Over the past two years, our (WA) strata has gone from a reasonable knowledge of what has been spent on work through evaluation of at least three quotes per job to complete ignorance after a change in strata manager. Current strata manager policy is that they provide only two quotes, and do not provide job costings despite being requested to. Of course, costings can be obtained by inspecting the records, but naturally, they’re not too keen on that either. Records are the property of all owners, not the strata manager.
We narrowly avoided an instance of an unlicensed painter being used to paint the complex on the recommendation of the strata manager. It took a small amount of owner effort to discover that the painter, apparently a strata manager regular, had been unregistered for three years ….
The wheel turns towards sanity & knowledge, but it’s slow …
My point is that some work is required to manage both the job and the strata manager, and that sometimes, that work can seem pointless since the strata manager is being paid to look after that sort of thing. It’s not made easier by COO members who do not want to put in the work to manage the strata manager to ensure that we are getting value for money.