Relationship of strata council and the contracted providers of services are sometimes strained

Suzanne Morphet
Sun

Condo living is carefree living, right? Your strata council hires a strata management company and it takes care of the bills, the bookkeeping, the AGM, the council minutes … whatever needs to be done. For that full management service, your strata corporation pays anywhere from $20 to $30 per “door” per month in Greater Vancouver.

Since 2006, all strata managers must be licensed by the Real Estate Council of B.C.

Another reason you can sit back and relax; your affairs are in good hands.

If everything’s rosy, then why am I hearing so many complaints about strata management companies?

Let’s start with bullying. According to Tony Gioventu, the executive director of the Condominium Home Owners’ Association, “there’s a number of property managers who simply do not want [strata councils] looking for any information or scrutiny against the services they’re providing. They don’t want anybody questioning what they’re doing.”

Gioventu told me he’s been in the room when a strata manager has threatened a strata council by saying, “‘you belong to a (condo owners’) association, we are not going to manage your property.”

Here’s another complaint, this time from an owner. But since I can’t verify the information, I’ve taken out names.

“We as a council have had lots of problems with [strata management company] awarding contracts without quotes, etc., etc. The last thing they did was give themselves $1,000 more a year for management fees at the last AGM and it was not mentioned at the AGM and was picked up a month after the meeting. The rep from [the insurance company] stated that if we left this strata management company our insurance premiums would go up thousands of dollars. They work like a good cop, bad cop.”

Of course, not all strata management companies are unscrupulous or unprofessional. Maybe -hopefully -only a very tiny fraction are. But as the adage goes, one rotten apple spoils the whole barrel. And strata management is a big barrel.

As of last week, 302 brokerages and 1,045 individuals were licensed to provide management services in the province. (As with realtors, managers must operate under a licensed managing broker.) They offer their services to strata councils who represent the owners of almost half a million homes in the province.

A strata corporation is not obligated to hire a manager, but it’s estimated that somewhere between 50 and 60 per cent of stratas in B.C. pay someone to help them manage their affairs, even if it’s only a bookkeeper. However, most — about 80 per cent — want and pay for a complete management package.

The strata management industry has its own association, the Strata Property Agents of British Columbia, with over 90 members.

I asked executive director Kevin Thom about the industry and whether he personally thinks there are weaknesses in the law that account for the wide-ranging complaints I’ve been hearing. His response?

“The entire industry has been self-regulated. Has it received the attention of governments that are necessary? Most likely not … I think the regulation that’s out there is getting better, it has never been a top priority of any government, I don’t care, Liberal, NDP or otherwise, it just has not been.”

So what does that mean for strata council members who just want to get on with their carefree life and without their current strata manager? “It’s a free marketplace,” Thom says.

In other words, shop around.

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This entry was posted on Saturday, April 24th, 2010 at 9:02 am and is filed under Strata Information. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.