annual assessment

I would think so, in some states it is required by law but it really comes down to what is required by YOUR CC&R's. We are a COA and send our homeowners coupon books each year for their monthly assessment but each HOA is different in how they do things.

We never sent out notices for paying dues. People who bought in our HOA were actually informed there was a HOA. That and the fact there was a drop off box for dues at the mailboxes. We had an island at the entrance that was one big bill board/mailboxes/drop off box. You didn't mail your dues in unless you lived out of the area. Our Accountant lived there and was a member who controlled the box. There was no excuse to NOT know you were in a HOA and owed dues.

Your documents will tell you if you need to send out notifications in some cases. However, they may be silent on the entire issue. It still doesn't mean one doesn't owe HOA dues. It just means it was YOUR responsibility to be INFORMED and to do it.

We have a coupon book. I'm not sure how much point there is to it these days; I set up an automatic monthly payment.

John, I don't know about Tim's HOA but our MC does it.

Just attach the file here. So all can use forever. (wink) See the "choose file" button when you reply.

OK, I've sanitized the document (removed Association name, address, etc.). We typically print the 1st page in colored paper and add a colored paper blank as the last page.

I've also included our cover page.

These are MSWord documents.

There are certainly more fancy ways to do this but this is an inexpensive low tech way that works for us.

Tim,

One thing I would worry about with coupon books is that some owners may interpret it to mean that a coupon must accompany their payment. (I have dealt with companies in the past that required a coupon with a payment.) If owners get that idea, then they will not use alternative forms of payment such as their bank's billpay feature because they cannot add the coupon to the payment.

I strongly urge any association to allow making payments as easy as possible and in a variety of ways. Some people are stuck in the 1950's and handwrite a paper check mailed in a stamped envelope. I have not written a check from my checkbook in years. I opened a new account two years ago and never ordered any checks at all and mail out an average of only one or two items per month.

Most banks seem to offer some sort of billpay service where the bank prints and mails a check as instructed by their customer. Associations should encourage the use of these services as they may be programmed to send out a check on designated days in the future. One of the better features of a billpay service is that when the bank writes the check, the money has been set aside to pay it, so no more NSF's.

Some banks also offer the ability to do a direct funds transfer from the homeowner's account to the HOA's. I am not personally familiar with this, but if the fees are not excessive the convenience of paperless payments would make this worthwhile. Again, no more NSF checks.

I would also look into on-line credit card payments simply because it is such a common way to pay. My association's management company offers this but hits the homeowner up with a $10 fee. I doubt that we get many credit card payments and in this day and age that is a rather excessive fee. I think there are lower cost alternatives available.

Our association found that when we switched management companies to one where owners could view the status of their accounts online that our delinquencies dropped dramatically. Just last night I had a question as to whether we had paid our annual assessment. At ten o'clock at night I was able to look at our account online, see that the assessment was not paid, and then instruct our bank to mail payment. Things do not get much easier than that.

Our HOA dues are very low, and we collect them annually. We send out a notice to every one of our 825 property owners, many of whom do not live in the area (we have a lot of second homes). We also send a reminder a month later, and then send out another letter telling people that if they don't pay by a specific date that we will file a lien against their property.

Last year we started on-line bill pay, which many people like to use.