Do you know what you’re paying your strata manager? Hint: Its not your entire levies bill that’s for sure! But it might be more than you know. We show you inside how strata businesses work.

Strata management can feel like a necessary evil. A grudge purchase if you will. Not something you want to pay for, but hey, what’s the alternative? Doing all the work and carrying all the risk yourself.

We get it. But your strata manager can make a real difference to your strata ownership experience. A good strata manager will make your strata life easy, and who doesn’t want that? A good strata manager will also offer you value for money. Which doesn’t always mean the cheapest. This is our guide for understanding if your strata manager is offering you value for money.

There are different ways strata management businesses make revenue. Typical revenue streams are:

1. Base management fee: an annual fee, usually paid monthly, to undertake agreed tasks.
2. Disbursements: these can vary greatly and can include everything from a charge to every email sent or paper scanned, to recovery of costs such as postage or banking fees.
3. Additional/Schedule B fee: this is for service, charged at either a fixed rate per task, or an hourly rate, for work not included as an agreed task or service.
4. Commissions: Usually insurance, but these can extend to other services as well such as energy broking, reports and other professional services.
5. Adjacent services: Strata agencies may also own, or partly own adjacent service businesses such as insurance broking, building management, property management or remedial services.

Different strata management companies will structure their fee services differently.

For example, some may offer what appears to be a low base fee, but the level of included services is very low.

Other might include email correspondence in the base others, other will charge for every call and every email.

The different fee structures are not right or wrong, but they might not be the right fit for your building.

To understand what your strata manager actually charges your building, you need to analysis the transaction or payment list, as well as your strata management contract. Look for payments made to them, add it all up.

Strata Management is important, and strata managers need to be paid, and paid fairly for the services they provide, the risk they carry and the advice they give. But those fees and charges need to upfront and transparent. So if you don’t know what you’re really paying your strata manager…ask!

If you’re looking for a way to compare management proposals, we’ve prepared a template you can use to request proposals from strata managers, you can access it her