Building Community

Communication, commitment, and concern for the community. In the common interest ownership world, those terms are invoked with the insistence and intensity of a mantra, repeated so often that they risk becoming background noise, like the “buckle your seatbelts” speech that begins every airplane flight. The safety information is important, but does anyone really focus on where the exits are located or how to activate the oxygen masks? We’ve heard the speech so often we think we know what do in an emergency, or assume that we’ll figure it out if the need arises.
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Working Constructively With Your Association

So, you have a problem, a concern, an issue with the Board of Directors, the Association, or the management company?  What do you do?  What have you done?  Have you approached your concern with the Association as a negotiation with a partner, or as Marines landing on D-day?  Have you begun looking for win-win solutions to your concern, or began to solicit a cult of dissatisfaction from neighbors who might share your ideology?  Read more

Day Care case in Indiana

A homeowner's operation of a licensed day care out of her home, caring for up to twelve children daily,  constituted a commercial use in violation of a housing development's restrictive covenants prohibiting commercial enterprise, but a facility with fewer children might not.  Public policy favoring home day care was not violated by enforcement of the housing development's restrictive covenants.  Read more

Homeowners Associations Use Bonds to Fund Improvements

As planned communities across the country enter their third or fourth decade in service, there is a growing need among homeowners associations to finance major building and facilities improvements to maintain the safety, desirability and resale value of the homes in their communities.    The traditional practice of financing major capital projects with large special assessments is often very unpopular with homeowners.  Similarly, financing major capital projects with bank loans can be prohibitively expensive for homeowners associations, due to the high interest rates and the relatively short repayment terms required by most banks.   Now however, homeowners associations have a new financing option:  bonds.  Read more  (MS Word doc)

Minutes - The Legal Document of the Association

Twenty-five years in the association management business have provided me with plenty of opportunities to review Board Meeting minutes and observe the various methods used in keeping and writing minutes. The importance of the task requires knowledge of the purpose and content of meeting minutes. How can we find a common sense approach to Board Meeting minutes? Here are some helpful facts and information to guide you:  Read more

Emergency Preparedness: The Human Factor

Most managers would agree that nothing is more critical than being prepared for an emergency. But most institutional and commercial organizations focus their efforts on business continuity, meaning records, equipment and property. Although maintenance and engineering managers and others involved in emergency preparations understand life safety must come first, they often spend too little time developing strategies to get people out of the building, particularly people who cannot use the stairs to evacuate. How many managers put the primary focus of planning on people, the most important and costliest element to replace? Beyond that, not enough planners talk about ways to plan for evacuations when not everyone is able to use stairs to leave a facility quickly.  Read more

10 Things Managers Should Avoid Saying to Their President

Remember the old adage: “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it.” Well, in today’s managers’ interactions with the community association president, it is all about what you say and how it is interpreted. The key to managers’ successful relationships require establishing a greater understanding of the communication process and accepting personal responsibility for the success of the process. Avoid the following statements. Here are ten tips for breaking through the communication barrier that can sometimes exist between managers and their presidents.  Read more

Common HOA Excuses

Homeowner association members who pay their assessments late or not at all sometimes come up with some interesting excuses. Here are five common ones:  Read more

Coping From a Management Perspective: Living Through a Lawsuit

Lawsuits are an unfortunate, often expensive fact of life these days, and co-op and condo communities are not immune from seeing the inside of a courtroom, or at least a lawyer's office suite. An issue that arises between a resident and the board or between two or more residents can spiral out of control, wind up involving the managing agent, and end up in court. Then it becomes a battle of he-said/she-said until the lawsuit is over, a settlement is declared and it's back to building business as usual. Or is it?  Read more

Steps to Use for Successful Negotiation

Is negotiation another word for compromise? Possibly, but we like to think of it as cooperation.  Both sides should leave the table feeling satisfied that their voices have been heard, regardless of what they may have lost to obtain the mutually agreeable solution.   In the community association setting, negotiation skills are essential to the effective and efficient resolution of issues before they become bull-blown disputes.  Successful negotiations should not result in a winner and a loser; that’s for the courtroom.  Successful negotiations should result in both parties leaving the table feeling satisfied, and without resentment. As a Board member, you may face disputes from all sides, such as with an owner, another director, your association manager, etc.  The following are 10 steps to assist you with successful negotiations:   Read more

Safety in the Sky

Concrete Repair Q & A (Buildings)

You can see some cracking, rusting steel, crumbling concrete or some other signs of an apparent problem with the concrete around your building. Evidence of this type of damage may be prevalent on your balconies, or building facade or in your parking garage. These outward signs are but symptoms of a more serious internal problems— corrosion of steel or other metals inside the concrete or a self-destructive mechanism occurring within the concrete itself.  Thousands of property owners have experienced similar problems and numerous questions have been raised. In hopes of shedding some light on the subject, some of the most frequently asked questions are discussed below.  Read more  (PDF)

Rental Compliance

Community Associations help retain and improve the standard of living and property values within a community. While all owners sometimes wish that a particular restriction did not apply to them, most are grateful that the restrictions apply to their neighbors. In some cases their neighbor may not own the home; but have leased the home. Through the direction of your Board of Directors, the Management Firm should serve your community by coordinating common needs, overseeing and enforcing the governing documents (Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions, Articles of Incorporation, By Laws, Design Guidelines and Rules & Regulations). The communities governing documents may allow rentals; but in most cases the governing documents are not specific and allow broad interpretation. An example of the verbiage may be “each residential dwelling unit constructed on the Property may be occupied only by a single-family. Any dwelling unit may be rented to a single-family tenant from time to time by the owner, subject to the Association Rules”. Unfortunately for some community associations, especially the owner living next to the non-compliant renter, governing documents that are not specific or silent allow on-going problems and aggravations.   Read more

What Makes a Good Property Manager?

A good property manager is like a hip dad. He or she may not say things like, "Hey pal, whatcha say we go toss around the ol' pigskin?" but like a hip dad, a property manager needs to have a certain set of specific traits and other, harder-to-define skills in order to be successful. A property manager needs to be able to listen and communicate, as well as be proactive and involved, current and knowledgeable. He or she should also be levelheaded and resourceful, personable and articulate. For all the property managers diligently trying to excel, the list of "and's" goes on and on. At the end of the day however, most people working in the management industry agree that the most fundamentally important trait for a good property manager to possess is the ability to communicate and relate to people.  Read more