What’s involved in the O/C making decisions? When I was on the Executive Committee at the time when our Plan last used the services of a Strata Manager (SM) all we did was to “approve” what the SM put before us based on his recommendations; about 10% of the work that the SM did to manage the entire Plan.
We didn’t pay “peanuts” either – I just checked the Agenda of our 2005-6 AGM, the last one before we resolved to self-manage. At that time we’d paid the SM $10,202.23 comprising their Management Fee $6,068.96, Disbursements $3,841.77, and Legal (payment reminders prepared by them) $291.50. At the time, the above amounts paid to the SM represented just over 30% of our total expenditure for our 27 Lot Plan.
A damn lot of money for an “administrator”, and even though he was more than that, we discovered post self-management that the SM had put Motions on past Agendas that we’d resolved by simple majority instead of as a Special Resolution, had tax returns prepared without showing sundry income, and his Office had late-paid so many E/C approved invoices that many Contractors simply wouldn’t quote on work that his Office put out.
Whilst there are SMs out there who will competently manage in the way that I still believe many O/Cs expect, it’s every O/C to their own; we’ll stick with self-management where I have but one Plan to worry about, and where we save ourselves a packet.