Should We Appoint a Professional Trustee in Cape Town? A Practical Guide for Sectional Title Schemes

Should We Appoint a Professional Trustee in Cape Town? A Practical Guide for Sectional Title Schemes

If you manage or live in a sectional title scheme, you've probably wondered whether your body corporate would benefit from a professional trustee. This guide explains what the role actually involves, how it differs from a managing agent, where it adds the most value, and how to go about appointing one.

What does a professional trustee do?

A professional (or independent) trustee brings impartiality, governance knowledge, and meeting discipline to a body corporate. In practice, that means:

• Chairing or stabilising meetings and ensuring decisions are made and recorded properly

• Helping trustees understand and apply the Sectional Titles Schemes Management Act and Prescribed Management Rules in everyday situations

• Keeping budgets, special levies, and maintenance plans realistic and well documented

• Being on-site regularly to see what's actually happening, not just what's reported

When a scheme needs independence and momentum rather than more volunteer hours, a professional trustee can prevent gridlock and reduce conflict.

Professional trustee vs managing agent

A managing agent handles the day-to-day administration of a scheme — levies, invoices, supplier coordination, documentation. A professional trustee sits at board level, focused on governance and decision-making. The two roles are complementary, not competing:

• Managing agent: administration, supplier coordination, levy billing, documentation

• Professional trustee: governance, chairing, oversight, risk management, owner communication at board level

If meetings are long and inconclusive, or compliance keeps slipping, it's usually because one of these roles is missing — not because the other one is doing a bad job.

Where local knowledge matters

I work across Cape Town's Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl, including Sea Point, Bantry Bay, and the CBD. Coastal, wind-exposed, and high-density buildings each carry their own maintenance and budgeting realities, and knowing a building's specific pressures — salt air, ageing waterproofing, complex sectional plans — speeds up everything from site inspections to getting the right contractor in the door.

What's included in trustee and chairperson services

Here's a clear breakdown of what this typically covers:

Meetings & compliance

• Chairing AGMs and SGMs

• Keeping agendas tight and decisions properly minuted

• Helping trustees stay on top of their compliance obligations

Budgets, levies & planning

• Realistic annual budgeting

• Guidance through special levies when unplanned spend comes up

• Long-term maintenance planning

Site & suppliers

• On-site inspections to verify quotes and workmanship

• Support so trustee decisions hold up to scrutiny later

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Should your scheme appoint a professional trustee?

It's worth considering when:

• Meetings drag on, decisions get revisited, or conflict keeps escalating

• Trustees rotate often and there's no institutional memory

• You're planning major works — waterproofing, lifts, roofs, façade repairs

• You need genuine independence because owners or suppliers have competing interests

Schemes that make this move usually see faster decisions, cleaner records, and fewer disputes — particularly once someone independent is chairing.

How to appoint a professional trustee

Always check your scheme's own rules first, but the general path is:

1. Table the motion at an AGM or SGM to appoint (or co-opt) an independent trustee

2. Define the scope — meetings, inspections, budgeting support, chairing

3. Agree the term and fee

4. Record the resolution clearly, with a defined mandate and reporting line

If your rules allow it, trustees can co-opt someone between meetings. Otherwise, it goes on the next AGM agenda.

How much does it cost?

Fees vary by scheme size, complexity, and scope — usually a fixed meeting fee, a retainer for ongoing governance, or a project rate for defined work. It's worth weighing this against the cost of delays, re-run meetings, mis-scoped projects, or compliance slip-ups. A good appointment tends to pay for itself in avoided friction alone.

What success actually looks like

• Shorter, calmer meetings with decisions captured once

• Realistic budgets with fewer surprise shortfalls

• Clean, compliant minutes and resolutions

• Projects that get scoped properly, quoted fairly, and actually finish

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About me

I'm Krysia Narramore, an independent professional trustee working across Cape Town's Atlantic Seaboard and City Bowl. I work alongside managing agents rather than replacing them, and my independence is the point — it means I act for the scheme, not for any one party within it.

If you're weighing up whether your scheme needs this kind of support, I offer a free, no-obligation consultation. Get in touch.