🌟 Strata Life: Navigating Rising Costs with Smart Financial Management! 💰🏡

Strata fees are climbing, and financial management is more critical than ever! 📈 Our latest Strata Life podcast unpacks cost-saving strategies, budget planning, and legal insights to keep your strata community thriving. 💡✅

🎧 Tune in now to stay ahead with expert legal guidance on strata laws in Victoria, Melbourne! Let’s secure your financial future together. ⚖️🏢

Today's episode, I want to talk about what has been quite frustrating for strata communities, particularly owners, when it comes to raising levies and that is on financial management and rising costs. Mismanagement or insufficient funds for maintenance can absolutely lead to increasing levies or special assessments. That includes rising insurance premiums, and the cost of repair could also contribute to financial pressure. What I do recommend to committees in strata communities is to consider putting a capital fund budget, also known as reserve funds budget. I would also like to encourage strata communities to put in contingency fund. Why is it when they are passing a budget at the annual general meeting. Why is that absolutely important? So that you're not shocked throughout the year of special levies. Special levies are very upsetting. These are usually levies that are issued once off or on periodic times because a certain budget needed to be raised as a result of an incident or a circumstance. More often than not, this includes unplanned maintenance or repair or special expenses to hire an expert. Whether it's a legal or a building or engineering expert, a special levy would likely be needed. And that causes, understandably, anxiousness among slot owners. To avoid that, it's important that the strata community consider not to budget the exact amount needed for that year based on last year's budget, but to put aside money or savings for any emergencies to avoid special levies being issued. Even a contingency part of the budget, healthy would be about between 20 to 25%. So that in the event of emergencies, the Strata community could use those extra funds rather than raise a special levy. So, remember to maintain throughout the year financial health of the Strata community, put away some money as if it's savings to avoid any special levies or at least to reduce any special levies that may be needed throughout the year.

#StrataFinancialManagement #RisingStrataCosts #OwnersCorporationVictoria #StrataBudgetPlanning #MelbourneStrataLaws #StrataFeeIncreases #OwnersCorporationLegalAdvice #StrataComplianceVictoria #CostEffectiveStrataManagement #StrataPropertyInvestment #StrataLevySolutions #LegalInsightsForStrata #PropertyLawVictoria #OwnersCorporationRegulations #SmartStrataGovernance