If you’ve ever owned apartments or townhouses in a complex; chances are your life has been made easier by a strata management team, often without you even knowing it!
That’s because strata managers work behind the scenes, in consultation with the owner’s committee, to keep your complex or apartment block ticking along smoothly.
The strata management role can be varied and challenging, depending on the nature of the issues at the particular strata property.
Let’s take a look:
When Everything is Going Smoothly…
In an ideal world, all owners and tenants in a strata scheme get on perfectly and share identical goals and values about the property.
If this is the case at your strata property then you’re very lucky! It means your strata management team can get on with the task of effectively administrating the property. Property administration involves a host of tasks including, but not limited to:
- Organising and coordinating repairs and maintenance - this includes reactive and cyclical maintenance on all common property. At Strata United we consider it part of our job to ensure that only the best trades people work at properties we manage.
- Ensuring the strata scheme is safe - this includes standard tasks like making sure regular fire testing is carried out; and that ‘high-risk’ facilities like pools and lifts are maintained and compliant with safety requirements. It also means addressing new or unanticipated safety issues.
- Administrating AGMs and committee meetings – a strata management team will effectively make the whole process of AGMS and committee meetings as simple as possible for the strata committee. This means they will create and distribute agendas and minutes (after consultation), set dates for meetings, organise the venue and issue invites.
- Keeping a register of owner payments and issuing (plus paying) all invoices relating to common property, including insurances
When Things Get Tricky…
Your strata management team has two key tasks which don’t always endear them to misbehaving residents. These tasks are:
- Ensuring residents abide by all rules relating to use and access of common property
- Ensuring residents and owners abide by rules which apply within their own personal property
As you can imagine this can be a thankless and challenging task. Two of the most common issues that arise within strata schemes are:
- Breaches of pet restrictions – for the benefit of all strata residents, strata schemes have restrictions on the number, type and size of pets which can be kept. Unfortunately these restrictions are not infrequently violated! Imagine your strata scheme’s by-laws say no dogs over 10kg are allowed and one owner is observed to have purchased a Great Dane (and fallen in love with it!). It requires high-level diplomatic skills on the part of your strata manager to reach a satisfactory resolution.
- Parking breaches in common areas – Parking is often a hot button issue in strata schemes and it can get ugly! Some residents may feel they’re entitled to take up visitor parking space for their second car. Others may think parking in disabled parking spots is perfectly acceptable. Again your strata manager will need to engage all their diplomatic and negotiation skills to resolve parking disputes.
We hope this article has helped you appreciate the diverse and complex role of your strata management team.
For a premium, personalized and friendly strata management service; contact Strata United today.