We’ve spoken about Reserve Funds before, what they are and why they’re so important to the life cycle of your property. Commissioning a reserve fund study ensures that your reserve fund is enough to ensure that major expenses are taken care of without having to place an undue burden on the owners and minimizes the need for those major expenses in the first place. A well-maintained reserve fund is a key to enhancing the value of your property over its lifetime and ensuring its smooth operations.

Who are the Key Stakeholders?

As we’ve said before, a reserve fund is crucial for the smooth running of your property, and commissioning a reserve fund study is the first step to creating one. This requires both careful study and aligning with key stakeholders to ensure that the reserve fund is both accurate and in line with the long term goals for the property.

The key stake holders that should be consulted during the conducting of a reserve fund study are:

Facilities Management – Facilities management can help in the conducting of a reserve study by providing the list of all capital assets within a property along with its history. In order to accurately forecast expected costs for replacement and establish timelines, the thorough understanding providing by the facilities management team is essential.

Owners Association Management – The Owners Association management is another key stakeholder in the process, providing the survey conductors with all relevant historical and financial data regarding the properties current reserve fund status and past expenses to help guide the process.

Owners Association Board – The Owners Association Board appoints the firm undertaking the reserve fund study and guides them on what assets are to be accounted for in the reserve fund study and their long term plans for managing a properties assets. They are the ones who take the final call on whether or not to accept the findings of the study.

Suppliers & Contractors – Suppliers and contractors provide the surveyors with the information needed to accurately gauge costing for various capital assets present in the building along with incidental costs such as labour and installation.

RERA – Last but not least, any reserve fund study needs to be in line with the rules and regulations of the local governing body, such as RERA in Dubai.

As we can see, undertaking a reserve fund study is an in-depth process that requires information from multiple sources in order to be done properly. As such, it is crucial that when conducting a reserve fund study that your surveyor has access to all the requisite information and is given clear guidance on your plans for your property.

Need to set up a reserve fund for your building? Or maybe you need to update the existing study to be in line with current market conditions? Land Sterling’s team of experienced and accredited surveyors is happy to assist you with conducting a reserve fund study and can help you set one up for your building. Send us an email at info@landsterling.com or contact us on +971 43 808 707.