Condoreno, addressing social and technical challenges in condominium renovation

Annick Vanhove is a renovation coach for the city of Mechelen, Belgium, specialising in the renovation of condominiums. Her professional path began thirty years ago in the housing sector, where she coordinated efforts to support underprivileged tenants for a decade. This involved collaborating with social renting offices that rented and subletting private houses, with tenant’ unions that provided legal advice to tenants, and with renovation offices that offered renovation support.

A shift in her career occurred when a poorly designed government campaign inspired her to delve into communications. She recalls her thoughts at that precise moment: “Oh, government, do you really think that you can move people to action with this kind of brochure?” Annick then decided to shift her career into government communication and campaigns for another decade before transitioning to self-employment as a team coach and change management consultant. Her consultancy work included projects on heat coalitions and grids for Mechelen, leading to her involvement in condominium renovation and a professional move to the administration of the city of Mechelen.

In her current role, Annick finds her diverse skills converging. She addresses the technical aspects of renovations and designs and facilitates group processes among condominium co-owners, crafting compelling narratives and fostering effective communication. This unique blend of renovation expertise, team coaching, and strategic communication defines her approach as a “civil entrepreneur” within the municipality, driving innovation and initiating impactful projects.

Throughout her career, Annick has embraced the motto, “We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.” This belief fuels her dedication to sustainable living and community-focused initiatives, reflecting her commitment to leaving a positive legacy for future generations by combining her group facilitation and communications expertise to create sustainable, community-focused living environments.

In late November 2022, Annick joined the Condoreno project, a four-year initiative financed by the European Union’s Programme for Environment and Climate Action (LIFE). The project aims to develop and disseminate integrated home renovation services for condominiums across Europe. The project involves 10 partners working across three European countries.

From the Netherlands, the Technical University of Delft (project leader), Foundation Living cost Neutral Renovation and knowledge institute KERN are participating. The City of Antwerp, Energy house of Ostend, Embuild Flanders and City of Mechelen are the Flemish project partners (Belgium). Finally, the Parisian Climate Agency supports the project from France and UIPI and EBC are responsible for disseminating the project results across Europe.

Condoreno focuses on providing comprehensive renovation services for condominiums. These integrated services include:

1. Initial consultations: Offering information about potential renovations for condominium co-owners.
2. Condominium assessment: Conducting a thorough scan to evaluate the condition of the condominium, identifying both strengths and weaknesses.
3. Maintenance planning: Creating a detailed maintenance plan to address necessary repairs and restorations, forecasting future replacement needs.
4. Sustainability upgrades: Prioritising energy efficiency improvements to enhance the building’s environmental performance.
5. Renovation preparation: Preparing and designing the renovation works and securing funding by own means, loans and subsidies.
6. Execution: coordinating and supervising the execution of the renovation works.

The project addresses the challenges condominiums face, particularly those built in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, which often suffer from inadequate maintenance. The focus is on maintaining the building’s structural integrity while incorporating energy-efficient upgrades.

In particular the City of Antwerp, Flanders, built extensive experience in condominium renovation in their previous European ACE Retrofitting project (INTERREG Nord-West Europe). They discovered that the costs of bringing older condominiums up to standard can be so high that energy-efficient renovations become financially challenging. This issue is more pronounced in old condominiums than in older individual houses, highlighting the need for substantial investment to ensure these buildings are stable and energy-efficient.

Moreover, in Flanders, demolishing and rebuilding a condominium is seldom an option due to stringent decision-making quotas. According to Belgian condominium law, four-fifths of co-owners must agree to such drastic measures. In larger buildings achieving this level of consensus is nearly impossible, making comprehensive renovations the most viable solution for enhancing the sustainability and livability of these ageing structures.

The Condoreno project is positioning itself as a European leader in integrated home renovation services by implementing a series of strategic solutions designed to streamline the condominium renovation process. Therefore, they designed a variety of business models, depending on the initiator of the renovation services. While the Foundation Living cost Neutral Renovation operates within a coordinating business model, covering all phases from planning to execution, the Flemish cities and energy houses offer traditionally advice, guidance, and planning for renovations, leaving individuals to manage the execution on their own (advising business model).

Condoreno aims to bridge the gap between planning and execution by forging strong connections with the building sector. This approach involves developing relationships with building companies and professionals to seamlessly transition from planning to execution, like passing a baton in a relay race, as Annick likes to express it.

The Condoreno project’s team has created a detailed roadmap for the renovation process in both the advising and the coordinating business model, outlining the various steps and phases involved in the renovation process. At the moment, Annick and her colleagues are researching and developing specific tools and resources needed at each stage of the renovation process. For example, they are crafting tools to facilitate communication and coordination among all stakeholders, including co-owners, condominium managers, builders, and architects.

Another priority for the project’s team is to develop tools that will make renovation more cost-effective. By conducting thorough renovations, for instance, Condoreno can balance the immediate renovation needs of the building with the financial capabilities of the co-owners, ensuring that costs are manageable and long-term maintenance expenses are minimised.

In our conversation, Annick outlined several critical challenges confronting stakeholders in the condominium renovation process:

1. Financial burdens: Many older buildings, having suffered from years of inadequate maintenance, require significant investments to become structurally sound for the next two to three decades. The costs extend further when necessary upgrades for energy efficiency are factored in. For instance, energy-efficient renovations for small condominiums (less than 7 apartments) can cost €60,000 per apartment. This cost can rise to €70,000 for middle-size high-rise buildings (8-50 apartments).

2. Endless decision-making: Renovation projects face significant delays due to the need for a two-thirds majority vote among co-owners in Flanders. Achieving this consensus is particularly difficult in buildings with older residents who may not see the immediate benefit of such investments, or with co-owners with a low income. Additionally, every decision at a condominium association General Assembly comes with a mandatory four-month waiting period for objections, further prolonging the process.

3. Complex management issues: Condominium renovations are complicated by the need to coordinate with multiple co-owners with different financial capabilities and preferences. This makes managing these projects high-maintenance for condominium managers and building professionals, who must navigate diverse opinions and needs.

Annick’s experience in communication and coaching allows her to effectively guide condominium associations through the renovation process. She emphasises securing incremental approvals among co-owners by focusing on smaller, manageable decisions that keep the process moving forward. By achieving small “yeses,” she builds momentum and makes it easier to reach larger agreements over time. This approach helps circumvent the difficulties of reversing a “no” decision and ensures continuous progress.

A significant insight Annick has gained is the bottleneck posed by condominium managers. These professionals are often overwhelmed with routine tasks such as collecting feedback from the co-owners associations, accounting and maintenance, leaving them with limited capacity to handle the additional demands of comprehensive renovations. For condominium managers, integral renovations, while crucial for community and climate, are often sidelined due to their classification as “important but not urgent”. This results in delays as managers prioritise immediate, urgent tasks over renovation planning.

To counteract these delays, Annick is exploring ways to provide more support to condominium managers. She recognises that the current process—requiring multiple months to prepare and approve renovation plans—is too slow. Streamlining the process and offering additional resources or support to these managers could help accelerate decision-making and implementation. This could involve improving administrative processes, providing more direct assistance, or enhancing the efficiency of paperwork handling and general assembly scheduling.

Annick is keenly aware that addressing these issues requires systemic changes. Condoreno is, therefore, committed to creating a more fluid process that integrates planning with execution while supporting condominium managers’ capabilities. The project intends to make the renovation process more efficient, ensuring that important renovations are completed on time and effectively contributing to community well-being and environmental goals.

Annick emphasises that the success of the renovation process is not solely dependent on technical solutions but also on managing social dynamics. She believes the process must address social and technical dimensions equally—roughly 50% of the effort involves managing social interactions and decision-making, while the other 50% focuses on technical progress. This balanced approach is essential for creating a process that is both efficient and responsive to all stakeholders’ needs.

Annicks approach to improving the condominium renovation process involves a comprehensive and collaborative design strategy. As part of her role in Condoreno, she leads the design of a co-creation process involving multiple stakeholders: co-owners, condominium managers, city officials, architects, and building professionals. This collaborative framework aims to streamline decision-making and implementation by ensuring that all parties are actively engaged in shaping the renovation process. The goal is to create a shared vision and practical strategies that address the needs and constraints of each group involved.

A key component of this approach is the facilitation and management of the renovation process. Annick underscores the importance of having a dedicated role to design and oversee these processes, ensuring they remain on track and effectively address social and technical challenges. However, a significant challenge is securing funding for this facilitation. Currently, Condoreno provides necessary subsidies to support these efforts. Still, without such financial support, Annick notes that it would be difficult. The city itself has no budget to support all condominiums wanting to renovate within its territory. At the same time the condominium associations themselves are not keen to pay for this facilitating activities through its own budget, especially considering the already high costs of renovations.

According to Annick, one of the project’s major accomplishments has been establishing strong connections with condominium associations and managers in Mechelen. Her efforts have transformed her role into that of a trusted advisor and partner, with several associations now committed to developing comprehensive renovation master plans. This early success is seen as a crucial step toward achieving more extensive, integrated renovations.

Looking to the future, Annick envisions a significant shift in how condominiums are treated in policy and practice. She expects to elevate the importance of condominiums to match that of houses. Current Flanders policies often overlook the unique needs of condominiums, leading to ineffective solutions. Annick hopes to influence policymakers to develop targeted approaches that better address condominium management and renovation complexities.

Annick would also like to help build a robust ecosystem around condominium renovations in her city. This includes fostering relationships with building professionals to ensure they are willing and able to undertake these complex projects. By creating successful renovation examples, she aims to demonstrate the benefits—such as increased property value, enhanced living comfort, and lower energy costs—to other condominium associations, thereby encouraging more widespread adoption of renovation efforts.

On a broader scale, Annick and the Condoreno team plan to share its roadmaps and toolkits with other European cities, supported by their project partners at the International Union of Property Owners (UIPI) and the European Builders Confederation (ABC). However, as Annick wisely points out, these resources won’t necessarily work in every local context. They will need to be adapted by whoever is interested in integrating them, ensuring that other European cities and condominium associations can effectively implement the lessons learned in Mechelen.

Condoreno’s website

Written by Jose Rodriguez
Fact checked by Annick Vanhove