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Your Expiring Operating Agreement
Over the next few years, many housing co-operatives will see their operating agreement come to an end. This event could mean a new beginning for your co-op. You can enjoy a bright future without an operating agreement—provided you play your cards right.
Perhaps your co-op’s future includes major
Fill Your Units
You can never get back the money you lose when a unit stands empty. Whenever a member gives notice, it’s important to get the word out, which is usually the responsibility of the manager. As soon as a prospect gets in touch, your co-op needs to follow up promptly. Otherwise, they will go elsewhere.
Get Paid
Your co-operative is in the housing business, not the lending business. It has bills to pay and a building to keep up. You should keep this in mind when members don’t pay on time.
If a household doesn’t pay what it owes and moves out, the co-operative is left with a bad debt, which will have to be
Budget Well
To avoid running out of money, your co-op needs to adopt a well thought-out operating budget every year. Without one, you could find yourself facing a deficit, paying your bills late, cutting back on repairs to units and unable to update and replace worn-out building elements.
Begin the process by
Borrow Money
As you come to the end of your mortgage, or earlier, your housing co-operative may need to borrow new money. The property may need more work than the capital replacement reserve can fund. Or you may have been looking forward to updating the older elements of your buildings and units. Some co-ops
Community Housing Partnership to Deliver Transformative Housing Initiative
A national partnership of housing organizations announced today that Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) has selected its proposal to create a Community Housing Transformation Centre supporting innovation, capacity building and long-term sustainability of community housing.
This National
The End of ILM Operating Agreements
For housing co-operatives with an Index-Linked Mortgage (ILM), the expiry of operating agreements is a complicated affair – more so than for their S95 Program cousins. To understand what happens at the end of your operating agreement, begin by looking at the agreement version your co-op signed
Refreshing our Agency Reports
The Agency is currently working on refreshing our four key reports for co-ops: the Risk Report, Compliance Report, Plain-Language Financials, and the newly renamed Performance Report (previously known as the Co-op Data Report). Our goal was to make each report more accessible and engaging. We have
Your Plain-Language Financials: Needed More than Ever
Do your members understand the co-op’s audited financial statements, even with the auditor’s best efforts at explaining them? The Agency created the Plain-Language Financials so that co-op boards could answer that question with more confidence.
The idea behind the Plain-Language Financials is
Tip of the Month
Capital Reserve Balance
61% of Agency clients hold a capital reserve balance of at least $6,000 per unit. By almost doubling the amount from 2007, co-ops are nearly twice as ready to meet their future needs.