is a management company necessary?

You have to ask yourself this question. Are their enough homes in the division to do such a task? How many homes do you have? You mention a comman area at the entrance is the only thing. Is it a gated community? You need to provide us with alot a details to get a soild answer to your question. The board members and myself ask the samething, and we can to the notice that it is a full time job or maybe a part time, but do you trust people to handle the community money? What if someone in the community volunteers and takes off with the community money, then what?

Yes, you can self-manage, but realize that managing an association is a profession that people train in, get certified in and spend years learning. There is a reason for that.

Does your board have the time, energy and interest to become experts in these and other areas?
- Selecting/hiring contractors (quality, liability, workman's comp, insurance, licensing checks, etc)
- How to run and document meetings
- How to properly keep Association records to comply with various laws and IRS requirements
- How local, state and federal laws apply to your HOA and it's board
- What insurance do you need?
- Collection practices and staying on the right side of the Fair Debt Collection laws
- How to enforce CCRs and collections on your neighbors without creating problems in the community and possibly for yourself.
- The Board is only shielded from personal liability up to a point. That shield starts to break down when corporate standards aren't followed and laws are ignored. This can easily happen unless all Board members get the proper education.
- Etc......

Will you be able to keep a volunteer base that will do all of the above?

The board is in place to 'direct' and make decisions. The board should get good advise from many professionals along the way. The actual operational work is not the board's job but they can take on this huge burden if they desire.

Here's some articles to read:

http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20020123_selfmanage.htm
http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20010228_condo.htm

hoatalk makes some good arguments for professional management. On the other hand, our association (134 individual homes) has been self managed for eighteen years without serious issues. The three other associations in our development are also self managed as is a rather large one a few miles up the road from us. Another nearby 700 home association is planning on going from self managed to a management company.

We hire a CPA to do our taxes and annual audit, we have an attorney who specializes in HOAs on retainer, and we hire a lawn maintenance company (we solicit bids) to maintain the easements leading to our development. We send out assessment notices (annual) and collect the money. So far, it hasn't been a big problem but there have been a few minor issues. We have our attorney to fall back on for collections.

We receive tax, insurance and utility bills and the bills from our contractors and we write checks as needed to pay them.

The big advantage I see to a management company in our case would be not having to confront neighbors with minor CC&R violations such as parking on lawns and trash out on the wrong day. On the other hand, they would not be around 24 hours a day to observe these violations.

I would be interested in knowing the cost for a management company for our HOA and what services they provide.

The bottom line is - it depends.

Thanks for the information and the document. We are more than twenty minutes away, more like three days. Are you aware of a national listing of HOA MCs or any in the North Charleston, SC area?