One of the top questions that we get asked is “how many properties do your strata agents manage? “

The answer is, like most things, IT DEPENDS.

What are the Top 5 factors that go into determining a strata managers portfolio size?

1. Service level required: some buildings we manage are limited services such as financials only/ or financials plus AGM, etc. A small building of 8 units only requiring financials is not a huge workload compared to a 200 unit building with full management services, but both are technically one building in an agents’s portfolio.

2. Maintenance requirements: some buildings are undergoing elevator modernizations, repiping projects, envelope work, etc. These can be extremely time consuming to manage when compared to a newer building with very little capital upgrades that are required.

3. Warranty issues. Newer buildings with warranty issues can be extremely time consuming as well. There are always warranty issues, and sometimes Insurance claims required, which can take up a lot of time!

4. The number of meetings per year. This can be a huge factor in determining just how busy an agent is going to be. We try to ensure that our agents only have a maximum of 2 meetings on average per week. Any more than this, and a work/ life balance becomes more difficult.

5. Common areas and amenities. The amount of common space can determine how much time a building will consume. Does the building have elevators, swimming pools, amenity rooms, gyms, etc? Or are they townhouses with very little common area? For this reason, buildings with few common areas can be much easier to manage, and take up far less time.

Bonus 6th factor in determining the size of a strata agent’s portfolio;

6. Number of units. This one is really important. The number of units will correlate to how many phone calls and emails an agent will receive. If you manage 1000 units, and even 10% of your client base decides to email you that day, that could be 100 emails that you potentially have to manage, on top of everything else the strata manager has to juggle. No easy task, even with a good administrative team behind you!

As you can see, rather than asking the standard question: how many properties do your property managers and strata agents manage, you might be better off asking some of the above questions instead to dig a bit deeper.

Looking for some help with your Vancouver strata management needs? Please reach out to us here today!