HOA Management and Accounting Fees

Our subdivision was platted in 2009 but to date the construction is only approximately 45% complete. We are still at the point where homeowners are not permitted to represent the HOA and the builder/developer has a property management company handling our HOA. We are having issues with several owners refusing to pay annual fees because they can't see what the management company is "doing with our money." The property managers are difficult to deal with but recently, finally, provided a copy of their accounting records for the past two years for our subdivision. Now we can see that almost all the money collected goes to pay the "Management and Accounting Fees."

Regarding Assessments, our covenants state, "The assessments levied by the Association shall be used exclusively to provide for the acquisition, improvement, care and maintenance of any Common areas and any property owned by the Association. At this stage, NONE of this is true because the builder/developer is maintaining common areas and cutting the grass along the street in front of the undeveloped lots. Note: the homeowners must request this maintenance be done AND the undeveloped lots are completely overgrown with weeds, shrubs, snakes and poisonous spiders.

Main question: Is the builder/developer responsible to pay these "Management and Accounting Fees" to the property management company since they hired this management company?

No.

The homeowners are the members of the association and the members must pay the expenses of the association, which would include the management and accounting fees, even though the developer hired the property management company.

As with any new development, the developer typically controls the association until the point at which the association is turned over to homeowner control in accordance with your governing documents and state law. It is not unusual the developer to decide which contractors to hire for maintenance, management, acco8unting, etc. Once the association is turned over to the homeowners, the homeowners themselves can make all those decisions.