August 2023
There is no disputing the benefits of high-rise condominium living. Convenience, no-maintenance amenities and socialization are at the top of the list. The condo board puts in many hours to make the high-rise home enjoyable for everyone.
Keeping everything in good condition requires more effort than most realize. There are contracts to monitor, read and approve. Engineering reports need to be reviewed. Project and contractor quotes are solicited and considered. Budgets are prepared, invoices approved, meetings attended and meeting minutes produced. New directors quickly learn that there is much more to condominium management than they realized. Demands on condo directors exceed their available time.
Many communities operate in a disorganized manner at great cost. Primary problems are lack of good records which slow down information gathering. Decision making slows down and quality of decisions degrade. Consider what occurs at board meetings. An agenda is created. Material is gathered and distributed. Something new raised at a meeting requires research and deliberation in order to make an informed decision. Far too often, necessary information is just not available, so boards create action items in an attempt to obtain the information they require which can take weeks or months.
Finding information that should exist is a constant challenge. That reserve fund study from three years ago. Meeting minutes about continuing water leaks that began five years ago. Days pass from when a condominium manager is asked to find documentation to when it is searched for and eventually found. It can take weeks before a required document has been found even if it had been sent to multiple people dozens of times in the past. Digging through filing cabinets, storage boxes and e-mails, or reviewing board meeting minutes is laborious and time consuming. This should all be unnecessary simply to re-share information.
Many communities lack necessary information on their building. Prior maintenance and repair histories, reports on problems, past board decisions and reasoning may all be lost in a vast disorganized storage system that is impossible to sift through. Boards are forced to revisit matters previously discussed and decided on without benefit of now inaccessible records. Projects move slowly and poorer decisions are made because records are unavailable. Problems compound as board members and condominium managers change with no way to transfer their knowledge.
There is a misconception that condo fees can never go down. If boards were more organized, this would be possible. Fewer employees repeatedly searching for the same information leaves less time to do actual work. Boards would make better decisions if they had access to better information from their internal records. When equipment fails, knowing if it is under warranty could save on repair and replacement costs. Lack of records makes it impossible to know if work was done by subpar vendors.
Condo boards should have more insight into, and control over, their expenses. It should be easier to plan and track projects, review expenditures and make better decisions. Less time should be spent on maintenance and more time planning improvements.
Imagine how much faster things would proceed, and decisions made, if records were better organized and in a central place so that all information could be found in minutes rather than hours, days or weeks. Some of this is achieved by making information available to owners through condo management software or a website.
Solutions are available. Information available to owners and residents can be organized and made available using condo management software or apps. Information intended for the board and management can be maintained with proper password security. Time taken to properly organize information and records can potentially save thousands of dollars monthly by reducing service calls, freeing up condominium manager time from fielding information requests, leveraging warranty coverage, and better decisions.
