Annual Fee Increases

Wade, statistics have no bearing on what your particular HOA's financial needs are. Each line item of the operating budget and the reserve budget needs to be evaluated plus longer range planning to determine the annual assessment. What percentage is your increase of $150? For example if it is an annual increase $150 with a current assessment of $600 that would be a large increase of 25%. But if your current annual assessment is $1800 the increase is 8.3%, which would only adjust for inflation for 2 years.

Some HOAs like to increase their fees each year to adjust for cost of living (~4%). While other HOAs prefer to increase less often and in larger increments. Some have gone as long as years with no increase when there is good budgeting AND there are very limited major expenses.

Lol... I can beat that Roger...

When I moved in and became the first of our board of directors, in September 1994, we had monthly dues of $25. We lowered them in January of 1995 to $20, and they have never been raised since... 11 years with the same dues, which are a decrease from the previous.

Roger is right, however, that a budget is very unique to each HOA. You can't really compare one to another, any more than you can compare household budgets from one person to another.