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Hi Flatchatters,
First, I’d like to thank Jimmy-T for all the work he does behind the scenes to keep this site going! Strata is DEFINITELY an area where independent voices need to voice their experiences and be heard.Our little 10-unit strata is recovering from 8 years of poor management, bouncing between incompetence, inattention, indifference, pitting owners against each other, and serving the self-interests of favoured owners. Two years ago, we asked the then strata manager to give us OUR full financial information within 14 days (making sure we used lots of words from the Unit Titles Management Act) and they elected to terminate the contract with 7 days notice (the contract allowed them to terminate with 7 days notice but we had to provide them with 3 months notice). Anyway, their terminating the contract was a “win-win” as far as we were concerned!
We then signed up with a company at the premium end of the market to get things in order and “steady the ship” and this has worked out very well. Now that most of us are at least talking to each other and we want to explore ways of lowering our levies e.g. are we getting good value from the 30% commission we are paying on insurance, or can we look at options for self-managing or at least choosing the level of assistance we want or need.
Do people have recommendations (+ve or -ve) for companies or systems?
The only one that I have briefly looked at thus far is https://www.ourbodycorp.com.au
It is not just about the fees … but potential savings are a good way to get engagement (from at least some owners). OurBodyCorp offers 3 levels of service (we are currently paying $5250 pa for 10 units).
Owner controlled: $7.60 per unit per month (i.e. $912 pa for 10 units)
Admin support package: $11.60 per unit per month + $49 once only per unit setup (i.e. $1441 pa for 10 units)
Fully managed: from $24.00 per unit per month + $49 once only per unit setup (i.e. $2929 pa for 10 units)Take care,
Woodwalker
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Hi Woodwalker,
I haven’t used OurBodyCorporate, but our 14-lot building (in Sydney) has been self-managed for about seven years.
We’ve been using Urbanise, which is software aimed at strata managers, which is overkill. But having learned how to use it and paid the pretty high up-front cost for setup and training, we’re happy to stick with it. But I don’t think I’d recommend it to you, just because of the overkill.
I do like the sound of OurBodyCorporate’s different levels and would guess the admin support level is appropriate.
Although we don’t have a strata manager, we do use external building consultants and lawyers to support our self-management.
Good luck with it!
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Hello WoodWalker
If this questions is still important to you, my self-managed system is run from non-strata specific software:
- Email on my computer
- Spreadsheet and wordprocessing software (Excel, Word, Google Sheets etc)
- Personal Finance Software (e.g. Quicken, MoneyDance)
- Cloud data storage (e.g. Google drive, Dropbox, OneDrive)
It took many hours to set it up. Now it is easy to send levy notices, create meeting agenda, minutes, financial reports. If you want to go cost free self-management, you have to be very organised and experienced with the abovementioned software.
OurBodyCorp
In the beginning, I tried OurBodyCorp for one year. I took the cheapest subscription (owner controlled). I discontinued the service because the owners did not use it.
Pros:
- Easy to use. Not much technical support beyond the initial setting up.
- All owners can login and see the state of the financial accounts.
- Levy notices easy to send: With the unit entitlement information, the system calculates the levies and sends invoices to all owners at the click of a button.
- Financial reporting: This system records every transaction. You can attach documents (invoices) to a transaction. There is a summary page showing how much is spent on each category.
- Meeting agenda / minutes can be set up. The minutes let me assign actions to people and check them off when they are done.
- Noticeboard for communicating news to all members.
- By-laws and other files could be saved.
Cons:
- If an owner has paid their levies before the next quarter started, I could not adjust the levy notice easily.
- I already had MoneyDance set up with the financial records. I found myself entering the same transaction twice: once for each system. Personal finance software lets me find out “how much did we spend on xxx over the past five years?”
- As a NSW owner, I need to have a ten year capital works plan and a “Key Financial Information Statement”. I still needed to use a spreadsheet.
- Printing the agenda / minutes. There was a lot of grey background. At the time, background printing could not be turned off on my printer. It wastes a lot of toner.
Since I had to use my own spreadsheet / personal finance software anyway, OurBodyCorp was only useful for owners, who wanted to view the accounts. Since none of them did, I ended the subscription.
STRATABOX
I trialled this product because it was advertised in FlatChat. I did not pay for it. The system was still in beta.
Pros
- Easy to use
- Geared for larger owners corporations.
- Seemed to be geared for documenting communications between owners, residents, strata committee, strata manager, building manager.
- Facility for logging an issue and keeping track of what is being done to resolve it.
- by-laws could be saved. Can’t remember if other documents could be saved.
- Could set up meeting agenda / minutes
Cons
No financial information could be recorded. It would be a deal breaker for me if I can’t send levy invoices and do the financial accounting.
In conclusion, the only system which met my needs was the one I created from a couple of spreadsheets, personal finance software and a word processor. If anyone is interested in self management, I could open a thread to talk about how I did it.
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