Self-directed HOAs and Bill paying services

Started by JohnK3 • 4 replies • 1174 views

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JohnK3 (Pennsylvania)
Posts: 967

Posted:

We're thinking of taking our HOA "private" as our outside Mgmt. Co. wants to about double their annual charge to over $8K (over a third of our budget, which includes an additional $25 a quarter to cover their proposed raise) to do the following:

1. Collect and deposit quarterly checks from our 19 households.
2. Pay our landscaping service 6 times a year, two insurance policies, an annual audit, one monthly electric bill (6 months for a pond fountain), removal and replacement of that fountain by a service, and, of course, themselves.

Most any problems we have, and there are few, are typically handled by a board member.

Our question: are there services that can just collect dues (we'll send the notices to households)and pay our bills without being involved with our small problems? Or some good software for us to handle this? Or any other suggestions or observations?

Thanks.

DonnaS (Tennessee)
Posts: 5,671

Posted:

John,
If you and the other 18 households (members) have enough support amongst each other, there is no reason why 19 members need a property manager. Do you have officers for your association? It should be very easy to manage yourselves. What you need to do is to contact a bank or savings institution and set up a checking account with at least 2 officers signitures required to sign checks. You can have your payment coupons or envelopes directed to that account and then your Treasurer can monitor it to make sure that dues are coming in to the account. If you work this right, everyone would be more than willing to not have to pay any funds for the small amount of duties that your management company is performing. Just follow your documents for how your charter was formed as to officers and member responsibility.

GloriaM (North Carolina)
Posts: 829

Posted:

John:

You can have an outside service just do billing for your HOA Receivables and payables. There's no reason the charge should be that high unless you have them for Full-Service. Shop around I am sure you can find someone who would do bookkeeping for you a lot cheaper.

BradD2 (Florida)
Posts: 418

Posted:

John, our 50 lot Association is self managed and what we do is pay our bank's Association Services department to make the invoices and then receive the payments and deposite them. For about $.70 a unit a quarter they print up an invoice which says you owe X amount and provide a return envelope. They take the money and deposit it into your account. For $.50 a unit a quarter they will mail it but we choose to have it sent to us so we can add an update letter to the mailing. You can then logon to their website and see who has paid what and when along with pictures of the check and invoice.

JohnK3 (Pennsylvania)
Posts: 967

Posted:

Thank you for your replies. My apologies if I violated HOATalk.com customs by replying individually to the posters. The info provided is valued.

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