Suggestions on Noticing Meeting to Replace Mgmt Company

Hi everyone,

We are soliciting proposals on replacing the management company who has given us 60 day notice on our existing contract (long story but they grumble that they are paid too little, so have issued 60-day termination and said they would sign a new agreement at a much higher rate that we don't want to pay, hence the alternate proposals).

The Board would like to meet in executive session (Board only) and discuss the alternate proposals but any suggestions on how to notice the meeting? We don't want to go through the management company for obvious reasons.

We have a bulletin board near the mailboxes where a hardcopy is posted x days prior, and the management company typically sends an email blast. We are thinking skip the email blast and just post the notice on the bulletin board.

Any thoughts on this approach?

Thanks in advance.

As a "personnel matter," and to avoid giving one potential MC a boost over another. the proposal from the MCs are OK in ES. That's where they should be.

(I don't think Melissa' old HOA had an MC so I believe she's not experienced with them)

But since your current MC gave you toe and your Board will not pay more for their services, why do you want to keep the existence of the Executive session secret from them??

Positng on the bulletin board is adequate meeting notice for members in CA. As you know, you need only two days notice for executive session (in CA).

Sorry--your current MC gave you notice....

Thanks Melissa, in CA the Board manages vendors/contracts including management companies.

To be honest if we had more time I would love to engage for more feedback but we need to chart our path soon since we have 2 months notice from the prior company.

I agree completely with JohnT.

Yes, you're right, Jignya, this would an agenda item called Contracts in Formation. That's all, as you know, that you need to put on the posted agenda & meeting notice.

Do you mean, JohnC, compose the proposal's wording? I don't see why that would be treated as a a private or confidential matter suitable on for executive session. But I'm not sure about this. Max will know.

As someone who has gone through this process a few times over the years. This is definitely an Executive session item. The membership has no need to be involved in this discussion. It is a Contract and very important one that should be taken serious. There are many questions that need to be asked and 60 days is not enough time to do an adequate search IMO. Some of the questions that need to be asked are below.

1) What type of PMC are you looking for is it Full time onsite or a Portfolio account?
2) What was your issues with the last PMC?
3) What services do you expect them to provide?
4) Do you know what the going rates are for PMCs in your State? You are located in Ca. do you have a per door charge from other companies? You may really need to consider your existing PMC if they are asking for a raise.
5) Lastly once you fond another company you need to find how they ramp up because most want 30 days prior to taking on a new customer to prepare and if so that shortens decision time.
6) I would avoid the larger companies that are usually hired by developers. They are not a good fit for homeowner boards. Trust me on this fact.

My opinion is you need to consider asking your existing MC to give you more time. It takes a good 9 days to do a good search of companies and check references. Pay them the extra fees and make the next choice carefully.

If you do finally find a replacement company make sure you compare the contracts to your existing contract pricing. The devil is in the fine print and can get you into something that ends up costing you more than you even know.

Sorry that I do not have more time to elaborate at this time. You need to keep this at the Executive level and remember you are elected to make these choices. everyone who has ever gotten a letter from the PMC company wants them fired.

If your only issue with your current management company is that they want to be paid more than you want to pay them, I might think a little harder about switching. Changing management companies will cost you a good three months of functionality. At least.

Everybody wants top notch service for as little money as possible. Doesn’t happen. You will end up getting what you paid for, good luck.

I think Mark's comments are spot on. We went through this exercise two years ago and interviewed 3 other companies. Our current company was despised by the community and previous boards. It took us a long time (6 months) to do this. We first defined the requirements which is important and then we researched potential companies. Each of them was given a written RFP. I would never suggest searching for a new PM without this.

We ended up staying with the 'despised company'. We found that their price was competitive and more importantly we came to realize what the real problem was. Previous boards didn't define what they wanted the PM to do and their expectations for them were out of line for what we were paying. Many of the problems we had were a direct result of the board. For example, our reserves were inadequate and generally the neighborhood was in a state of disrepair. Everyone, including the board blamed the PM when the real issue is the board would not increase fees and they failed to take any active interest in planning. My point is, I'm suggesting that before you jump ship take a hard look at yourselves and see if any of the issues you have with the PM are really your own issues. As the old saying goes, "be careful what you ask for."

The only thing I'd add to all of the excellent suggestions issued do far is to conduct a homeowner poll on the performance of the property manager AND the board. It should be an annual thing asd you can pose questions like "did you receive an acknowledgement of your email within 48-72 hours of sending it." Note this doesn't ask if you were happy with what you were told - this question simply asks whether you were told the board and/or property manager received it. There could be other questions on receiving any explanation, is the board transparent regarding board decisions, etc,

When I was on the board, we did a homeowner survey every year to help identify the boardand property manager's strengths and weaknesses. Use the responses to identify trends and that could give you insight on what you ask the property manager to do and how well its being done. Sometimes you may find some education is in order so homeowners understand some issues need to come to the board, not the property manager. This way you get homeowner input without having g a meeting.

Something else to consider - is the board asking the manager to do things that aren't in the contract. If so, and a price adjustment is appropriate if they insist on the property manager taking on those responsibilities. And when was the last time the property manager increased your fee. If its been a few years, you need to understand inflation causes everything to go up and so the increase us the cost of doing business.

There's nothing wrong with reviewing job performance to ensure you're getting what's required in the contract, but as others have said, simply deci g to switch because you don't want to pay more isn't a good idea either

Good advice.

Only Jignya knows what the long story is.

Yet, most of us know that a 60-day termination notice from an MC is rather rare.

Hard to say if another MC is going to jump at the chance to service this community.

So the question I would hope Jignya would answer is - Would your HOA have terminated the management company anyway if they hadn't given 60-day notice?

Really ...what kind of crowds and people do you deal with ?

Keep a bad management company at all costs and keep paying dues to an HOA that literally has no purpose.

Amen on this. Also the underlying issue in Cindy's case was owner apathy and the willingness to sit by for 15 years and do nothing but whine until their roofs were about to cave in.

At that time we had a paper newsletter so we put the survey in there, gave people about two months to respond (they could mail them in or drop them off in a small lockbox we had on the clubhouse door). These days you can use Survey Monkey for free (if you want to spend a little money, they have other bells and whistles).

There were some question suggestions on the Survey Monkey website, but we also used questions from an article CAI's magazine ran several years ago. Or you can google HOA homeowner survey or something and get some ideas that way. Generally, we asked stuff like did you attend a board meeting this year, if not why not (e.g. scheduling conflict), have you used the exterior change request process, was it easy to understand, stuff like that. There was also a spot where people could write in additional comments about whatever they felt like.

Basically, you want to keep it relatively short, maybe 10 questions (12-15 may be pushing it depending on how involved your community is), and keep the responses simple - yes/no, rank on a scale of 1-5. Generally, a response rate over 20% is great because the more responses you get, the easier it is to detect patterns.

We usually did ours near the end of the year, as it helped review our performance over most of the year, so we'd publish the results at the beginning of the next year - publishing it alongside the year-end annual financial report. Hope this helps!

Yes, it's always interesting how people forget that time has a crazy way of speeding up or slowing down to where you have to confront things when you least expect it. I remember one person commented that this type of thinking is like people saying "we don't need no stinking college fund!" Or a retirement account or even a Christmas savings account. No wonder people have ridiculous bills and never seem to get ahead.....