Body corporates are often misunderstood by homeowners. Body corporates provide services to body corporate residents, and body corporate residents only pay for the body corporate services they use.
This is a great way for body corp members to save money on their monthly bills. In this article, we will cover three key points about body corporations: what they do, how they work, and why you should join one!
What they do: body corporations provide a range of body corporate services, including:
- garbage collection and disposal
- water sanitation
- cleaning common areas such as hallways, stairwells, garages, and courtyards.
These tasks are often split up between the various body corporates so that they can be done more frequently or have different parts of your body corp serviced each week.
For example, one body corporate may service the courtyard every week while another body corporate services just part of it once a month. In this way, homeowners only pay for what is required from them rather than paying for an entire complex to be cleaned each day (which would cost much more).
This also means that if someone has moved out there will not be any additional work needed to be done to that body corp other than cleaning the common areas.
When you buy a house or unit in a body corporate community, it is important to understand exactly what your body corporate fees include and which parts of the process fall under the responsibility of your body corporate.
In addition, it’s equally as helpful to know about any additional costs associated with services such as pest control so you can make informed decisions when budgeting for service providers.
How they work: body corporate services are an integral part of any body corp community, and without them, body corporates cannot function.
Each body corporate’s structure is different so it may be important to research the costs associated with certain aspects of running a body corp for your particular community.
Key points:
- Body Corp fees will vary depending on what you want to include in this fee (for instance pest control or gardening)
- It’s good practice to understand these things before buying into a body corp, but if not possible then get advice from the real estate agent who sells you the property as they should know about local laws regarding body corporations.
- If there is no gardener/groundskeeper included underbody corporation fees make sure you find out who is responsible for body corporate services as they can become your new best friend or worst nightmare.
- If the body corp goes into liquidation, you may be held liable for some of those fees that were not paid to the body corporation from before
In a nutshell body corporations (or “the body corp”) manage shared spaces and assets within a community on behalf of all owners/occupiers in a strata scheme.
A lot of people don’t realize there’s an association between them and their neighbors until something goes wrong! This is why it’s important to understand what these things include at the time of buying property so it doesn’t come back to bite you later down the track when somebody leaves.
For more information on body corporate services, check online.
