Hiring a Management Company

My advise is sit down with your present MC and see if things can be worked out. Much easier then changing companies.

https://echo-ca.org/article/how-good-your-management-company/

Community Association Institute (CAI) has a directory where you can search for accredited community managers in your area. You can first select by State and then change to the city to alphabetical

https://www.caionline.org/pages/credentials-directory.aspx

Ask boards of neighboring associations for pros and cons of the companies they use. Also ask about the criteria they used in hiring.

JWD,
You make some great points as do others as well. The 1 additional thing that I did that brought something that was important to me in my last change. Once we had narrowed it down to 2 candidates, I ask for the contract so I/We could read the terms before having our lawyer review. As with any contract it was tilled very far towards the PMC. I marked it up with several things that I wanted negotiated. The main thing was they wanted a 2-year contract. After just getting out of a bad relationship with our last company this was a deal breaker for me. I wanted to be with the next PMC for 10 years but did not want it written into the contract. I had 5 or 6 things that I requested changed or modified. One company said they do not make changes to their contracts. The other company made the changes as I requested with hardly any push back. Going into our 4th year with that company and must say it was the best decision that has been made on any board I have served on.

Bigger is not better. Better is better.

I’m a bit late here, sorry. I posted something here about a year ago, and based on experience, it’s still true:

From July 2022:

Our PMC has dropped the ball sooo many times that I believe we’re going to dump them and begin actively looking for a replacement. It’s been suggested before - but “Honestly Doctor, I think we may really crash this time.”

I’ve never been involved in this kind of effort before, but there are a handful of concrete items that I think we’ll be looking for:

- Their availability to handle issues with the pool. The pool gets maximum use on Friday afternoons, weekends, and holidays. Our PMC is closed at those times.
- Related: response time on emergencies.
- How many other properties is our PM going to handle? We’re currently one of ten. That ratio is not proving to be realistic.
- What portal system do they use for ACC, Violations, payments, etc? Our ACC likes the system that our PMC has set up with. Another PMC that uses the same system would be attractive to us.
- Related: what kind of visibility does the Board have into these systems?
- I think we might like to have some kind of formal agreement or system on status reporting. We’ve had too many action items simply disappear. Admittedly, this is partially the Board’s fault. But also, we’re paying the PMC to help us navigate through these issues.
- Related: firm time and date tracking of action items as they come and go.

We might be in for a shock - it might be that we can’t find anyone who meets these requirements within our budget. And the stuff about progress reports and time/date tracking - I may live to regret that: I’ve dealt with some very shabby business service interfaces, we need something that effective but not inflexible, and that may be tough to find. But at least we’ve got a few solid requirements.

Again, this is merely my thinking on how to approach a task I’ve never done before. So, to any future generations reading this: don’t mistake my thoughts for actual experience.

A couple of months after I wrote that, our PMC was acquired by another PMC. We considered the situation carefully and decided to go with the new company - they used the same bank, they used the same portal system, it gave us the opportunity to dump our totally worthless PM for a new, better one.

After working with them for almost a year, and a pretty tough one at that (tough in the sense of ice storms and wandering hordes of homeless people and getting the pool running with lifeguards after COVID and record heat waves) this list is still pretty strong. I’ll add:

- pool operations suppprt (if you have a pool) is a BFD. I’ve been running the pool this year and aside from trespassers and homeless people breaking in, the biggest thorn in my side has been pool access control. The PMC claims they can’t give me access to it, so everything has to go through 1-2 people at the PMC - so if someone steals a key fob and uses it on a Friday, I typically can’t get it disabled until Monday or Tuesday.

- response time on emergencies (and telephone response time in general): their emergency number is worthless. Plus I’ve fielded many complaints from homeowners who can’t get through to customer service via telephone, emails not responded to, etc.

- we need to close on some kind of task tracker system. Our PM is a great fellow, and highly responsive - but there is simply too much stuff going on, and we need to begin working with some kind of formal tracking ‘ ticket system so that stuff doesn’t get lost / forgotten.

Pragmatically, the financial aspects of the switchover have been the biggest problem: people never changed how they paid dues, or forgot, or did it wrong, etc. And after almost a year we’re still attempting to get it all straightened out. The new PMC has been good about working with us on this - but strictly speaking, they should not have allowed this to become a problem on the first place.

As luck would have it, just yesterday the PMC sent me a “How are we doing?” email. And I’m going to let them know.

Bill