We’re all familiar with personal new year’s resolutions — they offer a great way to hit the “Reset” button and work towards a goal you may have. In the same way, you can make a list of resolutions for improvements to your building that you may want to implement in the new year.
Some potential building goals for the new year could be to:
- Make capital improvements
- Improve response time with maintenance requests
- Build up the building’s reserve fund
- Fill building vacancies
- Improve building energy efficiency
- Make a long-overdue extensive repair, such as roof replacement
- Amend the building bylaws to account for a new type of problem
- Hold more building events to foster a sense of community
Once you have your building goals in mind, it’s time to consider how to implement them. The way you execute your plan will depend on the way your building affairs are handled.
If you’re the owner of a small building, you can implement these changes yourself, or with the help of your property management company. Most mid- and large-sized buildings have an HOA board that makes these kinds of decisions and then puts them up to a vote by the other building owners. If you live in a building like this, you’ll have to attend the association meetings and raise the issue before your peers so it can be voted on. For even more control, you can run for a seat on your building’s HOA board.
Either way, as the executing arm of your HOA, your property management company will have a key part to play in the implementation of these building goals. If you’re considering hiring a new property management company in 2017, we’ll be discussing some of the basics of how to request proposals in next week’s blog post.
