#52587
SMG
Flatchatter

    We managed to sack our Strata Manager after 22 years and the benefits have been huge  It was a huge effort and many people were convinced that the world would fall apart if we messed with this admin function. Breaking up the cozy little set-up was the goal and amazingly we finally did it.

    We had a big barrier to convince the majority of our 137 lots and the worries of the sister SP as there is a lot of shared common property and there was a misconception there were benefits to having the same SM Company and Manager, we are no seeing how wrong they were.

    We managed this by using a Strata Manager Broker out of Melbourne. He provided us with the base questionnaire of 130 questions and we added 50+ of our own, this template and knowing we had all the basics covered was really useful. He also provided a spreadsheet to compare the costs/inclusions of the final three we considered, which gave us a one-page overview everybody could understand).

    The benefits of using a SM Broker included him providing 5 qualified contenders (we approached 3 others independently), a 3-month waiver of strata fees with the new SM (if provided by the broker), and a lot of support and advice about the process and dealing with the desperate misinformation coming from the soon-to-be-outed SM when they realized they were indeed losing a cash cow into the future.

    Once we decided on the new SM we had a committed team member who knew the ropes and got us over the line and the vast majority of the owners voted for the change.