How often are your dues due?

Our association collects dues on a quarterly basis. Our property manager advises that we are a little odd, most of their other clients collect dues once a year.

Our bylaws allow the board to set the frequency of payments.

I'm just curious if we should change the frequency. It'd cost less in administration fees to collect just once a year rather than 4x per year.

One advantage to collecting more frequently is that you'll get an earlier warning if someone is going to have a delinquency issue.

The above is what I call best practices.

Every account I have ever managed in California has assessments paid monthly.

It depends on how much your total yearly assessments are. We are billed quarterly, but people pay them monthly because of peoples budgets. If you go yearly, you might paint yourself into a corner and catch some heat from those that can't pay year to year.

For this reason I prefer monthly payments.

$500 once a year. That works for me.

Just once a year for us, I think that's the usual

One advantage of annual fees with the option to pay monthly (compared to a straight monthly fee structure) occurs when legal action is needed to collect.

Let's compare $1,200 per year vs $100 per month.

Let's assume that the owner didn't pay anything in Jan, Feb, and Mar. The HOA decides to get a judgment on April 2.

In a straight monthly fee system, the HOA can only get a judgment for $4OO, the amount for the 4 months in arrears at the time of the filing.

But in many annual fee systems with the option to pay monthly, the HOA has the option to accelerate a demand for the full annual amount as soon as the owner becomes delinquent.

In this situation, the HOA can go for a judgment for the full $1,2000 in the April 2 filing.

This approach can be extremely valuable where an owner is chronically delinquent - because - even if you get a judgment for $400 under the monthly system, the award may not happen until a couple of months later, and by then, the owner owes the HOA another $200. Depending on where you live, you may be able to amend your original filing, or you may have to make a new filing for the additional $200. There may be additional fees.

The Annual with Monthly option gives the HOA a lot more leverage with the delinquent owner and a lot less fiddling around with the courts.

In three HOA/COA home sales, the title company always made sure that I, as seller, was credited at closing for those HOA/COA dues that I had paid beyond the sale's closing day. I think the buyer may have paid for the remaining days in the month (of closing) where the buyer held title to the property.

It really depends on what the needs and preferences of the association are. It is not uncommon for monthly dues to be collected (especially in condos). While admin fees may be lower if annual dues are collected, it may also be harder on owners to pay one lumpsum.

I would be scouring the CC&Rs for indications of what constitutes "delinquent" or "late." I know the interest rate that many CC&Rs state shall be assessed for late payment is typically pretty high, so this question is of course important.