Depending on the size of the building, the day-to-day operations that keep a building running can be incredibly complex. Homeowners associations, themselves staffed by volunteer condo owners, sometimes find themselves in need of assistance in successfully carrying out these crucial tasks. That’s where a competent property management company can come into play.
A property management company can successfully take over building operations and allow the association to get back to doing what it does best: governing and supporting its owner base. Fully integrated property management includes components of: customer service, financial planning, payment processing, property maintenance, legal compliance, and many other aspects. A lot happens behind the scenes, which condo owners are often unaware of.
Let’s take a look at what property managers really do each day to keep properties running:
Financial matters
A property manager’s financial responsibility spans much farther than just solidifying the building’s annual budget. For instance, it also includes project financing, collecting assessment fees in a timely manner, invoice reviews and processing, Association and Owner ledger audits, financial statement compilation, reimbursements, tax return preparation, account reconciliations, and more.
Keeping in touch
Your property manager also becomes the main point of contact for owners in the building, handling all questions, concerns, queries, and even emergencies. Property managers normally field hundreds of calls, emails, and resident requests from clients each day. These include account queries, complaint submissions, sales/ rentals/ moves/ delivery requests, ledger questions, contact requests, service requests, scheduling, etc. Overall, this means a lot of calls and emails owners don’t have to worry about.
Maintenance and repairs
Experienced property managers evaluate building needs years in advance, and also have great relationships with reliable and trustworthy vendors, which allows them to handle all maintenance or repair issues promptly. When a property management company reaches a certain size, vendors become interested in working with them, instead of the other way around. A property manager can put out a Request for Proposals and wait for the pitches from vendors, which greatly reduces the amount of time it takes to evaluate different offers. In the long run, this can save owners money.
Legal matters
We always stay on top of the latest building codes and legal matters as well — Illinois Condo Law as well as Association governing documents are constantly being upheld and enforced behind the scenes without too much visibility to owners.
The work of a property manager encompasses all things related to the building, from collection of association fees and building maintenance, to landscaping and security. When a property management company does its job well, many of these activities happen behind the scenes with residents completely unaware.
All of the above mentioned tasks are probably things you as the owner of a condo would prefer not to have to think about. Even condo boards find it challenging to deal with them, and this is exactly a part of the value a property management company offers with its expertise — solving problems before they even happen.
If you want to know more about how a property manager can help your association, contact us today! With more than 200 buildings managed since 2003, we know how to take care of your property as if it was our own.
