Condo Media - November 2014 - 37

include a specified number of mailings, "but when boards went over that
limit, it would mess up their budget."
Keegan says. Now, he is encouraging
boards to use e-mail as much as possible. "That is less time consuming for
the manager and less expensive for the
association - a win-win for everyone."

What You Do

Like most management contracts,
Keegan's details the responsibilities of
the manager, but it lays out the responsibilities of the board as well, specifying,
for example, that the president establishes the agenda and runs the meeting,
the treasurer reviews the financials and
summarizes them for the board, and the
secretary takes the minutes.
This conveys an important message
to board members and owners, Keegan
explains. "The trustees need to have
ownership. This helps them realize that
they are running the association. And
owners, too, see that it is the board and
not the manager pulling the strings for
the community."
Deciding what the management fee
should cover is fairly straightforward;
deciding what it should be for any
particular client is more complicated,
because properties differ in their needs
and the expectations of their owners
and management companies have to
consider both what their competitors
charge and what their clients are willing
to pay.
McBride considers many factors in
structuring his fees, but the size of a
property is not among them. Whether
the property has 50 units or 250, he
explains, the manager will spend the
same amount of time preparing for
board meetings and the administrative
structure behind the manager will also
be the same. The per-unit fee will be
different for smaller and larger communities, "but that's just the math,"
McBride says. It's not the structure of
the fee. The variables that do make a
difference, he says, are the complexity
of the site, the amount of a manager's
time it requires, and the expectations
of the board and the owners.

The presence of an on-site manager
also affects the fee. If a complex site has
a manager on site, it will require fewer
administrative resources and less of a
portfolio manager's time than a smaller
property with high expectations but no
on-site manager, McBride explains. "We
will have to spend more corporate resources to achieve the same quality of service [for the smaller property]." In many
cases, he says, "we can't be as competitive
for a 50-unit property with high expectations and no site staff as we can be for a
200-unit property with on-site staffing."

Something Has to Give

When confronted with a board that
has high expectations, complex requirements, and a limited budget for
management services, McBride will tell
them, "You need this much of a manager's time. If I lower my fee, something has to give." And when it comes
to hiring experienced managers, who
can provide quality service, McBride is
emphatic: He's not willing to give at all.
"What I pay people is fixed," he says.
Keegan responds similarly when
boards say they don't want to pay more

Condo Media * November 2014

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Condo Media - November 2014

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