Emergency After-Hours Calls

If you have a property manager, he or she should have an on-call manager you can use.

If you're self managed, you may need to rotate among the board to designate some as on-call" manager (no more than a week at a time). You should also define what constitutes an emergency - something that's an immediate threat or safety would be a start and your association master insurance can help you develop a policy and definition.

Since we're talking about association responsibility, he sure this policy only applies to the areas the association's responsible for. This would also be a good time to remind homeowners they need to keep their individual policies current and make sure they notify the board of they notice the need for repairs in the common area and not assume it's already been reported. Regular maintenance and monitoring can prevent emergencies from happening.

In that case, you may want to review what type of calls have come in over the last 6 months or so to look for trends. If this is an issue with all your clients, you may need to determine who seems to be calling more often and why. For example, if community A has had a lot of broken pipes, they may have an underlying problem that needs a long-term solution. The board should be advised of that and they can decide what they want to do.

There are a few property managers who post regularly on this website (Max, Bill, Barbara are three that immediately come to mind), and they may have suggestions as well.

Rose

The approach to an emergency is not to call BOD Members. Establish a relationship with vendors who are the ones one needs to contact. Publish and distribute this list to each owner. In an emergency the owner should be calling the vendor, not a BOD Member.

From experience, the only emergencies I have ever had was flooding from a plumbing/sewer issue and fire. We have an after hours answering service and the call is routed to a manager who is on call. The management company should know who has responsibility for the leak, HOA or homeowner and that would need to be communicated during the return call. Depending on your coverage area, you may need several reliable plumbers that can be call at a moments notice.

But, whatever you do, don't call a BOD, they would have no ideal what to do.

Wow, you wrote that long winded reply to just the last line that was posted. In case you missed it, you did, it was directed, as a joke, to JohnC.

I don’t know of any vendor that commonly works with HOAs who would perform services without the authorization of a manager or board member.

And exactly what was the criteria that made you state that Jack's manager/MC was incompetent? IF, you had taken the time to read JohnC's comments, he said don't bother to call a Board Member. If you are self managed who do you call? As Barbara pointed out, vendors are going to want the go-ahead from a manager or Board member, unless from your experience of managing properties you have a different take.

Thank you everyone for your replies.

We will be very specific with the scripts we provide to the after-hours call service, and we will base the actions taken from conversations with the board (ie., pre-approve emergency work under certain conditions, etc.). If board members wish to be notified overnight of issues, we would include them to the list of contacts.

Emergencies (day or night) are typically plumbing related.

Your emergencies after hours are solely: blood, flood or fire. If you have elevators, maybe if there isn't another one available.