Self Managed Association

Hello All,

The association I oversee has decided to move away from a management company after years of underwhelming service. We are a small community, 24 homes, and have been self managed in the past so I believe we can be successful here.

I have started to look into software solutions for managing general operations (issues or work orders) and accounting/finances (we are also looking at just outsourcing the accounting aspects).

There are a ton of them so I am looking to poll the community here to narrow the focus. Does anyone use a platform they really like/dislike?

It would help to know what sorts of functions your platform would need to support. You mentioned outsourcing the accounting - but would your platform need to interact with the bookkeeper/accountant's software? Would you need to interact with the association's bank in any way (updating homeowner records when they've paid assessments, etc.).

I agree that with a very small association you can probably handle a lot of this manually, but you still need to define what it is you'll be doing. For instance, you'll need to provide records if homeowners request to see them. And if you'd ever have to send an owner to collections or worse for non-payment of assessments, you will need to be sure that you have all of the necessary information to support those efforts.

Not to scare you off, because paying a community manager often doesn't make financial sense if your community is small. But a professional manager has a wealth of knowledge that you'll also have to replicate in addition to whatever software that person would have used. (Some of the regular posters around here who've managed their own communities sometimes refer to it as "selfmismanagement" and they're not entirely joking.)

George
Ellen has asked questions you should answer.

I can definitely understand the mismanagement part of self management, especially considering it is done by volunteers who don’t necessarily have the subject matter expertise. It also may be that we just had a very bad go with the mgmt company we have in place.

It sounds like there are a lot of risks and complications around the financial side of self management so maybe a good place for us to start would be with operational, specifically work order/issue mgmt. There has been a huge gap there with our mgmt company here (tracking, prioritizing, updating, resolving, reporting) and we have essentially managing this ourselves.

Are you a condominium complex or single family homes?

I lived in a 130 town home development that had an HOA (it was not a condominium association).
There were very few problems being self-managed.
We did hire a bookkeeper to collect the mail, make deposits and track the payments.
The Treasurer filed taxes, wrote the checks, proposed the budget and maintained the accounts.
The President and Secretary took care of any other paperwork (corporate annual filings, etc.).

If you are in a condominium complex, I would be more concerned about being self managed as a little thing missed today can become something major in the future.

Which can be a larger issue the smaller the community.

We were self managed with 107 owners. Only had an accountant for collecting and paying bills etc... Everything else we did amongst ourselves. Keep in mind your HOA does not have be about "Saving money". It should be about collecting the right amount of money in order to pay it's operational expenses. That doesn't rule out having an MC as long as your dues are set high enough to pay for one. Your HOA is a non profit but NOT a charitable one. You don't get charitable contributions tax advantages. You are also subject to taxes if you try to raise money outside of collecting dues or special assessments.