An HOA board has three significant roles: to protect, maintain and enhance the Association. Everything the board is responsible for in a homeowners association can be placed into at least one of these three categories.
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You don’t want to be bored with numbers, spreadsheets, dollars and cents. You already know that’s what a budget is made up of. Instead, what actions are the most important for you to actually do to ensure financial success in your homeowners association? There are a lot of pieces and parts that come into play, but following this advice will help you get started in the right direction of financial health for your community.
Deer browsing in the back yard is charming. Birds are beautiful, graceful and melodic. Seeing coyote in the distance and hearing them calling to one another at night gives a sense of being close to nature and adds to the feel of your community. But too much of any one thing is never good, and the feeding and encouraging of wildlife in the homeowner's association is not in the best interests of you, the animals or the association.
As an HOA board member you probably know what a reserve study is and the importance of doing one. Equally important is that having the proper reserves in place will ensure that the long term assets in the Association (roads, roofs, pool, landscape, etc.) will be properly cared for and maintained.
If you’re in the process of house hunting you may have come across your dream home in a homeowners association community. But before you make a major purchase, are you informed about living in an HOA? If you aren’t familiar with how it works, there are some important questions to ask and a few actions to take before purchasing your new home.
Halloween is a kid’s delight. It’s a blast to dress up in costumes, go trick-or-treating, attend parties and most of all, eat a lot of candy. At the same time, Halloween can be scary for parents. Costumes can be dangerous, too much candy can be sickening and walking around at night can be risky, even in your homeowners association community.
The purpose and protocol for executive sessions in a homeowners association are often misunderstood by both homeowners and board members. HOA Board members may call an executive session to discuss important matters and make crucial decisions involving privileged and private information.
Below are some frequently asked questions that you might have about executive sessions that will help to increase your knowledge and fulfill your duty to be informed as a member of the Board and Association.
If just a few homeowners aren’t paying their HOA fees it can be felt very quickly in an association’s budget. It can also cause a ripple effect. If too many homeowners fail to pay their HOA fees, lenders might start to be unwilling to finance mortgages in the association. This could lead to a decrease in property values.
When it comes to the annual budget for your homeowners association, it can feel cumbersome to understand and plan. It can also seem like an overwhelming task because you just don’t have a lot of accounting knowledge.
The budget planning process is a lot of work and a large responsibility for the HOA board to prepare. It’s a complex activity that has to start early so the budget can be finalized and approved prior to the beginning of the new Association fiscal year.
We’ve all heard the term “read the small print before signing on the dotted line” but how often do we really do this? An HOA board will be considering and entering into contracts on a regular basis and it’s not uncommon for otherwise cautious people to become jaded by the terms and conditions and just quickly glance over the documents.
