DPM PROPERTY SERVICES: Property with the Personal Touch
Having grown out of Devmark Property Group’s in-house property management function, DPM Property Services has transformed decades of expertise into a burgeoning third-party management business. According to Director Chanet Muller, retaining a strong owner’s mentality, extensive construction and maintenance knowledge, and an increasingly comprehensive management offering are helping DPM protect and enhance property assets across the Western Cape.
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For more than 25 years, DPM Property Services has been entrusted with successfully managing the substantial property portfolio of Devmark Property Group. Originally embedded within the Group’s internal organisational structure, the property management division gradually identified a lucrative opportunity beyond its parent company and began taking its proven expertise, systems, and knowledge to the wider South African property market.
Having spent decades protecting and enhancing assets owned by Devmark itself, DPM was particularly well placed to offer third-party owners the same level of care, oversight and commercial discipline, resulting in the seamless and effective transformation of a highly successful in-house capability into a standalone property management proposition with the most solid of foundations.
“We take great pride in what we do and manage each property as if it was our own,” states Director, Chanet Muller. “Intimate knowledge of the property industry adds to the exceptional service and our competitive advantage over other managing agents. Our motto is: the client always comes first.”
FROM THE GROUND UP
Since DPM’s long-established in-house management function was spun out as Devmark Property Management in early 2020, Muller’s vision has always been to build something deliberately different, and utterly unique. “The traditional image of a property management company in Johannesburg or Cape Town is of a large player managing 30,000-plus units,” she explains. “From the beginning, we knew we never wanted to become one of those.”
That distinction has been explicit throughout: DPM’s ambition is not scale for scale’s sake, but a much more hands-on, owner-minded service where individual assets do not disappear into an enormous portfolio. “Growth initially was 100% organic and driven entirely by word of mouth, so it was naturally slower at the outset,” Muller remembers.
“We focused on being an extremely personal, responsive company — our contact details were readily available in every one of our buildings, and we could always be reached. That accessibility and availability were essential in setting us apart from the beginning. It makes a real difference when customers know they can speak directly to the people who own and run the company.”
For Muller, that personal approach is not simply a matter of positioning; it is embedded in the way DPM operates. Having founded the company, she takes pride in knowing each of its trustees, tenants and owners, as well as its security and cleaning personnel, by name. “It is a very hands-on approach,” she stresses. “We will never fall into the trap of choosing quantity over quality.”
This people-focused, highly personal ethos has not gone unnoticed, leading to the establishment of key relationships and, in turn, significant new opportunities. “We have worked hard to sustain that founding ethos as we have experienced substantial growth,” Muller says.
“We started by partnering with a single developer three years ago and now work with a few of the top ones in Cape Town. We have an agreement with them whereby, so long as our service remains at the very highest standard and my Directors, our portfolio mangers and I retain that same level of personal involvement, we are entrusted with all of their new work. This means that, just across these partnerships alone, we have perhaps 10-15 new buildings coming through the pipeline each year.”
As those relationships have deepened, so too has DPM Property Services’ understanding of exactly what each partner expects and requires. The familiarity works both ways: developers know the standard of service they can expect from DPM, while Muller and her team are able to anticipate the particular priorities, preferences and operational needs of each client.
“They trust us, and we trust them,” Muller affirms. “We are now probably one of the biggest, and most prominent, property management companies in Cape Town in terms of the relationships we have built with developers, the number we represent, and the fact that we are their immediate first choice when it comes to managing new launches.”
PROPERTY DONE PROPERLY
DPM’s growing management portfolio encompasses some of Cape Town’s most recognisable recent developments, and Muller singles out Dolce Vita in Sea Point with particular enthusiasm. “It is a premium Atlantic Seaboard scheme developed by the Berman Brothers, and one of our flagship buildings,” she describes.
“It is essentially split into two components, with the residential section that we manage joined by The Cole, a five-star Kove Collection hotel, alongside high-end retail and a rooftop bar and restaurant offering breathtaking sea views.” Muller is right to be excited by this flagship address, and not just because of its prestige and prime location; Dolce Vita also encapsulates the kind of complexity that increasingly plays to DPM’s strengths – a high-end mixed-use environment, discerning owners, sumptuous communal facilities and the need to co-exist and coordinate seamlessly alongside a major hospitality operator.
DPM’s increasingly substantial management portfolio includes some of Cape Town’s most recognisable recent residential developments, of which TenonV, Charlie & The Chairman, Three43onB, The Sage, Lady Backs and 100onM represent just a handful, alongside a varied collection of commercial, retail, industrial and retirement assets.
“We have also just taken on our first building in Paarden Eiland — Maritime Place — a landmark Rawson Developers scheme combining residential, commercial and retail space, and a hugely significant addition to our portfolio.”
“This is the first residential development of its kind in Paarden Eiland,” Muller underscores. “It is a genuine first for the area, and unbelievably beautiful.”
DPM’s mandate has come to extend far beyond routine property administration. Its role demands meticulous handover, close engagement with owners and trustees, uncompromising service standards and a deep understanding of how residential components must function alongside wider hotel, retail and hospitality offerings. The continued securing of precisely these kinds of appointments demonstrates just how far, and how quickly, the business has progressed from its origins as an internal property management function.
The vision for DPM’s future is emphatically not to become a behemoth organisation with tens of thousands of properties under management, Muller reiterates. Instead, the focus is on preserving the personal touch that has defined the business from the outset, while continuing to build on its growing reputation for exceptional service delivery across every aspect of its offering.
“Our singular, unbending commitment is that we manage each property as if it were our own,” Muller stresses of the company’s overarching vision. “That sums up DPM Property Services more accurately than anything else. Accordingly, each service that my team and I provide is delivered with the intention of exceeding every expectation.”