There are plenty of ways to approach condo management and board membership that lead to all sorts of different types of success – flying by the seat of your pants, though, is not one of them. There’s no quicker path towards condo chaos than simply jumping in and attempting to handle everything as it comes without having any sort of plan of action guiding the way forward. Condo management is simply too complex for that sort of devil-may-care style of management to be successful.
While there may be the odd condo board out there that’s stumbled into success without any sort of plan or strategic approach, we certainly wouldn’t recommend rolling the dice like that to any of our partners, and instead recommend finding success through a series of well-thought-out, proactive processes.
Start Things Off Right
Being the new kid is never easy. Make the experience an enjoyable one for everyone involved by kicking things off on the right foot for new owners and existing community members alike by having an established New Owner Welcome process in place! In addition to helping break the ice with new condo owners and making them feel good about moving in, this also presents a great opportunity to get all the details, information, and paperwork the board, building and condo management service needs right off the bat (such as key financial info). In addition, having a New Owner Welcome program in place also creates the perfect opportunity to educate the new owner on the condo’s bylaws, community events, and more, ensuring that all community members are on the same page regarding responsibilities and guidelines right from day one.
Making Changes Easier
Switching condo vendors or contractors is traditionally something of a painful procedure – but with an established Vendor Transfer Program in place, the entire process immediately becomes much less of a headache. Find a method that works, map out the key actions taken, and then simply deploy that same operation every time you need to switch vendors. Mischief, managed.
Reserve Fund Studies and (ugh) Special Assessments
When it comes to reserve fund studies and special assessments, we’ve actually done the legwork for you and written at length about all the different ways to find success when navigating these complex situations within your own condo building. Ideally, having a proactive process in place for your building’s approach to reserve fund studies should keep you from having to worry about special assessments at all – BUT, special assessments are things for a reason (mostly because unfortunately, even the best-laid plans can have hiccups), and so we’ve provided as tried-and-true a process as we could to making your way through that difficult procedure through the link above, should you ever need it.
Keeping Things Trim, Tidy, and Proper
Every year, as constant as the changing seasons, there’s also the regular annual maintenance that rolls around with every spring, summer, fall, and winter. Whether it’s landscaping, window washing, leaf clean-up, or some other building-specific maintenance need, it pays to have a plan in place for all of it. Maintain an annual checklist complete with approximate booking dates, estimated costs, and reliable vendors, and simply go down the list as the year progresses, being sure to update details or information as necessary. Just like that, you won’t need to always be worrying or stressing about ongoing maintenance needs – simply follow your process, and the rest will fall naturally into place from there!
The Details of Documents
While you might not be able to schedule ahead when a condo document review might be necessary, you can certainly have a plan in place – and guess what, we went ahead and did the homework on this one for you, too! With a go-forward plan and a proactively established process in place, condo document reviews become less of a hassle and more a matter of simply going through the motions whenever they happen to come up.
Preparing for an Emergency
Emergencies are, by their very nature, unpredictable. With a little foresight, you can plan ahead and prepare for the possibility of an emergency in advance, if not for the specifics of the event itself. The best way to do this is to establish an emergency response plan for your condo building, and then sharing it out with all board members, owners, and tenants. Hopefully, this proactive step will not only help to safeguard individuals from injury – or even death – but will have the twofold effect of also mitigating damage and property loss as well.
When we lay it all out like that, you might suddenly feel like you’ve got a lot of work ahead of you in order to streamline your condo building’s processes and day-to-day functionality. Don’t panic! Our advice: identify one goal, one single process that you’d like to change, and focus in on that. Then, when you’ve got that one wrapped up and in a good spot, move on to the next piece you’d like to address. Before long, you’ll have gone through the whole list – and in the meantime, you’ll get to experience the added bonus of each item getting easier and easier to action as you tidy things up and increase efficiencies in other areas around the building.
Don’t worry if you get stuck on a particular process or implementation, just give us a shout at Edmonton condo management companies. We’ll help your condo corporation sort out whatever it’s trying to accomplish. From how to build a condo community to how to implement an emergency response plan, we’re here for you!
