Taking over a building from the previous manager: the first four weeks

Julia Hartwig runs a management practice in Hanover. On 1 January she takes over the association at Marienstraße 40, thirty-two units, from a manager who is retiring. What she receives: a spreadsheet of owners, an export from his management software, twelve binders, the register of resolutions as a PDF, and the reserve balance on a sheet of paper.

That is a good handover. Many are worse. This article walks through the first four weeks in Condomana. How to check an export from the old software for completeness before you rely on it is covered in detail in Getting your data out of your old software.

Week 1: master data, as a dry run first

Under Settings → Import Ms Hartwig picks the source format. Three routes are open:

Her export comes from another system, so she takes the third route, reviews the proposed mapping and corrects two columns. She uploads the files — CSV, Excel or ZIP — and clicks Analyse.

Nothing is written yet. The result is a dry run with a reconciliation report: what would be created, what updated, what skipped, and every row that cannot be imported, with the reason. In her case, two ownerships point to units missing from the export: two garage parking spaces the previous manager kept in a separate list. She adds them to the source, analyses again, and only then confirms. Importing the same data a second time creates no duplicates.

Besides buildings, units, owners and shares, the import takes over ownerships with their dates, tenancies, opening balances at cutover and historical settlements. The first settlement therefore stands on real figures, not on zero.

Data health

Next she opens Settings → Data health. Condomana checks continuously for gaps and contradictions and gives each building a score. Marienstraße starts at 71:

• The co-ownership shares add up to 1,002 instead of 1,000. Here the page deliberately offers no fix. A changed share changes what an owner pays; she decides that with the declaration of division in hand, not with a click.
• Two records for the same person — once as an owner, once as the contact for a community of heirs, with the same email address. She merges them in one click.
• Twenty-nine owners without portal access. Those come in week 3.

Nothing is changed silently. What she has checked and accepted, she dismisses; it no longer counts against the score.

Week 2: the paper history

She has the twelve binders scanned. Rather than uploading each file separately, she uses Import in bulk: the whole history as one ZIP, optionally with a manifest.csv saying where each file belongs. Every file is processed on its own. A damaged file does not abort the run, and what could not be classified is named in the report rather than guessed. Everything is virus-scanned before anyone can download it, and afterwards it can be found by full-text search, as far as the files contain text.

Nothing is shared yet. Which documents owners see, she decides deliberately: the declaration of division, the last three sets of minutes, the insurance policies and the latest economic plan for all owners; everything else stays with the team.

Continuing the register of resolutions

She enters the old resolutions under Resolutions with Record a resolution, with date and wording. New resolutions from Condomana follow on in sequence. In Germany the register of resolutions has to be kept under § 24 (7) WEG, and in a takeover it is the document asked for soonest — at the latest by the first buyer examining a flat.

Week 3: bringing in the owners

Now the twenty-nine "no portal access" findings. On the Data health page she invites each owner with Invite to portal, straight from the finding. The invitation is a link that works once and expires; anyone who does not respond gets one automatic reminder. Invited owners cost nothing.

The Portal column on the association's management page shows her each owner's state: On portal, Invited, Invited · reminded, Not delivered or No access. Two addresses show "Not delivered"; she sorts those out by phone.

At the same time she publishes an announcement: who the new management is, how to reach it, and that the key documents are now in the portal. Owners who have already signed in find the declaration of division and the minutes there without calling.

Week 4: day-to-day operation

What remains are the things the previous manager kept in his head:

• Maintenance plans for the lift and the heating, with interval and contractor. Condomana assumes no statutory intervals; she enters each one herself.
• Deadlines for the caretaking contract and the building insurance — with the notice period, not just the end date.
• The colleague who co-manages Marienstraße, invited under Team as a manager.

The test almost nobody runs

At the end of week four Ms Hartwig downloads a full export under Settings → Export: all master data, ownerships, tenancies, opening balances and settlements as CSV in the same format the import reads, plus every document in its original form. Not because she wants to leave, but because she has just seen what a handover looks like when nobody checked beforehand that the way out works. The export is available regardless of subscription status.

The essentials

• Analyse first, then confirm. The dry run shows every row that does not fit before anything is written.
• Data health finds what the handover left out — and never changes anything that moves money on its own.
• The paper history goes in as one ZIP; sharing is deliberate.
• Invited is not signed in: the per-owner portal status shows who is still missing.