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Am I fighting a losing battle?
No sooner than one Cleaning & Gardening contractor is terminated for poor performance, the next one proves equally bad for servicing the needs of the common property.
Are they all just bad? Am I waisting my time looking for a half decent one?
I feel like purchasing a lawnmover, whipper snipper, leaf blower etc and doing the damn thing myself!
Perhaps its getting those all in one outfits that do the cleaning, gardening & bins that is tripping me up?
It’s proving such a waste of money(thousands) when I look at the budgets for the following year.
Any tips from other committees battling this issue?
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Why not do it yourself?? You can put a proposal to the committee that you take on the cleaning and gardening and putting the bins out and get paid for it for the same amount of $$ that is being paid to the contractors. This has been done before in other strata complexes where a resident takes on those chores. All you need is an ABN and then the common property gets done properly and you get paid for it. Any complaints about poor performance then fall back on you. Things can go awry if you go on holidays and no-one else is prepared to cover you in the interim.
As an alternative, you could ask neighboring strata complexes if they recommend anyone and who they use. Our guy does nearly all of the apartments in our street. If anything needs doing, I just email the manager and he attends to it or instructs and supervises his labourer’s.
You really need to furnish the contractors with a written and agreed upon job specification which outlines exactly what their duties are,and the outcomes expected.
It cuts both ways and understanding the situation in-depth helps find a better response. We’ve had a bloke do our place for many years. He bought the run off a retiring guy who was a qualified landscaper where the new guy was a former teacher. What worked ok originally suffered in the new hands but on inquiry the committee and some owners were quick to scoff the new guys efforts but didn’t realize he was entitled to stay within the original contract terms and it’s limits, and that the committee rather than pay him more or alter his terms on proper review actually cut out some of the things they thought were not necessary. So it can be unfair to blame him if you don’t first fully understand what he has agreed to be there to do.
But anyway, in Qld at least, there is a 10 year time limit max that the same guy can extend his contract for. Beyond that the whole thing needs to go back to market, and before doing that you really should re-assess what your needs are, what tech can be now applied to make the role more efficient, what extras might be called for and who manages these, who on the committee or someone they will appoint will be capable and willing to be the contact person so too many folk don’t hound the guy, what an alternate provider may put forward, and what the general market values the work at in today’s pricing.
Over the years owner’s will pay a small fortune for this service and it’s generally, other than site insurance your 2nd most expensive annual cost, so it’s worth reviewing. Especially considering the effect it can have on the owner’s home enjoyment, site upkeep, nature of tenant the building attracts, and perceived site values that the work reflects across your whole property.
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