It's very probable that the firm simply didn't have the management bandwidth to do proper property management, which is a business all on its own and unless you

It's very probable that the firm simply didn't have the management bandwidth to do proper property management, which is a business all on its own and unless you really care about it, you're not going to be able to do it as well or as cheaply as someone who does. I can easily see how a company would prefer paying another company to provide a nice, delineated set of deliverables as opposed to managing workers to provide them themselves.