DIY Strata goes online but some property owners know this already.
Nice piece from strata journalist and expert Jimmy Thomson in Domain (Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, Canberra Times)
There was a time when small strata schemes that weren’t professionally managed got by with casual chats in place of meetings, and levies reminder notes slipped under the door instead of printed invoices.
But as strata life has become more complicated, with legal obligations stacking up, the back of a ciggie packet management model just doesn’t cut the mustard any more.
As apartment buyers get more savvy, it hurts your property values when they discover there are no records and no minutes (because there have been no meetings), so the need for an easy way to manage your own building properly becomes critical.
The obvious thing is to hire a strata manager – and a lot of smaller strata schemes do just that – but there’s an economic twilight zone where unit blocks are too small to generate enough income for the strata manager to justify the time they’d have to spend managing them.
Some strata managers will tell you that a dysfunctional 12-unit block can be as much work as a 120-apartment scheme and yet they get one-tenth of the income.
But now that we are in the age of information technology, it’s a lot easier to find software to help, and there are a lot of different products to try.
One fairly recent innovation was OurBodyCorp.com.au, which was started by former Adelaide Festival director Kate Gould, who launched the website when she discovered there was little support for owners who wanted to manage their own schemes.
2 thoughts on “DIY Strata goes Online”
Aw, thіs was a really nice post. Finding the time and actual effort to geneгate a really good article so many thanks!
It’s great to find educated groups on this matter. Sounds like you understand what you’re speaking about! Thanks