Do we need a public webpage?

I believe it varies by state. I’m told it’s required by Texas. I don’t know what state you are in (I vaguely recall that you’re not actually in Washington?). Even if it’s not “required by law”, an online source of the latest, up-to-date public documents is almost always a good thing.

You should definitely be able to host a static site for a lot less than $1500/year. If you know what you’re doing, you can even hang it off of a home NAS for free. I wouldn’t recommend that for you. I think a lot of domain hosting services provide cheap/free hosting if you register the domain with them.

BillD

Facebook is terrible! I prefer a formum such as this that is searchable and threads are catagorized. Facebook is quick and easy, but try finding anything of value after a few days. Facebook is not easily searchable and discussions are typically all over the map, plus after a few days the conversation is hard to find.

Our website self maintained and the cost is less thatn $300/year. We also have facebook groups and these groups encourage a lot of fighting.

Our Facebook group is run by non-Board members and entirely homeowner maintained and managed, other than when I try to answer people's questions about HOA related stuff.

IMO any facebook site or chat page should be run by a non board member.

Our association has many Facebook pages for a few reasons and I'm trying to consolidate them into a forum such as this, but hard to get owners off of facebook.

What has happened is that fights have occured resulting in someone getting banned from a FB page. This owner then simply starts their own page. This has happened a few times. Also, due to the lack of any category function on FB we have many FB pages defined just for a specific category. I think we are up to close to 10 FB pages. I hate Fb, but it is easy and popular.

Exactly. Because of the lack of any categorization the same questions just keep popping up over an over. I think I have seen the same cell phone service question 6 times in the past 3 months. I believe FB is also designed to encourange arguments.

Unfortunately, I am not sure if I can convince owners to migrate to a forum service such as this or another similar one.

Yeah.

Circa 1994 I bought a domain name for my neighborhood, and my wife and I set up and maintained a site gratis / as a ‘hobby’ until ~2015, when Texas law said the HOA needed to have a website, and by then we were happy to hand it all over.

I tried to make the site ‘interactive’, which included at least a couple of attempts at a ‘forum’ not too different than HOATalk. No luck. For one thing, maintaining a list of valid users is a lot of work. For another, many people just couldn’t make it past the ‘entry pain threshold’ of a forum: it was too much effort and (at the time) many people simply didn’t ‘get’ the concept. During much of this time we also maintained an email listserv, which worked reasonably well - most people were fairly comfortable with sending / receiving email - but it never covered more than about 1/3 of the neighborhood.

And then ~2017 it seemed like everyone migrated to FB, and that’s how it’s been for the past 5 years. I’ll assume everyone understands just how poorly FB rates as a medium. But 99% of the neighborhood is on it.

It is, BTW, an “unofficial” neighborhood FB group, and so my BOD is paranoid about posting anything to it. There’s an “official” group - but hardly anyone knows it exists.

One thing (which may or may not be obvious to everyone reading) is that maintaining a ‘web portal’ For Residents Only is expensive and tedious. Even if you have a PMC that maintains its own list of resident email addresses, updating the website rapidly becomes a tedious chore{1}. A simple static site that holds some public documents on it is a lot easier. And, of course, updating it becomes yet another thing to procrastinate.

Finally: my BOD may be paranoid, but they aren’t completely delusional: the resident who owns the FB group tries to ‘vet’ people who ask for access, but there’s always the possibility that some thief or salesperson might find their way in. And, of course, no-one ever bothers to tell anyone they’re leaving the group. So we’re limited in what we can do on FB.

BillD

{1} there’s a chance that this stuff might get easier in coming years, as PMCs or companies that specialize in HOA Portals support some form of Single Sign-On (SSO) and/or Federated ID (FID) services. There’s a chance that FB itself may support some of this stuff already, but honestly, this crap makes my eyes glaze over.

I tried to do a webpage too back in the day. It just failed miserably. No one used it or paid attention to it. Even making a "free" email address for sending things to the board didn't even go over well. I made it so board members could read/respond with a password. Nothing not even the board.

I just found that if you have an issue to address with your HOA send a letter or appear at a meeting. If you have a financial billing question call the accounting office. You want a copy of the documents, they are PUBLIC documents available at the courthouse. It wasn't the HOA's job to provide them except for the By-laws if existed. If we did give out a copy, then may charge the expense for copying be it on paper or disk. (10 cents per sheet).

My current HOA is not official yet. We have a FB page. Mostly to chase down the ice cream truck or find deliveries. We have a few that have HOA experience/knowledge but not many. So the HOA business is mostly with dealing with our useless PM. We have had not had a "fight" but a few contraversial statements. Someone hated animals and threatened people for their pets never to cross their yard. Otherwise it's not been a real hotbed of HOA discussions.

You may be overthinking all of this. Your NOT "CEO of a Corporation" or a member of "Corporate America". So don't run your HOA like it's a corporation. It is incorporated only to the point to have the right to collect and spend money. After that its really a COMMUNITY of your neighbors. It's more of a quasi government than corporate.

> Wow, I'm simply speechless.

(I’m standing mute right beside you)

BillD

Hi,

I believe Texas and Florida are required to have them. I think that it's a very good idea for any HOA to have a website because it acts as a source of information as well as a marketing tool.

While I understand $1,500 isn't nothing, it's not terribly expensive. I think you could hire a company to maintain it for you for that price. Facebook is a good tertiary communication tool, but it's much harder to control and is less secure.

Melissa,

An Association is incorporated to provide a corporate shield to the membership (i.e. sue the HOA not each homeowner).

Additionally, being incorporated creates a legal entity which has the same rights to the courts as any person (as you pointed out).

However, there are many reasons to incorporate.

Regarding websites, ours was visited a lot.
Mainly by prospective buyers and realtors.
It created a transparency that made the development attractive.

Unfortunately, after I quit running it, the new board chose to get rid of the website and create a private FB page.

Tim I get what your saying about being incorporated etc. My point is that it's NOT a corporation one would find on NASDAQ. Being incorporated offers certain protections and gives the way to collect money for it's operations. However, it's not like I can make a business card and assigm myself "CEO". It's NOT for gathering business opportunities other than hiring contractors to get the work done. We are not going to set up a tent or have tents set up to hand out brochures to the public. We are NOT going to offer scholarships or have our names put up at the local ball park sponsoring a team. That is NOT they type of corporation a HOA is. It is a not for profit non-charitable set up for collecting of dues/operational costs and protecting it's board members.

I think someone trying to run their HOA like it's a "corporation" type of business is crossing a line they should not be over. Know your lane before someone starts screaming "embezzling". It seem suspicious if I was to review the HOA books and see "Scholarship" or "Vendor show".

Our urban 200+ condos high rise has a public page that include our CC&Rs, Rules & Regs, lists of vendors who'll work in our units; list of plumbing, etc., and fireplace parts; list of Committees and Committee charters, many forms; a "Welcome Pak"; contact info for the onsite PM & 24/7 vehicle gate kiosk. And much more. It's very useful for realtors and all residents whether owners or renters. There 6 of so rotating pics of the property. And much more. I think we could have a nice piece of prose about our community and think I'll write one before long.

Our Owners website contains Newsletters, minutes, financials, Bylaws; annual budgets & reserves summary. We can make payments there and fill out work orders for the common areas. Within it, there's a Board portal for board members.

Our MC set it up and it's included in our monthly fees to the MC (well, they say it's free). The PM updates them, but sometimes gets behind. I don't know how much it's used. Residents do get confused about the two sites.

(I have no idea what Melissa's most recent post has to do with the O.P.? Or with anything HOA since it's about what an HOA isn't)

The reference to Marshall's post reminded me: We have no HOA interactive site. An Owner started a NextDoor, which I joined and there's occasional whining about a big interior rehab project going on right now, but it doesn't seem to get much use.

Michael,

Of course you can build and host an information-only website for public access. Meeting minutes and copies of by-laws, etc are great sources of information (but place the disclaimer that you or your attorney should consult the official HOA documents on file at the county courthouse as online docs are technically unofficial or could be incomplete or outdated).

Good luck with it.

Since we cannot mention product names, I will simply tell you that I used a site that only costs $300/year but is very robust and very easy to use. Basically, and "HOA" has an "Express" way to build and manage a web site. You don't have to spend much time on it, once it is built, because the information can be mainly static. The only thing we do is this:

* Once a month I upload that month's financial reports
* We have an even calendar, and our social committee has rights to update it
* Now that we have our own board, we might upload minutes each month

So while some time is spent setting it up, the maintenance afterwards can be pretty simple. Especially if you do NOT include the social media feature.

Our site was very similar to DavidG45's.

I agree that the time needed to maintain a mostly-static site is pretty minimal. Turning off comments on blog sites allows you to avoid the liability that comes with users posting to the site as well as all of the headaches. However, you'll still need a Terms of Service agreement - see your HOA's attorney for more info.

Things that I found to be a nuisance:

* You'll need a paid version if you want to have a personalized domain name - otherwise your site will have a URL such as "HOAname.WebHost.com". Many web hosting sites also allow you to obtain a domain name through them - this makes life easier, but it's not free. Not hugely expensive, though - we paid under $100 per year for the entire package.

* If you want to upgrade to a paid version, many sites require use of a credit card. If your HOA doesn't have one, you have to use a personal one. If/when you step down from the board, you have to make sure to get your personal info removed.

I've never had problems moving a domain name from one registrar to another. The registrar does not own the name, the individual owns it - and you can use ICANN's Whois function to look up where a domain name is registered. The actual domain name owner may keep his personal name and other info private, which is usually a smart thing to do.

When I did my first web site, I actually used a different, independent domain name registrar - and it was kind of a pain in the posterior to get my site's various settings tweaked to point to the correct domain name settings. If someone builds web sites for a living, this isn't too bad. But for non-professionals, not having to deal with such things is a benefit.

(Note that when you register a domain name, various status codes are set, one of which will prevent domain name transfer. This is to stop unauthorized hijacking of domain names by somebody who wants them or who wants to hold them hostage. Your web site would stop working if this happens, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it other than report it and go through the steps needed to get your domain name back. While this is going on, you're out of business - a real problem for companies that do a lot of their business on the web.)

Not saying that there aren't bad registrars out there - I just haven't heard of them. I expect that any web hosting company that pulled a stunt like that would discover that there are repercussions. The real money is in web site hosting - enough that they are able to offer free basic hosting to folks who don't need a fancy site - and there are enough other options out there that people would move to a different, more ethical hosting service if their current one tried to pull a fast one.