self-managed condo?
I’m thinking about buying a condo in a 9 unit sponsor building. One stipulation in the contract is that the building will be self-managed, unless the condo board chooses to hire a manager. Since nobody has moved in to the building yet there’s no existing condo board. Of course the board could choose to hire…
I’m thinking about buying a condo in a 9 unit sponsor building. One stipulation in the contract is that the building will be self-managed, unless the condo board chooses to hire a manager. Since nobody has moved in to the building yet there’s no existing condo board. Of course the board could choose to hire a building manager, but maintanence would then naturally go up. Does anybody have experience self-managing their condo building? Is this common? Does it work? I envision all sorts of complications. But one less expense, too…
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I bought in a 15 unit condo a few years ago. We have been self managed for the majority of the time. We did hire a management company for a while though. They were a nightmare! They really just didn’t care much about our small building and made a lot of mistakes.
We realized that we were better off saving our money and self managing. We happen to have an accountant and another owner who is quite skilled in home repair. It works out nicely. We have hired one of the owners who is going back to school to serve as the super. He’s pretty dedicated to preventative maintenance so it works out well.
I think self managing is a good option for small buildings. When we did have a management company we just ended up managing the management company.
Leah
curiositykilledthecat:
What maintenance company do you use? What do you pay them per month?
Listen to Meredith’s warning before you consider my thoughts. I’ve posted on this topic a few times, if you want to look in the archives. In summary, presuming your building is mostly sold, and mostly owner-occupied, I recommend self-management.
We bought about 6 years ago in a 6-unit condo. We have been self-managed and 100% owner occupied since the beginning, and it really works extremely well for our building. Our common charges remain at $200 per month & have had just one assessment (had to replace the ENTIRE roof–new construction, crappy contractor, therefore not a surprise).
We hire a maintenance company to take the garbage to the curb, clean the common areas, and shovel snow, but the business of our little organization here is run by the owners. We trade off with the board positions, and all but one apartment pulls their weight (5 out of 6 is fine with us!).
The upshot is that, at the end of the day, we all have a very personal interest in how things go, and what we have to pay, and the general upkeep of the building. As such, it goes quite well. We even had an emergency a few weeks ago, when the water main from the street broke, leaving 1/2 of the building without water. We circled the wagons and had the repair bid out, done and paid within 60 hours (even though it happened at 4:00 pm on a Friday).
Good luck~
My husband and I bought a condo that is self managed last April 2008. The developer was able to sell 4 of the 8 apartments and then the economy really tanked. He ended up renting out the other 4 units. We were fairly lucky in that the renters are pretty ok to deal with. The down side of this is that nothing has happened yet in regards to forming an association etc. We were supposed to pay maintenence fees to the dev until the association was formed and to this date we’ve paid nothing. The reason for this is that the dev doesn’t really have his stuff together. We’ve contacted the dev several times to get the association going but they’ve been pretty delayed in getting back to us. The 4 owners handle the garbage/recycling and it’s not too bad but really we believe the dev should be doing it. In short, it really depends on who else ends up in your building on how things will turn out. We’ve talked about hiring a management company but none of us really want to pay that much for this service and in our case it would mean that we have to collect money from the dev since he still owns 50% of the building. I don’t know if this helps but I hope it sheds some light on how things could turn out.
Not an expert but the contract is probably just stating the obvious as per the offering plan, as I’m sure the developer would like to move on. For large developments, boards are usually formed and day to day running is transferred to it once 50% of the units are sold. I would be worried if your contract says the building will be self managed after just the first sale? A no frills 9 unit condo should be relatively easy to self manage by a board BUT, like everything else in life, you would only know for sure once you’re doing it but if it’s too much of a hassle, there are a few companies that specialize in managing small rental/coop/condo buildings at “reasonable” prices.