Our Strata Building Managers save time and money for apartment buildings and their management committees. In some cases we have saved buildings ten or twenty times their building management costs – that’s a great investment!
How do we save our clients’ money? Reducing costs is fundamental to our philosophy, and we benefit from that by having happy clients.
Unfortunately “strata” is one of those words that seems to make quotations double and processes more complicated. Our building managers can help avoid that by monitoring costs and trades to ensure that the building is obtaining quality work at a fair price.
We can also assist by finding better ways of solving issues and keeping costs down. There is often little incentive for contractors or strata managers to do this, so having our building managers on your side can be very beneficial. Savings may be minor or major, either way they can really add up.
A simple example is that for a recent insurance renewal for a building with a Strata Building Manager, the quoted policy cost had nearly doubled. The insurance brokers report was forwarded to us and we noticed that an automatic 5% increase in building value had been applied, which is fair enough, except that it pushed the insured value a fraction over a large cost increase threshold.
We suggested that a tiny adjustment to the insured value would be of no consequence other than dramatically reducing the premium. The strata committee requested this adjustment and the policy cost dropped by about $30,000 – a nearly one third cost reduction for the same insurance cover.
In another case a quotation for a waterproofing issue in a three-apartment building was around $35,000. We suspected that the prime contractor was allowing a very large contingency for a portion of the job that was not their expertise. We suggested obtaining a quotation for that portion of the work directly from a specialist, and it came in way less expensive.
The job was then split between the two contractors and completed to a very high standard for only $12,000. The saving was very significant when shared between just three owners.
Of course, most savings are smaller than these examples, but they do add up. Not every building can make huge savings, but all our clients make some savings, including in the personal time that they no longer have to spend on building matters.
Owners and committees in each strata plan or apartment complex also have their own requirements and preferences in how to use building management services – they are completely flexible and we can help define the services that will work best for you:
