We’re all warned against “keeping up with the Joneses,” but for housing co-ops, knowing how you’re doing financially and operationally compared to your fellow co-ops is essential information.
So, to help co-ops “keep up,” the Agency created the Performance Report.
Using data from our clients’ Annual Information Returns (AIR), the report presents a co-operative’s three-year trends on such metrics as vacancy loss, arrears, capital reserve contributions, administrative spending, energy costs and more. Even better, the data is shared visually on bar graphs as well as text to view each co-op’s results compared against those of other co-ops.
Depending on the metric being compared, we group our clients into relevant peer groups, ranging from regional groupings for vacancy loss to all Agency clients for arrears and bad debts.
One particularly useful metric in the report is Housing Charges Compared to Market, which shows average market rents for apartment-style units in your area. These are compared with from CMHC’s Rental Market Report (unfortunately only apartment rental data is available). Maintaining housing charges at a level that keeps up with inflation and rising operating costs is an important lens for housing co-ops to make sure they are financial sustainable for the long-term.
If your co-op is ready to take the next step and explore the data on your own, our HomeRun online tool can be a great next step. With HomeRun, you can not only explore and see many of the same metrics in the Performance Report, but you can also customize the peer group for comparison by geographic area or co-op size and view some additional metrics such as audit fees.
Naturally, every co-op will have different strengths and weaknesses. Reports like these can’t account for things like an exceptional community life or strong member engagement.
But by using the information in the report, along with the data in our Plain Language Financials and Risk Rating Reports, your co-op will have everything you need to draw your own roadmap to financial and operational success.
To learn more about how we create the report, as well as how we chose peers for each metric, please consult the Q&A on the Performance Report available on our website.