Mid-Rise Condo Management
A nine-story condo building sits in an odd spot, and owners usually figure that out a year or so after closing.
Services
It’s taller than what a townhome manager usually deals with. Still, it rarely earns enough to cover the front desk and engineering staff that a downtown tower depends on. Residents still expect the elevator to work every morning and the roof deck to be open on Saturday. The board, typically five neighbors with day jobs, ends up working out how to meet tower-level expectations on a building-sized budget.
WRMC has managed condominium associations in Texas and Colorado for over twenty years, handling everything from 16-unit luxury buildings to large towers with hundreds of homes. Mid-rise communities fit nicely in between these types. They get the same dedicated property accountant and vendor standards as our biggest properties. Our condo association management and high-rise condominium management teams support boards like yours. A mid-rise manager can easily reach out to seasoned coworkers about issues like elevator upgrades or facade problems.
What mid-rise boards are up against
Call it five to ten stories. Some are old office buildings that got converted, and some are newer, with a pool deck sitting on top of the garage. Either way, the building has a tower’s equipment and little backup for it. Plenty of them have just one or two elevators. When one is down for a week waiting on a part, the owner on the eighth floor is carrying laundry up the stairs. The association owns both the roof and garage. It is also responsible for fire alarm inspections. Then there’s water: a leaky balcony on the sixth floor causes stains on the fifth ceiling. By the time anyone investigates, several owners have already filed claims.
The money side gets tight in its own way. Operating budgets in a building this size don’t carry much slack, but the big-ticket items still arrive on a tower’s schedule. An elevator upgrade can cost over $100,000. Replacing a roof or garage membrane may be even pricier. Plus, the master insurance policy is usually one of the biggest budget items. A board that sets dues just to cover this year’s bills often finds itself needing a special assessment later. This can be a tough talk with owners who thought their dues were fixed.
Staffing varies a lot from one mid-rise to the next. In smaller buildings, a part-time engineer and an empty desk after five are usual. Larger buildings usually have a team of two or three people. They manage both the front desk and maintenance tasks together. The board acts as an employer. This means volunteers handle payroll, hiring, and turnover. When a general manager leaves, it can slow things down. In this industry, that happens often. A building this size may lose months of momentum before a new manager settles in. This turnover is a big reason why communities look for a new management company.
The complaints in a mid-rise are small, and they never stop. Two move-ins got booked for the freight elevator at the same time. The package room has been overflowing since Monday. A board member hears about each one, usually in the lobby while holding a bag of groceries.
How we work with mid-rise communities
Boards in these buildings tend to open with two questions. Can we trust the numbers, and does anyone know what’s about to break? The rest of the conversation usually grows out of those, and so does the way we set up each building.
Financial management and reserve planning
Ask a new board what they want to see first, and it’s usually the reserve number, followed fast by why it’s that number. So we start there. Your dedicated property accountant gathers last year’s spending. Then, our financial team, led by CPAs and master’s-level experts, helps create a budget based on that. Then we look at what’s coming, like the elevator modernization and the garage membrane, and put a price on it. An engineer walks your building and writes the reserve study from what’s actually there. Monthly financials come in plain English, so a retired teacher on the board can follow them.
Building systems and vendors
We set inspections around the building in front of us. A ten-year-old podium building has different weak spots than a forty-year-old conversion. Elevators and the fire system each require a specialist. It’s good to know who they are before something goes wrong. A window seal that’s failing in March is a small repair. In August, after a storm, it’s three floors of wet drywall.
Before a contractor works in your building, they go through our Preferred Vendor Program. We confirm the license is current, check that the insurance covers what it claims to cover, and call past clients to ask how the job went after the invoice was paid. We stay on each project until someone has verified it’s finished, since a half-completed balcony repair is a problem for everyone living below it. When a major project comes up, we manage the bidding and bring the board a side-by-side of qualified contractors with the scope differences spelled out, so a low number isn’t hiding a missing line item.
Ready to Transform Your Community?
Stewardship isn’t just what we do—it’s who we are. Connect with us to see our unique approach in action.
On-site teams and leadership support
Not every mid-rise staff is the same way, and we don’t force one model. Some buildings do fine with portfolio management. A dedicated Community Manager handles the day-to-day, and our accounting and HR teams and our leadership sit behind them without a crew on the property. Others need a small team on site, anywhere from two or three people and up. Either way, a regional director oversees the general manager directly. Ours handle ten to twelve communities, not seventy or eighty, so they have time to know your building and to step in if the GM’s chair empties. Our HR team handles hiring and payroll, so the board isn’t posting job listings or running payroll.
Plenty of mid-rise buildings have nobody at the desk overnight, so the first person to find a leak is usually a resident in pajamas. They need somewhere to call. Our customer care line is open 24 hours a day, and an actual human answers it. Bilingual support is on the line too. Hold times average under 30 seconds, and routine questions get a reply within a day.
Board education
A lot of directors get the job because they happened to be at the right meeting. Then they’re asked to approve a six-figure elevator proposal with no background in elevators. We start new directors with an orientation, and we keep running sessions on whatever the board is dealing with that year.
Technology that works
Directors tend to log in the night before a meeting, looking for the financials they forgot to ask about. They’re there. Owners pay assessments through the same portal. Anyone who spots a drip can file a maintenance request from the mobile app on iPhone or Android before they forget about it.
What happens when a board calls us
Most boards that call us have one thing nagging at them. The elevator contract renews in March, and nobody’s sure the price is fair. Or the manager everyone liked left over the summer, and the replacement still hasn’t called back. We usually ask to walk the building before we say much of anything, since the mechanical room tells us more than a brochure ever could. Then we read the budget and the last year of financials and sit down with the board. We share what we found, including the parts nobody enjoys hearing. WRMC is women-owned and led by Andrea Willett, and her hands-on approach sets the pace for how closely our team stays with each property.
If the ground floor has a restaurant or retail space, we manage shared parking and cost-sharing issues in our mixed-use properties. We have offices in Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, and Denver. We also support communities in all our service areas, including San Antonio and Houston. When you’re ready to talk, request a proposal and tell us about your building.
DEDICATED STEWARDS TO COMMUNITIES
At WRMC, we blend a boutique firm’s personalized service with an industry leader’s strengths and resources. We’re here to support you, build community, deliver dedicated stewardship, and ensure every detail is managed effectively. At WRMC, community isn’t just what we manage; it’s what we create and nurture.