Forums, studies, surveys, articles and more
We intend to tackle many of the challenges faced by board members in the management of community associations. One of these challenges is the board hiring of professionals who specialize in common interest developments who can help address the specific issues in their community. Not all professionals are the right fit. A professional manager, attorney, insurance agent, or others, can represent a significant percentage of the budget. Consequently, care should be taken to choose carefully. The challenge for boards is vetting these professionals, this starts by creating a well-defined request for proposal. Then select who to invite to submit proposals.
We are approaching this challenge by finding the most effective common interest professionals through their participation in case studies. This will be an opportunity to demonstrate how they individually approach certain challenges. Each study will be location-specific. Board members will have a tool to assemble a short list of candidates.
We are initially tackling rising insurance premiums for communities and individual homeowners. This study is a collaboration of; portfolio managers, Insurance company risk managers/agents, and common interest attornies. Subject communities will be profiled based on type, size and region in the country. Along with premium history and identified risks based on location.
We will curate input from a variety of sources in the common interest industry, from a general viewpoint to specific regions and communities nationwide. With
Property Owners
If you are an owner of a common interest property – this platform is designed to deliver community transparency. You are invited to weigh in on all matters related to your association. Your leadership needs to know what you think.
Homeowner concerns:
- Assessments
- Insurance
- Deed Restrictions
- Statutory mandates
- Maintenance
- Elections
- Privacy
Board Members
Community volunteers, like board members and committee members, are thankless jobs, that are often not appreciated by the members. Due to general apathy by residents, finding people willing to volunteer can be difficult. We intend to overcome this “apathy” trend by opening homeowner interaction. And, hopefully make it easier for boards to communicate their intentions to the community.
Portfolio managers
For professionals who provide administrative and maintenance services to community associations and are willing to interact with homeowners in their service area.
Management companies
Management companies employ portfolio managers and provide administrative support, as well as training and communications.
CID Ancellary services
These CID speciialists provide; insurnce, legal services, accounting, replacement reserve analysis, and many other services.
Developers
Common interest community developers need to be part of the conversation. Developers set the standard for how communities will succeed or fail over time. Statutory requirements, both state and local levels make creating new housing more complicated.
Ten years ago we started interacting with common interest property owners, specifically non-board member owners. We wanted to know how much these owners knew about their community. Could they name their board members, for example. Or whether or not their community was professionally managed. Only 1% were able to name the current manager or the name of the landscape company. Maybe this is no big deal, but when it came to the assessments, nearly every interviewee had an opinion. Generally they felt powerless if they objected. On the other hand we could not find a professional association manager who would not take the time to interact with these homeowners.
We asked many other questions, however, only question related to their assessments resulted in specific responses.