10 ways to lower your levies

The old adage that you get what you pay for doesn’t always apply to levies or fees for apartment buildings. Sometimes you pay too much for what you are getting.

Generally speaking, you should be paying your fair share of all your building’s services, whether you want them or not. But are you getting value for money?

You can’t do very much on your own but how can you and your neighbours make choices that lower your levies without reducing your services (assuming you don’t want to reduce the value of your apartment).

1. Cut electricity costs in common areas.

There are so many ways of doing this from having your lift lobby and car park lights on a timer, to installing low energy lighting, to having motion-activated lights.  But don’t be tempted to go belt and braces on this. Installing low energy lights and motion activated lighting may be less cost-effective than one or the other. There are plenty of websites on this,  including a federal Department of Industry web page (yourenergysavings.gov.au) that compares the options.

2. Suck up the power of the sun

Don’t be like the dough-brained executive committee that rejected solar panels on their roof because “it would cost more to pump the water up there”. Photovoltaic systems convert sunlight directly to electricity which can be used for all the things that electricity is used for, like common area lighting, for instance.

Recent reports claim that with the improvement in efficiencies and reductions in costs, a photovoltaic system can pay for itself between six months and two years.  Circumstances differ, of course, but all you have to do is get a quote and see if the sums add up for you. The Green Strata website (greenstrata.com.au) has a stack of information on this.

Meanwhile green roofs and walls are all the rage.  Not only are they turning some of that nasty CO2 into oxygen, they keep the building cool in summer and warm in winter, which, at the very least, helps keep common property heating and cooling costs down. There’s a City of Sydney guide (greenvillages.com.au) and you’ll find the Victoria draft guide to green roofs and walls here (imap.vic.gov.au).

3. Check your water systems for waste and leaks

There’s a double whammy with water waste and leaks in apartment blocks. Firstly, there’s the addition to your common property water bills, then there’s the additional energy it takes to pump the water up to anything higher than the third or fourth floor, which is a cost to the environment.  The cumulative effect of leaks in a large building over a long time is huge.  Again, the Green Strata website is a fount of information.

4. Cover the pool

If your outdoor pool is heated, especially in winter months – get a roll-out, floating pool cover to keep the heat in overnight or when people aren’t using it.  The technology on this is improving every year so check it out, even if you have tried it before and it didn’t work.

5. Make more of your space

With the increased use of motorbikes and scooters, there’s an opportunity to rent out the little nooks and crannies of common property as allocated motorbike spaces.  The same applies to rooms that could have cages installed to be rented out for storage.

6. Communicate

If your building is paying a lot for strata managers and lawyers to argue with disgruntled or by-law breaching owners, the problem could be you.  In the 10 years of the Flat Chat column we have discovered that the most common reason for people breaking rules is that they either don’t know what they are, or don’t realise they apply to them.

For instance, how many tenants actually get given a set of by-laws, even though the law says they must? Head off problems by keeping people informed about the issues, with occasional gentle reminders of the rules and standards of behaviour expected in your community.

And find out what residents want. Apartments are changing and the kind of people who choose to live in them is changing too.  That means current residents may have different priorities from the original owners and you could be paying for services that no one wants.  It costs very little to ask, so why not do it?

7. Mediate

If, despite your excellent communication skills, things do go wrong, try to organise your own mediation before people go marching off to Fair Trading looking for a referee.  You’ll probably end up having a mediated settlement anyway, so why not cut to the chase and organise one yourself through the Community Justice Centres (cjc.nsw.gov.au).

By the way, in Victoria, strata schemes must have their own internal dispute procedures by law.  It doesn’t always work but, as Winston Churchill said, “jaw-jaw is better than war-war”.

8. Garden for fun

Some people actually like getting their hands dirty with a spot of weeding, digging and even lawn mowing.  If you are spending a lot on gardeners, think about organising supervised rosters for the green-fingered gang who miss their backyards and love nothing more than mulching.

9. Maintain and repair

Getting owners to agree to spend the money in sinking funds is almost as hard as getting them to salt the cash away in the first place.  But regular maintenance of equipment such as lifts and garage gates cuts down on operating costs (because they work more efficiently) and staves off the day when they need major repairs and renovation. Do you service your car regularly or wait till it breaks down on the Hume Highway?  And basics like painting and cleaning enhance the values of properties too.

10. Check your service contracts

Many buildings have management, cleaning and service contracts that have just rolled over from one year (and one committee) to the next.  Chances are that you could get a better service for less money by first negotiating with your existing service provider then putting contracts out to tender if that doesn’t work.

But be careful you are comparing like with like.  A strata manager, for instance, who has a low per-unit fee but high ancillary costs will be great for a building that only calls them once a year to organise the AGM.  But if your committee members are frequent phoners, you might be better off with an all-in fee than covers everything.

Finally, remember that your committee members are likely to be enthusiastic amateurs, at best, and you shouldn’t expect them to have all the answers. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t ask the questions.