Just elected to the condo board: your first 90 days

Nobody will hand you an induction pack. What you know about your building in three months depends on the questions you ask this week.

The meeting is over, your name is in the minutes, and then nothing happens. That is the shared experience of almost every new board member: no training, no induction pack, no handover. You become a board member the day you stop waiting to be told how.

Here is what fits into three months, and what shapes the quality of the whole term.

Week 1: understand what you are, and what you are not

The board assists the manager and monitors their management. It advises, it checks, it raises alarms. It does not decide in the meeting’s place, and it does not administer in the manager’s place.

That limit is not a frustration, it is a protection: everything you do inside it leaves you unexposed. See the board’s role and its members’ liability.

Week 2: appoint a chair and divide the ground

Members elect a chair among themselves. They coordinate, centralise and speak to the manager — with no authority over the other members. A board with no appointed chair is a board nobody addresses documents to.

Then split the subjects: accounts, works, contracts, resident communication. A board where everyone follows everything is a board where nobody follows anything.

Weeks 3 and 4: ask for the documents

This is the most profitable step of the term, and the most neglected. Ask in writing, as one list, for what lets you understand the building.

• The by-laws and the schedule of division.
• Minutes of the last three general meetings.
• The last approved accounts, with their annexes.
• The list of live contracts, with renewal and notice dates.
• The latest surveys and the maintenance log.
• The arrears position, by amount and by age.

Most of those should already sit on the manager’s online space. If it is empty, that is your first useful finding: see the condo extranet.

Month 2: read the building, not only the paperwork

A board member who only walks the building when something breaks will find problems too late. One methodical walk-through is enough to spot what will cost in two years: roof, façades, basement, plant room, ventilation, lighting.

See the annual walk-through checklist and the maintenance log. Take photos: in two years a dated photo beats any memory.

Month 3: look at the accounts before they become urgent

Checking accounts goes badly a fortnight before the meeting, with papers discovered the night before. Start now, with nothing at stake: this is when you can ask naive questions without blocking a vote.

See reading the five accounting annexes and checking the accounts.

A useful board is known not by what it contests, but by what it read before everyone else.

The three first-year mistakes

• Committing an expense or instructing a contractor: not your role without a voted delegation. See delegating powers.
• Becoming the manager’s after-sales service to residents, without ever writing anything down.
• Keeping everything in your personal inbox: the next term will start from zero.

The third costs most over time. A building loses its memory at every board renewal, and pays twice for the same surveys. See the handover.

What you can bring in year one

You need be neither a lawyer nor an accountant. Three contributions are enough to change how a building runs: write down what is decided, keep a list of open incidents, and inform residents at regular intervals.

None of those requires special skills, and they separate a board that endures the meeting from one that prepares it. See communicating with owners.

Start your term with CoproHarmony

CoproHarmony gives the board a shared space from day one: documents, incidents, decisions and exchanges in one place, passed on to the next board. Create your free space.