Body Corporate management of your property investment
There are hundreds of thousands of management corporations throughout Australia
For many entering property investment in a multi home development for the first time, there is some confusion over Body Corporate management of your property investment and the general role and responsibilities of a body corporate.
There is a section on our website under FAQ’s that will help to clear some misunderstandings. Click here: http://propertyinvest.co/property-investment-frequently-asked-questions-faqs-information/
There are hundreds of thousands of units and townhouses across Australia, but surprisingly few people understand how they’re managed When a land title is shared between units or an apartment building, the owners of the properties make up a group called the ‘Owners Corporation’ or sometimes referred to as body corporate or Strata Corporation.
Rob Honeycombe, managing director and principal of Bees Nees City Realty in Brisbane says many buyers are relatively clueless when they buy their property investment.
“The buyer goes to a bank manager, they deal with a real estate agent and a conveyancer or solicitor, but at no point do any of them have the expertise or the time to actually explain [body corporate] to them,” he says. “Unless the buyer makes a point of asking questions, they’re not going to get the answers. The majority of buyers get through that process without having anything explained to them in terms of what a body corporate really is, how it works and what their rights and obligations are.”
As recently as this month, Lime Property Solutions was assisting a new client sort out expensive insurance they had in a property investment purchased before coming to Lime Property Solutions. The client was actually paying full insurance on the property and was surprised when it was explained that only a small amount of Landlord insurance was necessary on the property as his strata fees were already covering the building insurance.
Body Corporate management of your property investment
Some property investment clients do not like the idea of paying a strata fee for their investment property and cite house and land packages as maybe a better option. This can be false economy. Remember a big part of the cost of Strata Fees is usually building insurance so if you are in a Body Corporate there is no individual building insurance to concern yourself with. In a house and land, this cost could easily be more than $1600 per annum. Add on to this the general outside maintenance costs of house and land plus say a $10,000 to $12,000 bill for a new outside paint job and roof repair every 10 or 12 years (these ‘outside’ costs would all be covered by a Body Corporate), then a good well-ruin strata can be just as inexpensive as a property without a body corporate. Click here for full story: http://goo.gl/w5x5Nr
