HOA Management Blog
‘Tis the season for holiday shopping and people love the convenience of ordering online. Avoiding the crowds and shopping from the comfort of your couch is an easy and appealing way to save time and get your gifts ordered all in one place. Whether you’re having your items shipped to your house or sent directly to the recipient, this day and age homeowners need to be on the lookout for individuals who steal packages from properties - also known as "porch pirates."
People seem to have a love-hate relationship with homeowners associations. More often than not, the people that love them respect and feel protected by rules, and the people that hate them don't like the rules - these are also the people who are usually violating the rules.
When a member is violating the HOA rules, do HOAs have the ability to enforce the rules by fining the member?
In a homeowner's association, members pay their assessments, and those assessments are divided between operating and reserve accounts. That money goes to pay for the upkeep of common area components in an association. Individual board members should not have access to those funds.
The idea isn't that an individual or small group would profit from the assessments being paid, but rather that all members would collectively benefit because that money's being used for the common good of the entire homeowner’s association.
Are your HOA board members able to handle the load of managing your homeowners association, or do you need a professional? This is a great question to be asking and there are a few factors to consider. If your board can handle some of the responsibilities but doesn’t want to take on all that needs to be managed and get done, then you may consider splitting the work between your volunteers and outside professionals.
A hot topic in homeowners associations is renting out your home in the neighborhood. The primary concern for homeowners is that too many rentals will lower the quality of the HOA community, causing broken rules, problems in the neighborhood, and safety issues. While some HOAs may restrict rentals completely, others set a rental cap. Most HOAs have a rental policy that can be found in the governing documents.
An HOA board may get pushback from members in the association when it comes to rule violations. Members will get a violation letter and they'll respond back with, "How come I'm getting a violation letter when my neighbor is doing the exact same thing? You're not treating everyone the same?"
First, the member may not know that their neighbor is also receiving violation letters, but regardless, in an HOA everyone should be held to the same level of the rules and accountable to follow them. People shouldn’t be treated differently within the association. This is known as selective enforcement.
When you become a member of a homeowners association, you receive a copy of the governing documents. By living in the HOA, you also agree to abide by them, so it's important to read them and understand what they say. However, these documents often use a lot of jargon and can be difficult to understand. Here's a snapshot of the purpose of the Bylaws in an association.
A common question asked among residents in a homeowners association is, how many board members should an association have? The answer is that it really depends on what the association's governing documents state. Typically, the number of HOA board members an association should have is found in the bylaws of the association. But in general, you should have a three- or five-member board of directors. Some have more, depending on the size of the association. A good starting place is to consult your bylaws.
An HOA board of directors has a fiduciary responsibility to the association. They're tasked with upholding the governing documents and the rules of the association. There's also the business judgment rule that says if the board receives expert advice on a topic, and they follow that expert advice, it provides them with a level of protection if there's a lawsuit against the board or the association.
Parking in a homeowner’s association is always a hot topic. From where it’s ok to park and not to park to enforcing parking rules and even issuing parking tickets, homeowners tend to be very territorial about their parking spaces - and adamant on making sure others living or visiting in the HOA don’t get away with ignoring the parking rules. That being said, sometimes you get a controlling HOA board that wants to take all parking matters into its own hands – going as far as issuing parking tickets. But can they do this?
