What does it cost us to leave a management company?

Sometimes nothing, sometimes several thousand dollars, and the difference is decided by clauses you agreed to before you had any reason to care about them. There are four places the cost hides.

An early termination fee, either a flat number or a set number of months of the management fee. A records-transfer or transition-out charge for producing your own documents. A data-export fee for getting owner ledgers and history out of the company's platform in a usable format. And the balance of the term, if the agreement requires cause to terminate and you do not have it.

Then there is the cost nobody writes down: the overlap. Most transitions run thirty to sixty days with both companies engaged in some capacity, and the outgoing one has no incentive to be efficient about it.

Negotiate all four before signing. In particular, get in writing that the association owns its records and receives a complete export in a usable format within a stated number of days, at a stated price or none. The version of that sentence you agree to at signing is the one that governs when you leave, and after notice is given nobody is amending anything.