Do condo associations need property managers?
Finding the right property manager for your condo board
When a condo association hires a property management company, the entire goal is to lighten the load of the condo board and to properly take care of the needs of the condo association. Some companies are worth every dime they make. Others need to shut down immediately and find a new career path. The tough part is you will not be able to tell who is who until you actually work with the company.
As a renter of both apartments and a condo, I vaguely understood how property management companies worked. But when most of your communication is with a landlord or a condo unit owner renting out her unit, renters don’t really have much interaction with the property manager. Renters barely interact with other condo unit owners. There’s no reason to because the landlord is supposed to handle any repairs, outages and concerns that a renter may have.
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But when you’re a condo unit owner and paying assessments, the management fees for the property management company are included in that monthly fee. So if you get a bum deal on a property manager, you’re probably going straight to the board to fix this issue. (Depending on the bylaws, the condo board would usually decide when to hire and/or terminate the agreement with contractors. Some condo associations may choose to have a two-thirds vote though, which can make working with contractors cumbersome, depending on how active the condo unit owners are.)
Recommended Read: “Should landlords accept more than checks and cash? ~ In a digital world, landlords and property managers need to become more tech savvy”