Strata Management, Property Management, or MISMANAGEMENT?
September 25th, 2008
Photo Courtesy of: SqueakyMarmot
When Buying a condo, regardless of where you buy it, one of the most important factors, if not the most important factors is to look into the Strata Management and Property Management. What you are looking for is possible mismanagement.
Think about this, the Strata Council, or Condominium Board (depending on where you live the name of this body may vary). are in control of how your home is taken care of, what rules you have to live by etc. Imagine if this were the case with your car foe example, someone else decides when and if you should repair something, or do maintenance, and if they do not make the right choices you will be left with the cost of repair.
In many cases it is not that the councils do not have the best interest of the owners in mind, they may not be qualified or understand the issues, after all they are just volunteers putting up their time on the owners behalf. Having said that there are many coiuncils that do ther due diligence and research and do a fantastic job.
The next part of this problem is that often the councils rely on the the property managers that they hire to provide them with expertise that they lack. Of course as with anything, there are good property managers and there are not so good ones. Unfortunately it is a business and they are kind of like the mechanics we take our cars to, they know that in most cases the councils do not have the expertise just like most of us do not know how to fix our cars or what is wrong, so we must rely on what they tell us, and we all know that there are times where we are probably not getting the best information.
So how do you guard against this problem? Well the best thing you can do when buying is read through all the document very carefully, you can often tell from the minutes how the councils and managers handle the property and issues. These minutes provide a snap shot of what has taken place. Normally when buying you will be provided with 2 years of minuted which should be enough to give a fairly accurate picture. As well, your Realtor should review these documents for you as they have much more expertise in this area as they deal with it on a regular basis and have seen many things. There are also companies out there that will review these documents for you, for a charge of course.
Don’t take this step lightly, you will be living with ot for as long as you own the condo. Often you can tell more from going through this process than even an inspection. Inspections look at the current situation, with the minutes you get to look back in time.
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