Originally Posted by Eff-1
(Post 9095511)
There was some chatter a few pages back about strata fees. Watch out. I'm on our council and we're going the budgeting for next year and it's pretty wild what is happening right now.
Pretty much every trade and expense that we have to budget for has increased their rates any where from 5 - 10%, on top of last year's rate increases.
We have about 160 units. 3 individual low rise buildings. One elevator per building. One outdoor water feature. One gym. One party room. Our annual operating budget is about $1M. We charge about $0.45 psf.
Out of that $1M budget, we have to cover the following off the top of my head (all of which have increased rates, or about to increase rates):
- Building janitors/on site caretaker
- Carpet cleaning quarterly
- Snow removal
- Ongoing HVAC and building controls maintenance and repairs (this is a huge expense generally, it feels like every month there's some fan or some belt in some duct or something somewhere that needs replacing)
- Fire equipment testing and repairs (another huge expense, these systems are expensive, we just had our annual inspection and they found $10k in necessary repairs and we can't say no or defer because of the fire code requirements)
- Annual window washing
- Annual dryer vent cleaning
- Annual parkade cleaning
- Landscaping (we have a large parcel of land, so lots of landscaping, including ground floor townhome gardening)
- Elevator repairs (we have a locked in maintenance contract, but the hourly rates for repairs keep going up)
- Garbage removal (another one that keeps going up, and they always are blaming the increase in tipping fees from Metro Van)
- Insurance policy was $200k last year, so about 20% of our annual budget
- Hydro for common areas
- Gas for the stoves in units
- Hot water for the building
- Internet for the caretaker
- We pay for I think 12 different phone lines. 7 enterphones, 3 elevators, the fire system, and probably another one or two i'm forgetting.
- Security cameras/key fob system maintenance and repairs
- Ongoing electrical repairs and maintenance
I'm sure I'm forgetting something else. Pretty much all of that has gone up in price.
Keep in mind our building is less than 5 years old, so this is all just ongoing maintenance of a relatively new property.
Luckily we've had a good council to date of young professionals and a tax lawyer, so we stay on top of our books and our budget planning. Last year was our first ever strata fee increase of 7%. Up to then we've never had to increase fees since the building was completed in 2020 thanks to prudent budgeting and cost management.
My biggest worry is what if a council comprises a bunch of randos who don't understand finance at all, and because of that alone, strata fees are impacted (because nobody knows what they are doing). I could see that could be very big problem for some stratas since it's all volunteer driven and the people you end up with is the luck of the draw.
The nice thing about a house is you get to control your own expenses and decide what you want to defer, DIY, etc.
With a strata you don't get that flexibility generally speaking. That's ultimately why I volunteer to be on the council, so at least I have vision and can provide input into what's going on, and am not just paying a bill without having any control over it (like you would have with a house).
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