Wayne Hewitt often tells people that the role of strata management is a bit like the Royal Family.
“We don’t make the decisions, but we do engage, listen and provide guidance, experience and knowledge to point our communities in the right direction,” he said.
“Like many in our industry I fell into strata management from elsewhere – in my case property management – and I enjoy the opportunity to help people every day.
“This might be resolving issues relating to parking, pets, noise or building maintenance through to the application of legislative matters and assisting body corporates to achieve more favourable valuations that will save them in costs.
“By providing our strata communities with high quality service, their problems can be resolved more quickly, good financial management can reduce the need for unplanned levies and the right solutions can be found.”
Wayne is Partner at Archers Body Corporate Management in Queensland. He is working closely with his team to implement changes to strata legislation in his state that will take effect from March 2021.
“While not the total overhaul our industry had been advocating, we are about to see a major update to Queensland’s Body Corporate and Community Management Regulations,” he said.
“Many of the changes have been inspired by Covid-19 including the use of new technologies such as electronic voting.
“Archers Body Corporate Management is already seeing the benefit of this approach. Since the start of Covid-19, we have experienced multiple improvements to our meeting processes by using StrataVote.
“StrataVote makes it much easier for our clients to engage in the voting process and we have seen a 20-30% increase in participation rates.
“It’s much easier for property owners to click a link in an email versus the old days of receiving and returning a physical voting form in the post.
“StrataVote tallies the votes and presents the information back to us. Our meetings run faster and the transition has been flawless.
“Changing legislation and Covid-19 is challenging industry stereotypes by showing that strata managers do so much more than attend meetings and manage accounts.
“Our role as a source of information, applying changing regulations and introducing new technologies is demonstrating the value we provide.”