If you live in a body corporate scheme, you’ve probably considered strata management at some point. A body corporate manager can make life easier and more enjoyable for everyone in the building by taking care of all the problems and tasks associated with running a strata building. This leaves the residents of the building free from having to deal with the demands of upkeep, maintenance, compliance, legislation and communication.
Of course, such a service comes at a cost, and you’ll need to weigh up the benefits provided by a professional body corporate manager against the costs of employing said manager. A body corporate is not legally required to have a strata manager, but plenty of them do. To make the fees worthwhile, you need to make sure your body corporate is a good candidate for strata management. Here’s how to find out.
Your body corporate would benefit from strata management if:
There’s no committee
If your building doesn’t have a committee, then it probably needs to employ the services of a body corporate manager. The body corporate manager will be authorised to carry out all the functions that the committee would normally take care of, and to make decisions that would usually be made by the committee. Someone needs to step up and take care of the many tasks involved with running a building, and if there’s no committee, hiring a body corporate manager is the logical step.
The committee needs help
While the committee of owners can certainly self-manage the building, this requires a great commitment of time and energy, and most owners are time poor. One of the great things about living in an apartment building is the fact that you won’t need to spend as much time on maintenance – something that gets eroded if you take on committee roles. If the committee is struggling to carry out the following tasks effectively, then it’s far wiser to outsource them to a body corporate manager:
- Ensuring levies are paid on time
- Ensuring invoices are paid on time
- Ensuring your building is staying compliant with current legislation
- Keeping up with building maintenance and upkeep requirements
- Taking care of financial, legal and communication requirements
- Dealing with emergencies
- Dealing with disputes and managing relationships
- Ensuring projects are completed on time and to budget
Employing a professional to take care of all these tasks will ensure they are done correctly, safely and on time. As well, this will free up owners to spend their time as they choose, on things they would likely much rather do than building maintenance and management.
It’s a large, complex scheme
A small duplex scheme is unlikely to need as much management as a larger, more complex one. There are likely to be more facilities that need managing in a larger scheme (think pools, lifts, gyms etc.) as well as more buildings and larger grounds to maintain. As well, there are more people to manage, and that’s where things can get tricky. People often have widely differing agendas and ways of doing things, and it takes a competent (and impartial) people manager to deal with them effectively.
If this is your body corporate scheme, then you need to get started with effective strata management. Contact the best in the business – Capitol BCA – here to find out how they can help: https://www.capitolbca.com.au/contact-us/
