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Buenos Aires expenses increased more than 160% in one year and more increases are expected due to electricity and gas rates - Infobae
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Las expensas porteñas aumentaron más de 160% en un año y se esperan más subas por las tarifas de luz y gas
El impacto de los costos de limpieza, seguridad y mantenimiento. Para reducir los gastos, expertos sugieren varias recomendaciones y la transición de resúmenes impresos hacia la modalidad digital, el valor del papel también registró un notable aumento interanual
www.infobae.com
January 11, 2024
The impact of cleaning, security and maintenance costs. To reduce expenses, experts suggest several recommendations and the transition from printed summaries to digital mode, the value of paper also registered a notable year-on-year increase
By José Luis Cieri
Staff expenses and cleaning supplies are among the expenses that require the greatest amount of money to pay monthly expenses.
The current distorted macroeconomic scenario is generating a strong impulse in the increase in costs in general, which also reaches common expenses in consortia and real estate groups.
Real estate requires products and services for its operation and maintenance, all of which are affected by inflation.
According to the ConsorcioAbierto platform, expenses rose the same as inflation until last December. In the city of Buenos Aires, in December 2022 the expense averaged $32,168 and the previous month it climbed to $83,958, and the increase is 160.99 percent.
Along these lines, values increased due to the effects of inflation, cleaning expenses, security, maintenance of common areas and equipment, among other costs.
Rate increases also left their mark. “An illustrative example is a 35-unit building in Congress, which in December 2022 paid $12,000 to Edesur for services such as hallway lighting, two elevators and water pumps. But, in December 2023, the invoice corresponding to the same set of services amounted to $49,000, representing a year-on-year increase of more than 300%,” Rodrigo Martínez Daveño , lawyer and administrator, told Infobae.
Likewise, the costs of repairs, especially those related to construction materials, registered increases that exceed the average interannual inflation (190%).
Carrying out comprehensive maintenance of services and common areas is more complex in Buenos Aires consortia (Photo: Getty)
Martínez Daveño added: “An average consortium with 40 units in Almagro and a single manager, who meets his payments regularly, registered an increase of more than 150% in his expenses between December 2022 and the same month of 2023. The notable “The increase in expenses is mainly due to the excessive increase in rates and the costs of materials used in repairs.”
The consortiums and administrators are also concerned about how the future electricity and gas rate increases will impact. As with gas, in the coming weeks, the Government will begin talks on increases in electricity rates that will come into effect from February.
Recommendations
In these difficult times, to reduce costs, the most common practices are:
- Implement LED lighting in common areas.
- Optimize the use of electrical energy and gas consumption in buildings with boilers.
- Currently, precise management is carried out to minimize staff overtime. In this sense, it is common to hear in neighborhood assemblies and meetings that residents have no problem depositing garbage in public containers on holidays or Sundays to avoid additional costs associated with the overtime of those in charge.
“Sometimes, it is also decided to take the garbage out of the waste rooms the day after the holiday or on Sunday morning to achieve the same savings,” commented Martínez Daveño.
“For owners, we suggest choosing digital administrations that offer transparency, centralization of communications and autonomy of analysis for each inhabitant,” said Albano Laiuppa of ConsorcioAbierto.
Effective control of expenses is achieved with digitized traceability of expenses, facilitating visualization and analysis from mobile devices.
Digital helps reduce costs
The increasing logistical costs for the delivery of printed expenses, combined with the constant increases in paper (222.83% in the last 12 months) and printing supplies (with a year-on-year increase of more than 285%), led to the consortia are increasingly opting for the convenience of digital expenses.
An analysis recorded that almost 75% of buildings already receive their expenses through digital means
A survey carried out by the Argentine Chamber of Computer Systems for Horizontal Property (CASIPH) showed that almost 75% of buildings already receive their expenses through digital means.
Diego Medwed, director of the CASIPH, recalled: “We had to adapt our companies and the entire infrastructure to the Home Office, make all the tools available to the consortia to replace paper and the physical distribution of expenses.”
Source: Argentine Chamber of Computer Systems for Horizontal Property (CASIPH)
More and more neighbors chose to receive expenses by email, cell phone applications, or downloading them from the Web, replacing paper ones to save up to 25% of the cost.
Little maintenance and late payment
The payment of expenses is the responsibility of the owner of the functional unit, although he may take action with the tenants if they do not comply (in the event that they rent it) with the payment of ordinary expenses.Laiuppa said that “it is common to urge administrators to send settlement and payment reminders to both landlords and tenants, maintaining the continuity of these processes to ensure efficient management and understand the reason behind each debt.”
Currently, delinquency averages 30% in CABA. As for interest, these will be calculated according to what is established in the regulations of the specific horizontal property.
After 90 days of default, the administrator must take collection actions: the use of email, WhatsApp and telephone calls. If there is no response, it is suggested to send a document letter and ultimately transfer the folder to a lawyer to proceed with legal actions.
Painting the facade of a building is very expensive these days. Most contractors accept quotas for labor on the job but materials must be purchased all at once and up front. The consortia do not operate with credit cards to access financing mechanisms such as Ahora 12.
Maintenance, especially on the exterior of the building, sometimes perceived as less urgent, is at minimal levels. Credits for works, which had begun to emerge, are practically non-existent today due to macroeconomic conditions.
Martínez Daveño concluded: “A painting job for the front of a 10-story building costs around $2,800,000, compared to a cost of $1,000,000 a year ago.”
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