Annual Inspections

I don't know if "all" HOA's do it but ours does. The Board walks the community often with homeowners. From this annual inspection they plan repairs/improvements for the year.

Oh and they note any violations that need to be addressed.

In Georgia there is a 2-year statute of limitations on taking action for Covenant violations. To be sure we catch things before the clock runs out, we check each property annually, usually in the spring after the bermudagrass has greened up. (That way we can tell if the grass is dead or just dormant.)

I like that Glen's association does the walk-through with the homeowner. IMHO it reduces the chance that the inspection becomes a problem, with hurt feelings and hostile reactions.

We have an ongoing debate whether it's better to do that or to send out anonymous reports listing the infractions. I suspect that this is mostly because some members of the ARC don't like confrontation and can't tell someone face-to-face that they need to paint their shutters.

We also do inspections in the spring and fall - we try to get it done between mid April and mid May, depending on weather and people's schedules, while the fall inspection is done (or is supposed to be) between mid September and mid October. We also use the time to identify CCR violations.

This topic is timely because I've been wondering if we should contract with a home inspector to check out certain things, not every year, but perhaps every two years or so to help us keep track of what we should be doing with the reserve study. We could have our property manager's maintenance department do it, but their overall performance or lack thereof is one reason why we hired a handyman to do certain tasks (he's a lot cheaper and has higher quality work). Do anyone else do something similar? Or how about bringing in an inspector to look over work costing a certain amount before we cut the check?