Relationships are fundamentally about balancing power in an enterprise, with the objective of common gains. It's much easier to orientate any individual around its own benefit, but coordinating the efforts of even just one other party, makes the computation very much harder.
One of the things that's crucial in the initiation of a relationship, is to make computation easy for everyone. When one party has more information, it typically benefits the relationship for them to share that information as quickly as possible, in a believable way, in order to the gain the confidence of their potential partner. We stereotypically see this play out in older-younger pair relationships, where the senior partner mentors the junior.
Now from the point of view of a consumer buying a real property asset from a developer, the deck is inherently stacked against the consumer. The consumer is typically not a legal professional, and therefore ignorant about the fundamental idioms of engagement with regards to large, bulky, high-ticket, assets. Whereas the property developer is typically a highly-capitalised entity with a suite of professional service providers at its beck and call.
Now in some countries, towards the final stages of transacting a real property asset, the developer must execute a "hand-off" of operations, from itself to either a private, or a local-government entity. In Malaysia, this is made particularly difficult because the local government entity receiving the hand-off is almost always staffed by untrained civilian volunteers, due to the current law. The statute is thus very poorly written, however, that is a matter of discussion for another day.
So in Malaysia, particularly (and I write about this based on professional experience ), civilian volunteers managing stratified properties will find themselves during the hand-off stage in a position where they may have, very little prepared research, and sometimes not even that much new information about ...
(1) how the law works with regards to real-property transactions,
(2) how to run a local government organisation,
(3) the character of their developer,
(4) the practical idiosyncracies of their regulator, the Commissioner of Buildings,
(5) the character of key contractors assisting in the hand-off process, such as registered Property Managers.
Thus the new local government of stratified properties in Malaysia, may initially find itself in a seriously undefended position. If there are no more-experienced parties to hand-hold the hand-off, the obvious strategy is for the volunteers to turtle.
FIRST, the volunteers must start to establish relationships internally within their volunteer cohort - anyone who has worked in volunteer organisations knows how fraught with difficulties this may be.
SECOND, the volunteers must begin systematically assessing their counterparties, the developer, the regulators, the proprietors of real property who are their constituents, and any contracted property managers ... and they must do so without having had any professional experience in doing so, for the most part.
THIRD, while the relationships above are being established, the volunteers must secure any and all strategic assets which are close at hand, due to a nearly all-encompassing fog, until the nature of the environment is understood.
All of these challenges are typically complex, and sometimes they are filled with confusion and bickering. However, those difficulties may be completely avoided if one has a good developer. The reason for this is, the developer is fundamentally a seller of consumer products. And due to specialisation, it stands to have vastly prepared knowledge about domains (1, 3, 4, and 5 ... if not also 2).
A good Malaysian property developer would thus facilitate a hand-off, by preemptively preparing the new local government volunteers for all of the five concerns above ... hopefully persuading them to save themselves from the need to engage in the three risk management tactics above.
I have personally only been engaged in one hand-off, of such a property in Malaysia, and so I have yet to find out who the developers are, who have good customer service. I look forward to learning more about this space.
