If your HOA board has decided to work with a San Diego community association management company, you will quickly see the benefits of this decision. Board members will have a lot more time and a lot less stress.
It’s important to set expectations early about who is responsible for which tasks. We can help you get started by illustrating the first five tasks that any HOA board can immediately delegate to their property management company.
1. Communication
Communication with homeowners, vendors, and other interested parties is always extremely important. A good HOA management company will help keep communication open, responsive, and transparent. We will communicate with the board and the leadership as well as the entire association and the homeowners in your community.
A good management company can liaise between the board, the association, and the community. Your property manager will handle your homeowners and residents. Management companies are good at systems and processes, and communication is often a specialty. Communication will flow more openly and everything will become more organized and efficient.
2. Accounting and Financial Support
Good homeowner association management includes accounting and financial services that are detailed, accurate, and transparent. This is one of the most essential functions of any HOA property management partner. You need a qualified and experienced team of professionals who can collect and account for dues, manage violations, and keep the community running according to the goals and priorities of the association.
You need property managers who can solicit bids from vendors and contractors for work that needs to be done and make sound recommendations on how to put together an operating budget and a reserve fund.
3. Meeting Management
Preparing for board meetings can take a lot of time and effort, and you should delegate the logistics and the planning of each HOA board meeting to your management company. Let your property managers take care of agendas, minutes, and materials.
With the right management team in place, your board meetings will be more organized, more productive, and possible better-attended. Let your management company schedule the meetings, get the word out to homeowners, and follow up on action items and agenda issues.
Let your HOA property managers be the point of contact when homeowners have questions about the meetings.
4. Contracts and Vendors
Property managers have outstanding relationships with local vendors and contractors. The board doesn’t need to waste its time asking for proposals from landscapers, roofers, pool cleaners, and other service providers. Hand this off to your property management team. They’ll know what to look for and how to measure cost against value and services.
5. Rules and Regulations
If your association is enforcing the rules with one homeowner but not another, you’re risking a lot of legal liability in your HOA. The board must enforce the rules uniformly in your homeowner association otherwise the entire organization will be vulnerable to lawsuits and legal claims.
One of the best reasons to delegate enforcement is that it removes liability from the board. The community has to trust that the HOA is going to hold everyone accountable to the same standards and requirements. If your board allows rules and regulations to be broken without consequences or enforcement, you will lose your ability to maintain the trust of your homeowners. The entire community will feel like the HOA doesn’t care about the rules they’re supposed to uphold. This will strip away any authority or legitimacy of the association.
These are five good places to start when you’re looking for ways to enlist your HOA management company in making things better in your community. For more helpful advice about professional management for your San Diego HOA, contact our team at Chase Pacific Property Management. There’s a lot more we can tell you.