Get Home Earlier One Night a Week

The results are in. A strata manager with about 800 lots gets 3 to 4 questions a week about who is responsible for damages to the lot and common property. Let’s call it 3 to be conservative.

Also, let's assume that 2 of the 3 enquiries can be answered quickly. Strata managers have experience with common problems, like a burst dishwasher hose.

That leaves one a week that’s problematic. How much work does that take to resolve for no extra fee?

Experience shows that the problematic repair issue will likely involve a tenanted lot and a property manager. The fight becomes: Will your owner or mine pay this bill? The fight can go on for months.

Recently I helped my uncle with one of these. By the time I got involved, his property manager had been locking horns with the strata manager for 7 months. They were no closer to resolving the problem than on the day of the water ingress. Meanwhile, mould has grown, and the tenant has vacated. The unit was empty and uninhabitable.

A postmortem of the correspondence showed the usual problem. The parties had become fixated on the wording of the insurance policies. They could have gone to the strata plan to determine who was responsible. First ask who, then ask how. Who’s responsible comes before how will this bill get paid.

For our Strata Operating Procedure for Maintaining and Repairing Common Property, I have devised this formula -

Who = W1 + W2 + W3 + W4

Where:

Who = Who pays for the cost of repairs, maintenance, and any consequential loss or damage? (Refer to the subdivision plan to find the location of the break or disrepair. Check if it is on lot or common property.)

And

W1 = What has broken or fallen into disrepair? (Relevant to who’s responsible for costs and damage)

W2 = Where exactly is the cause of the break or disrepair located? (Determines who’s responsible for the cost and damages)

W3 = When was the break or disrepair first noticed? (Relevant to any possible insurance claim and time limits for suing responsible parties)

W4 = Why has the break or disrepair occurred? (Relevant to insurance cover)

So, how does this save at least 3 hours a week on these matters? Answer - make the lot owner or property manager do the work.

In business today, hardly anything gets done without consumers doing half the work. For these cases, I recommend a form that requires all the 4 W’s to be answered before the claim is progressed.

Try it, and get home earlier at least one night a week.