Expensive Repairs

Our 44 unit condo has to have extensive repairs-new roof, siding, decks windows, structural upgrades and is projected to cost around 4 million dollars! The Board has engaged an architect to draw it up and manage the project. Is it necessary to have all of these people involved that take a significant fee? Even the management company wants in on the act to the tune of $35,000.00 to "manage and coordinate" the project with the architect and General contractor, which is expected to take a year. How do we know as owners if all of these extra fees are necessary? Why doesn't the board simply contract out the individual jobs to be done nad save some money? Am I paranoid here, or are we being taken advantage of??

You are definitely being paranoid. Boards are assembled of volunteers with varying degrees of expertise. There are precious few communities so lucky as to have someone so talented on the board as to have the time to find and hire, and supervise contractors while being knowledgable of City, State, and Federal codes, local hiring practices, union rules, insurance coverage practical knowledge of local contractors...... No! You cannot leave all this to the individual contractors.

In a project this large, clever contractors could easily milk an extra $400,000 to $600,000 dollars of your money out of it, and you would never know it. They could further incur similar overruns, and be coming back with half-finished work and asking for more money besides.

You hire these "expert" people because you will get better work done for your money, and you will get what you are trying to buy. And frankly, they will help you figure out just what you do want to buy and what you should be paying for it.

Your management company, too, will be undergoing much additional work, and deserves to pay for it. The hundred thousand or so you spend on all this expertise is peanuts compared to the risk you are taking without it. Think of it as insurance.

You don't want a bunch of well-meant inexperienced volunteers throwing darts at the phone book to pick contractors or hiring their relatives or or friends who have never touched anything this large. That's $4,000,000 of your money you want your board to gamble with. They are clearly doing the prudent thing here.

You might approach them in a spirit of becoming informed and of helpfulness, rather than second guessing and suspicion. They will need a lot of help in this project. Few people in their lives will be responsible for anything larger.

Good luck

Melissa:

With something as significant as what you are talking and with structural modifications an architect is a must IMO. They are knowledgable of building codes, etc., that you need to follow. Yes they do cost money, but in the end I think it is money well spent to make sure you follow codes and have a structurally sound unit.

As for your management company...that is debateable. Someone from the HOA side needs to be at the table to make decisions and protect the HOA. Is the MC the best person, I don't know. I do know there are typically a lot of meetings and a lot of time ate up with a project of this size and magnitude. Could it be accomplished by a volunteer, perhaps. Those are decisions your HOA needs to make.