The thermally induced coherent collapse of Bose-Einstein condensates at finite temperature is the dominant decay mechanism near the critical scattering length in condensates with at least partially attractive interaction. The collapse dynamics out of the ground state is mediated by a transition state whose properties determine the corresponding decay rate or lifetime of the condensate. In this paper, we perform normal form expansions of the ground and the transition state of condensates with shortrange scattering interaction as well as with anisotropic and long-range dipolar interaction in a variational framework. This method allows one to determine the local properties of these states, i. e. their mean-field energy, their normal modes, the coupling between different modes, and the structure of the reaction channel to any desired order. We discuss the physical interpretation of the transition state as a certain density distribution of the atomic cloud and the behavior of the single normal form contributions in dependence on the s-wave scattering length. Moreover, we investigate the convergence of the local normal form when using extended Gaussian variational approaches, and present the condensate's decay rate.PACS. 67.85.De -03.75.Kk arXiv:1411.0458v3 [cond-mat.quant-gas]