Finding common ground to dance on

It doesn’t have to be that way though, and a good resident manager will strive to find the common ground on which everyone can agree.

We know you can’t please everybody all of the time, but we can try to please most people most of the time.

By Trevor Rawnsley, CEO, ARAMA

Common ground. It’s an important area in any strata scheme, and it’s also the most important area in the relationships that decide whether a Management and Letting Rights (MLR) business can succeed.

A community title scheme is like a magnifying glass of society. It can amplify so many of the good things we enjoy – good friends, beautiful views and wonderful communal amenities in locations by the beach or by a golf course that many owners could not enjoy if they were buying a suburban house.

But community title strata schemes can also magnify problems, and finding common ground with owners, tenants, and bodies corporate is essential.

Creating harmony, nipping conflict in the bud and finding an area of agreement between all parties in a scheme is essential for any resident manager who wants to minimise problems in their business. Many of our resident managers are faced with the ‘Highrise Hitlers’ or the ‘Condo Commandos’ who end up on committees. Almost everyone in the industry has met them. The saying, “Every village has an idiot and some have more than one” also applies to Community Title Schemes. Our advice is to look in the mirror and make sure that you’re not it.

Sometimes in strata you have to live alongside people who aren’t suited to living in that environment because of their personalities. It would be great for all resident managers if the committee was populated by people who were just happy to volunteer their time to help others.

But as our former Prime Minister Paul Keating famously once said: “In the race of life, always back self-interest” because it is trying to win every time.

A lot of people who cause conflict in strata schemes are angry ex-middle managers looking to assert their authority over others.

I’ve seen former school teachers on committees who think they are back at work giving orders in the classroom, and they often bring an inflexible attitude to the rules, with no deviation or compromise allowed.

“Eyes and ears to the front”. You get the same thing with some ex-police officers. If someone breaks the rules, there’s great conflict to be had and consequences to follow.

Resident managers must realise that good relationships with owners, and body corporate committees are crucial to the success of an MLR business, and they must also realise that prevention is much better than cure and much less expensive.

Someone once described a good resident manager as being “20 percent technician and 80 percent politician”. Building relationships and focusing on maintaining them is 80 percent of what a resident manager needs to do, 20 percent is keeping the place clean and tidy and putting out the bins.

Common ground is the key to a scheme running harmoniously because if a resident manager tries to run their business out of their lawyer’s office it can quickly become a very expensive business.

Disputes in body corporates can shatter lives, because like angry infections they can fester, become toxic and then burst in a horrible explosion.

Some people have a “win at all costs mentality” and in strata those tensions can multiply with the stress of living cheek by jowl, or even on top of a neighbour with whom you are in dispute.

A wise old Greek man who I respect a lot, once told me that “It is better to have a bad year in business than it is to have a bad neighbour”.

There are some who feed off tensions and thrive on disputes, encouraging clients in strata communities to fight as hard as they can and for as long as they can, all the time with the legal meter on and running up costs. I have heard one lawyer in particular boast that he will “fight hard for you until your very last dollar”. In some cases, the committee will care less for the legal costs as they are often fighting with other people’s money.

There have been some shocking examples in community title schemes where minor disputes have escalated way out of control.

There was a case on the Sunshine Coast between an owner and a committee over an unpaid $1100 levy debt that turned into a court case with over $100,000 in legal fees. Both the owner and the committee were liable for huge costs that had accumulated on their behalf.

Then there is the case that has been featured on ‘A Current Affair’ of a unit owner building a balcony and falling foul of the body corporate. It has so far cost that owner $500,000. The trouble could have been nipped in the bud for a few thousand dollars at the start of the dispute.

There was another case over a $35,000-a-year gardening agreement between a body corporate and a resident manager on the Gold Coast that ended up accumulating $930,000 in combined legal costs. Even though the resident manager was victorious there are really no winners in matters like these.

In strata communities, residents who have previously lived in a suburban house find that noise is amplified in a scheme. If someone has a party everybody hears it; even someone dragging furniture across the tiles in the upstairs apartment can spark a blazing row.

Body corporate committees are meant to maintain and enforce the schemes by-laws which are meant to govern the common area but the by-laws are sometimes unreasonable and therefore unenforceable.

Committees are sometimes populated by people who have secret and hidden agendas.

Fortunately, most people live and work comfortably and harmoniously in strata and often do so because they know how to turn the other cheek and find the common ground. They don’t have to viciously defend every slight; every piece of paper that blows across the driveway is not the fault of the resident manager. They also realise that they won’t win every argument and that they shouldn’t start arguments in the first place and should instead seek common ground.

At the moment I’m working on developing a half-day training masterclass for experienced managers that focuses on building and improving relationships in a strata title context.

It’s one of the most important skills that a resident manager must have.

A good resident manager can also be a bulwark in resolving and avoiding conflicts between other parties within a scheme or between a landlord and tenant. I took a call recently from a member who said the landlord wanted her to increase the rent by $300 a week on his unit, that’s more than a 40 percent increase.

The resident manager told the owner that the people in the unit were really good tenants, they never skipped payments, they looked after the place and they never caused trouble. But the landlord had been watching the news and saw that there were desperate people out there willing to pay whatever it took to find somewhere to rent. The landlord wanted to get rid of the good tenant they had in order to try and make more money from tenants they didn’t know.

In cases like this the resident manager has to find the common ground and manage the expectations of the landlord who wants more money, but at the same time manage the expectations of the tenant who doesn’t want to pay more, let alone 40 percent more.

In this case the resident manager explained to the landlord that sometimes getting in a new tenant that we don’t know to replace a good existing tenant that we do know and trust, was often more trouble than it was worth. The resident manager, with agreement from the landlord, sought a little more rent from the existing tenant and both the landlord and the tenant were happy with the outcome. In this case the resident manager helped both parties find common ground.

The resident manager has the landlord as a client and the tenant as a customer and she had to dance with both without treading on their toes. If a resident manager can find the common ground to dance on for all occasions, then living and working in a community title scheme will be a much more pleasant experience for everyone. And it will cost a lot less time, money and stress.