Management Company Fee Schedule Checklist

The per-unit rate is the door charge. It’s the number in the proposal, the number boards compare across companies, and the number that determines almost nothing about what you’ll actually pay.

Everything else gets built on top of it, one line at a time, and none of it appears until an invoice does.

Why headline quotes aren’t comparable

Two companies quote $12 and $18 per unit per month. The $12 company bills separately for monthly financial statements, charges per incident for vendor coordination, treats the annual meeting as an extra, and adds a per-unit technology fee. The $18 company includes all of it.

Neither is being dishonest. They’ve unbundled differently, and unless you price the same 22 lines against both, you’re not comparing anything. This worksheet is those 22 lines, with the specific question to ask for each.

Where the money actually hides

Printing and postage. Statutory owner mailings are a legal requirement, they recur, and in a small building they add up faster than anyone expects. Per-piece pricing looks trivial until you multiply by owners times mailings times a year.

Vendor coordination. Ask whether arranging a repair is included or billed per incident — and if it’s a percentage of the invoice, understand that you’ve just given someone a financial interest in more expensive repairs.

After-hours calls. Get the per-call rate and the definition of after hours. Those two numbers together are the actual cost.

Audit or financial review. Frequently excluded from the fee and separately required by your own bylaws, which makes it a cost you owe regardless of whether anyone mentioned it.

Onboarding and termination. One is charged when you arrive and routinely omitted from the quote. The other is charged when you leave, and is far easier to negotiate before you sign than after you’ve decided to go.

The comparison that changes decisions

The second sheet puts the management company total beside a self-managed total across ten cost lines.

It’s built to be honest in both directions. Self-managed boards habitually compare a management quote against zero, which isn’t the real alternative — you still need bookkeeping, you still owe a tax return, your bylaws may still require an audit, you’ll still want legal review, and the statutory mailings don’t stop. Those lines are all in the comparison, and they need real quotes rather than optimistic guesses.

At the bottom, the sheet converts your management total to cost per unit per month. Compare that against the rate you were quoted. The gap between those two numbers is the entire reason this worksheet exists.

Then the harder question

If self-managing comes out cheaper, that’s a finding, not a decision. The follow-up is whether your board has the systems to absorb the work — the shared records, the coverage, the response times. Money saved by a board that then falls apart isn’t saved.

Ask before you take the meeting

The last page is a copy-paste email requesting the complete schedule in writing, including confirmation that nothing else applies. Send it first.

A company that will put the whole schedule in writing has told you something useful. So has one that won’t.