There is more to real estate management than meets the eye. Owning real estate property, whether for commercial or residential purposes, comes with a huge responsibility. Besides ensuring timely payment of all taxes and any other rates, you’ll also have to shoulder the maintenance of the property.
Although some people choose to run their real estate establishments independently, it’s never a walk in the park. If you’ve got other daily commitments, it becomes more challenging. How about if you’re not staying in the property? What if you’ve rented it out? Whether you’ve got other commitments or not, a time comes when you’d consider the services of a strata manager to help you in undertaking real estate management duties.
Strata management has become quite widespread in Australia, with more property owners choosing it over independent management. A strata manager will take so many responsibilities off your desk, making it easier for you to focus on what you do best.
Before we delve deeper into why you need strata management services for your real estate, let’s first get a clearer understanding of what strata is.
Table of Contents
What are Strata?
Strata is a concept in real estate in which one or more people share a property’s ownership. For example, if you buy a single unit in an apartment, you get far-reaching rights to the unit. In reality, you gain more rights beyond the unit you’ve purchased. You earn automatic rights to the property’s shared amenities like the parking lot, the swimming pool, outside toilets, gym, stairs, elevators, and more. While making the purchase is straightforward, managing these shared spaces and amenities is a tall order, especially if the management isn’t centralised.
And that’s where strata management comes in.
Why You Need Strata Management
Having understood strata, it’s now clearer why strata management is critical. Not every co-owner will take their day in the month to undertake the cleaning and general maintenance of the property. How about if you only use a few and not all the shared services? How about the handling of the administrative responsibilities relating to the whole property? By putting such things into consideration, it becomes apparent that there is a need to seek a strata manager’s services.
With a strata manager, you can focus on specific responsibilities that relate to your unit. You’ll only focus on taking care of your private cleaning, while a strata manager undertakes the bulk of the work relating to rates, taxes, compound cleaning, among other maintenance tasks.
Here are three main areas in which strata management comes in handy.
Administrative Duties – The administration of real estate property involves so many things, including record keeping, insurance management, maintenance, and, where there are tenants, tenants management.
Tenant Management – Whether residential or commercial, tenants require regular communication and a way to air their grievances. A strata manager will help you with the communications, enactment of rules, conflict resolutions, and overseeing tenant meetings and social gatherings.
Financial Management – Every property management attracts costs. A strata manager will help you with budgeting, invoicing and receipting, insurance filing, and more.
Once these services are taken care of, you’ll receive more room to focus on the things you love. That makes it possible for you to own multiple units in different places, confident that the strata manager will take care of your tenants.
If you’ve got shared property ownership, consider soliciting the services of a strata manager.
