I’m a software engineer planning on building affordable HOA Software

Hey,

My name is Albert and I’m a software engineer. I’ve been building web applications my entire life. Recently at a party I met someone from the HOA industry who basically told me that all HOA software is either terrible, hard to use, too expensive, doesn’t do exactly what you need or all of the above. He basically said if someone was able to build an HOA management platform that was both user-friendly and affordable, there would be a real market there.

Having deep knowledge of relational databases, java rest APIs, user-friendly UIs and just building/deploying web applications in general, plus having built these types of systems many times before professionally— albeit in different sectors/industries— I’m seriously considering a side project to build some type of HOA SAAS (software-as-a-service) product that will hopefully make people’s life’s easier without costing them a fortune.

My question is, before I invest time and energy in this, is there actually a market there? Some questions I have are:

— Are you already using HOA software and how happy are you with it?
— If a better product came on the market, what factors would cause you to switch?
— What expectations do you have of good HOA software?
— What features must it absolutely have?

I basically just want to put some feelers out there if this is a good project or not.

My software development skills are very high. If I were to invest energy in this I’m certain I could get something going. I have a plethora of code from previous projects I could reuse plus a pool of equally skilled developers I could (maybe) call on for help if need be. But first I need to validate this idea.

Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Albert

Thanks for your response. Perhaps you are right, hence the reason I posted this thread. Would you care to elaborate in what way?

Thanks for the feedback. When you say you keep everything in PDF, what kind of documents are these? Invoices I presume?

We have a full service property manager, and her company has their own in-house software to manage the internals of that business, but as with TimB4's community our association records are in Word, Excel and PDFs. We also use a Gmail account as the contact for the board and association (since email meetings are allowed in my state).

You can find free programs that do basically the same things as these programs. Or you can use Google Docs to store everything in the cloud. No need to spend much of anything.

Unfortunately HOA governance is a lot more hit or miss than many of us would like.

You're never going to get around the fact that board members have a wide variety of skills (or none at all), so no software is going to be usable by everyone. I'm also going to go out on a limb and say that the large majority of associations do not purchase computers or other equipment for board members to use - people use their own computers. So you'd need something that can run on a variety of platforms and that will address the security issues that come from exposing corporate records to external systems (that are likely not secured).

I would have to disagree, I think it all depends of the size of your HOA, if its small then it would make sense to use excel, PowerPoint etc. But for big HOA’s or property management companies I think software plays a huge role. Thinks that would talk you hours to do or even days with excel you can do it minutes with the right software. We use a software called condo control central, we originally got it for its proxy/e-voting feature cause we struggled to get quorum, then we started using other features like service request, document storage, maintenance tracking, etc . Go they have around 40+ features… go through these features and tell me if these can be done with simple excel https://www.condocontrolcentral.com/features/

Another problem we stored things on separate board members' computers. It was nice to centralize everything.

And since its in folders on Google drive, if google ever discontinues it, which they will someday, you can simply download the whole folder and save it to a new computer, thumb drive, dvd, etc.... Future proof.

My experience closely matches TimB4's. A lot depends on who is on the board/committees and their knowledge level and committment to maintaining proper record-keeping system. A few years ago we had a president who was functionally illiterate. That was a lot of fun trying to explain to the board how things "should" work. An extreme example, to be sure.

We have a new board of 5 this year. 2 of them don't use email. Another 2 needed the concept of "a PDF file" explained to them. They still don't understand. One board member resigned a week after having been elected last month and the board selected a new director to fill her seat. She'll be voted in as the new Secretary next week. I have high hopes for her in that she was a legal secretary for about 20 years and hopefully she has some familiarity with MS Office products. She will be our 4th Secretary in the past 14 months.

3 Secretaries ago we had one that did not appreciate the usefulness of archiving documents in PDF form. When she received things via email the first thing she did was print them out and file the paper copies in a file cabinet. Then she'd delete the electronic copies.

When I was the Secretary 5 years ago I developed a very simple database for use on a single PC using SQLite. Future development would have taken it to a distributed model but the project never got that far. It worked perfectly well on the HOA's PC in the clubhouse. It tracked owners, renters, phone numbers, mailing addresses, offsite mailing addresses, requests for maintenance and landscaping, email addresses and their permitted uses. It generated mailing address labels and email distribution lists depending on what the owners had given their permission for. In Florida, for example, just because an HOA learns an owner's email address doesn't mean it can include that email address in any kind of directory without written permission. Separate written permission is required in order to send that email association Notices. There is no one here now who even begins to understand those distinctions. I ultimately had to demand that my own email address be removed from the HOA's records because no one understood the use of BCC when sending out bulk emails.

At the start of 2019 the new board voted to get rid of the PC in the clubhouse. It's like banging your head against a wall.

The biggest problem with such a system will be getting people to use it and being able to devote untold hours in supporting it. "I forgot my password," gets really old really fast when the same people ask the same question multiple times a week. Theoretically it would be a very useful system for many people. Reality, though, is very different from theory. The reality is everyone in a self-managed association is a volunteer and unlike a real employer you can't pick and choose who you hire to do the work. You know you're in trouble when you need a PDF editing program and the first question is, "Can I do that on my phone?"

Unfortunately?

Heck with membership apathy the way it is, I'm happy for any volunteer.
No issue having to work within their skill set.

I'd rather have someone who is computer illiterate and is willing to serve then a computer programmer who isn't willing to serve.

LOL