As the Habs played today and scored, I was stuck in a 3 hour meeting discussing my condo building’s budget, audit, inspection and all the woes of the loudest ones there.

Frankly, it was hell.

From my 3 hours of undisputed pain, I must say, there must be quite a bit of money made in the business of managing condo buildings. Here is my reasoning from today’s observation:

1. There is a surplus of condo buildings right now, especially in my city because of the suspected trend that most baby boomers will get tired of their big, old homes (in need of big repairs) and opt out for the condo instead. Whether or not this induction holds true, remains to be seen… quite frankly, I still see plenty of “For Sale” signs out there for condos.

2. Having a group of condo owners volunteer to be the building administration and management is difficult because of all the work entailed. It is likely that there will only be 1 or 2 who volunteer and then through the process of managing and working to maintain the building, inevitably get stuck with the job because without replacements, they cannot just walk away since it is real estate that they possess (if only by XX%). These select few will inevitably go crazy.

3. But say the building manages to produce a few volunteers for the job, the chance of this select few to actually get along with each other and to work in an effective manner towards the well-being of the building … is low. Hence, there will be conflicts which will lead to a few of the select few to walk away and then we arrive at situation #2.

So from all of this, it is to say that after a year of handling the management, it is highly likely that a condo building association would like to subcontract. Whether it be subcontracting all of the cleaning, the machinery maintenance, handling of the bill payments, one of these or all of these or a few of these, external management will likely be hired.

Given #1, I wonder if these external management companies/”consultants” enjoy a lucrative niche?

Here is to hoping that my building will not fall into category #2 or #3.