing. That is not bad faith. It is what happens when the person answering would not personally carry a decision that turned out badly.
BCA has written down this exact confusion. Its guidance for owners unhappy with how an agent handled something suggests communicating with the firm and identifying the issue precisely. The reason it gives is the useful part. The agent may be acting on the instructions of the council, or there may be a misunderstanding which could be further clarified. Both possibilities sit behind an ordinary refusal.
Neither possibility is visible from the tone. A relayed council decision and an officer's own caution arrive the same way, in the same email, with the same air of finality. Owners read finality as authority and stop there. That is the point where a job gets abandoned or gets argued about, and both are premature.
Turnover keeps the picture blurred. Council members are elected at annual general meetings and retire at the conclusion of the next one, though they may stand again. Firms hold appointments for fixed terms, and each annual general meeting revisits how the firm has performed. A confident answer is often an inherited answer, passed down from people who have since moved on, with nothing recorded behind it.
Two instincts make things worse. Asking why the office will not allow something invites a defence, and a defended position hardens. Taking an installer's word that the last job in the block went ahead without any of this is worse still, because the letter that follows arrives at the flat rather than at the contractor. Neither is the useful move. Establish whether a decision exists, and leave its merits alone.
How do you ask without starting a dispute?
Ask for the source rather than the reasoning. Where does this requirement come from is something anybody at a counter can answer or go and check. Why are you not allowing this asks a person to justify themselves. The first question returns a document reference. The second returns a firmer version of the same sentence.
Say plainly that you are not disputing anything. The sentence doing most of the work is short. You are trying to record the basis so the file is complete. Offices field complaints constantly, and being told early that this is not one changes how the request lands.
Leave the office room to check. BCA's own wording allows for a misunderstanding that further clarification could resolve, and asking is what triggers that check. An officer who says they will confirm with the council has just told you the position was not a council decision yet. That is the fact worth having.
BCA also sets out where concerns about an agent's service can go, and the order is worth knowing before any of it gets used. Identify the issue precisely with the firm. Give input to the agent's supervisor where there are grounds for concern. Raise it with the council, which may decide to act in response. Any owner may requisition a motion for an annual general meeting, where the appointment is reviewed. Owners may attend council meetings, though raising an issue there needs the council's permission first.
That ladder is about how a firm performs, not a route for overturning a position on works. Reaching for it over a single unanswered question spends goodwill you will want later, on an estate you have to keep living in.
| What owners tend to say | How it usually lands | What to ask instead |
|---|---|---|
| What owners tend to sayWhy will you not allow this | How it usually landsAs a challenge, answered with a firmer no | What to ask insteadWhich document does this requirement come from |
| What owners tend to sayThe condo down the road allows it | How it usually landsAs an argument about a place nobody here runs | What to ask insteadHas the council decided this for this estate |
| What owners tend to sayMy contractor says it is fine | How it usually landsAs a reason to distrust the whole scope | What to ask insteadWould the office put its position in an email |
| What owners tend to sayCan you make an exception for me | How it usually landsAs a request the counter has no room to grant | What to ask insteadIs this something the council would need to settle |
| What owners tend to sayNothing in the by-laws says this | How it usually landsAs a dispute about a document | What to ask insteadWhere should I be reading, so I have the right pages |
Getting the answer traced back to a decision
Written answers outlive people, and spoken ones do not. The delegation has to be in writing, and the agreement recording what the firm performs is a written instrument as well. Asking for a written reply is consistent with how the arrangement already runs. It is not an escalation, and it helps to say so.
What makes a reply traceable is naming its origin. A message saying works of this kind need approval is useful once. A message saying the condition comes from a named by-law, or from a council decision taken on a stated date, still answers the question when a different officer opens the file long afterwards.
Ask whether the matter sits inside the firm's delegated scope. Put as an administrative question it is unremarkable, because somebody in the office knows and the delegation is documented. Put as an accusation it goes nowhere. The wording that works is whether this is something the office can settle, or something the council decides.
Store the reply against the flat, not against the job. Appointments turn over, councils turn over, and the owner is the only party still holding a file when the question comes back. A buyer's solicitor, a facade inspection, or an incoming firm compiling a register will each reopen it, and a stored email closes it in one line.
- Which document the requirement comes from, named rather than described, so the clause itself can be read
- Whether a council decision sits behind the position, and the date that decision was taken
- Whether the office can settle the matter itself, or whether it has to go to the council
- The reply as an email or letter from the officer who gave it, rather than a note you took at a counter
- What the office would need to see before it can confirm the position, where it is still checking
Where this page hands over
Four subjects next to this one are settled elsewhere. For the rulebook, including the layer your estate never handed over, read condo by-laws. For the platform under the machine, read common property ledge. For which permission a scope actually triggers, read strata approval for aircon works. For the body itself and how its council gets elected, read what an mcst is.
Three more sit further out. Paperwork and its sequence belong to the condo installation checklist. Machines cooling a lobby or a gym fall under condo common-area aircon, work the corporation buys on its own account. How a landlord and tenant divide the work sits under rental aircon responsibility, and who staffs the office has no bearing on it. The Strata Titles Boards is queued as a page of its own.
Everything above rests on one statute, retitled in 2025 to Building (Strata Management) Act 2004, though BCA's guides still carry the older initials, BMSMA, throughout. Reading the statute will not tell you who decided your matter. Neither will this page. Records held by your own estate answer that, and a professional reads them properly once the amount at stake justifies it.
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