Information on how many HOA have caps on fees

It depends upon the scope of your request. Do you mean in your city, county, state, region or in the whole country?

I think you will have to request a copy of the governing documents from the county courthouse and then read through them. Once you find it mark that as one and then get the next. By the end of the week you might be have an answer for your county.

Hi Robert:

I agree with Roger. I used to do portfolio management of HOA's, I had the two following scenarios:

1) Developer set the HOA fees low (doesn't only $50 per month sound nice?) for a townhome community, with a maximum 10% increase per year, unless there's a vote of the membership to allow a higher increase. The board has been increasing the fee 10% per year but it will take about 8 years to get to where they should be, if inflation doesn't kick in. Even at that point, if inflation does go up beyond 10% then the HOA loses ground on their costs.

2) Another developer set a $ cap on the assessments, unless there's a vote of the membership. 571 homes and they take 2-3 tries to get a quorum for annual meetings. Chances are, within 5 years they will reach that cap. At that point, without a vote of the membership, the assessment will not be able to be raised, so they will need to figure out what's going to be cut out - no more barkdust on shrub beds, no more cleaning the green slime off the white vinyl fences, cut back to financial management only and the board runs everything, cut off irrigation during the summer and let the lawns go dry and the shrubs die, fire the landscape mainenance contractor and ask for volunteers to mow the grass...

What you might consider: that the BOD set and publish the budget, then the homeowners have the opportunity to oppose it - maybe 20% sign a petition, and then it goes to a vote to reject with a majority required to reject; if that happens, then the BOD has to re-do the budget (if they haven't resigned by that time?) and resumbit to the owners, and in the meantime, the assessments continue at the previous year's rate.

With the cost of oil skyrocketing from time to time, asphalt costs will continue to rise as well, particularly if the oil companies decide (as they did last year) to fraction more of the crude oil rather than using for asphalt). This means that reserves for private street maintenance will need to go up accordingly. If you did a reserve study three years ago and haven't updated it, and have private streets, then chances are that your reserves are becoming underfunded due to rising asphalt costs.

I understand well that the homeowners like to keep assessments low; however, doing so unreasonably will begin to devalue the properties over time. You might not see it in the first few years, but sooner or later it will catch up. The other thing to consider is that the BOD is raising their own assessments - it's not like they aren't affected. A good BOD keeps in communication with the homeowners through the budgeting process, particularly if it's foreseen that the budget will rise substantially.

J. Patrick Moore, CMCA

Let me give you all some more information.We have 362 homes a 5 member BOD fees started at $140 in ione year they were at $170. We have a budget of $800,000 with $400,000 in reserves for club house pool sidewalk. Town takes care of street replacement. we have well over $300,000 in cash. BOD has complete control of the budget. No input from the community. No vote they can raise they fees at will. We are purposeing a 10% cap after which they have to come to the community for a vote. A 10% increase would raise about $77,000 of additional income and we would not have touched our cash. This is cash that has no home just colloect interest. It seems reasonable to promote fiscal responsibility that we ahve caps on fees. Now to my original question does anyone know how i would find out how many hoas have caps?