To be or not to be Self Managable?

At your expense.

If you are comfortable donating your significant professional services to your neighbors, go for it.

They will not be grateful. Most will not step up and offer anything similar to you or your neighbors.

Good candidates for self managing:

* Small community where the economics of paying a manager work against the community

* High level of skills among the homeowners

* Willingness of the homeowners to do the work

Poor candidates for self managing:

* Limited skill set among the homeowners

* Unwillingness among a fair number of homeowners to take their turn at the work

* Homeowners would rather pay for professional services than do it themselves

* Too many absentee owners (landlords and snowbirds)

I won't go into my usual shtick about the issues with using volunteers. But to sum up: they're not free, you won't get professional quality work, and you absolutely do not want volunteers handling physical labor (you'll eventually pay more than you've saved once injuries occur).

There is a happy medium where you figure out what tasks volunteers can reasonably take on (and - more important - you'll have a steady supply of willing volunteers). The you hire professionals for the rest. A common scenario is hiring a bookkeeper to handle the financial tasks.

It's also important to be realistic when assessing all of these things. Board service can take up a lot of your time even with a professional manager, and adding a manager's tasks on top of that may discourage board service altogether. And while there is overlap, the skills of a board member and the skills of a manager are different. Having one set doesn't automatically translate into the other set.

I think many boards go into self-managing and only focus on the potential cost savings, which may not materialize. They also ignore the downsides, which are real. And the downsides can appear with a change in the community's demographics. You may lose your willing retirees and gain younger professionals and parents who don't have time to spare. Or several owners decide to rent out their homes. That's not a criticism of any of these groups, just a recognition that there are only 24 hours in a day and many people have too much to do without adding more.

For the right communities, self-managing is the way to go. It's worth investigating, but be realistic about the challenges that go with it.

Good Point Ellen!

For 2023 the MC we hired basically did nothing for us.
So we picked up the slack and basically did all the work.

Now that we have decided to terminate, We are contemplating
hiring a part time property manager that would handle the compliance, inspections and
other property manager duties.

I have been handling the accounting part to a certain extend as I have to constantly
review that our bank is being reconciled correctly and that our vendors are being paid on time
ect... + Budget completion.

I think someone asked if regarding form 1120 (H) to answer this question I used to work in a tax firm and I very familiar with filling these types of IRS Forms for tax related purposes.

Not all homeowners will be grateful, The only time they are grateful is if their pockets are not affected. But at least the board is active and willing to give up their time to help.

We are as small community and dont really have many expenses.

I think the biggest issue would be keeping track of payments or whose late.
But we might not even need a software for that?

But based on the majority of the comments, being self managed sounds more difficult than a long term solution.

I'm with David. But it also depends on the complexity of the HOA. 30 condo units in an elevator building with a lot of amenities might have more mgmt.-type needs than 30 SFHs (or even 100) with few vendors as in Carlos' case.

Did you ever say, Carlos, is your HOA is condos or SFHs?

Reach out to some accounting firms to see if they could handle collecting
the monthly assessments. I doubt it would be any cheaper than paying a PMC X per door.
30 doors are small enough to self-manage. I would keep a good rapport with your current vendors
and your current legal counsel. Ask your current legal council if they would be comfortable
being your council if you were to self-manage.
If you remain self-managed, reach out to the bank where your assessments are sent to.
perhaps they can leave the web portal active so owners can pay assessments monthly or quarterly.

I know our PMC's website directs me to the bank's website to pay assessments.

The presence of a pool house (and pool, I assume) leans more toward active management. This is especially true down south where pools can be open for much of the year, unlike communities up north where pools are typically open from Memorial Day to Labor Day. Maybe Bill from Texas and others with pools can post some of their (horror) stories.

Managers take care of day-to-day tasks around the community, including ones that need prompt attention. It's not like board service where much of what you do can safely be put off while you go out of town for a few days. So the presence of amenities that see regular use means that you need someone who can jump in right away if there is an issue, and may even need someone physically present (not just available via phone or internet). Even up here in the Great Frozen North, the beginning of pool season was a big chore for our manager.

We've been self-managed for over 20 years & it has worked well keeping our dues reasonable. We are 1 79 single-family home community with some common areas but no amenities.
Two recommendations are: 1) Talk to your bank & see if they can help set up a Lockbox account for HOA dues payments. 2) Hire a CPA account each year to review your Fiscal Year-end & do your tax forms.
I hope this helps.

Thank you Tim I received your e-mail

The spreadsheets you sent me are so detailed and amazing to have.
I will be responding back to you in a few.

Do I feel 100% working on the spreadsheets and I cant help to think that one day
when I decide to no longer be the "Treasurer" who ever takes over will probably
have no idea what is going.

That is why we are open to the idea of using a Management Software, I guess we are
thinking future and being able to roll over things smoothly if necessary's.

I have looked at a few software's out there but since there is so many I am curious
if anyone has any recommendation's

Again if you are not allowed to post that here feel free to e-mail me GZA3603@HOTMAIL,COM

Carlos,

When I took over as Treasurer, I was handed the checkbook, an envelope of receipts (separated by years), lot ledgers and copies of deposit slips.
Had I known nothing about being a treasurer or accounting, I probably would have left the place in a mess.

Therefore, I took the initiative to create binders for new officers. Appropriately titled "I was appointed [office] Now What Do I DO?"

These were the minimum things they were required to do to make the Association function.
I finished all but the treasurer prior to leaving (partial on the treasurer).
The Binders contained:

General description of the office and what is expected.
Calendar of events (taxes due, corporate report due, annual meeting notice needs to be sent)
Step by step on where the post office box is
step by step on how to take minutes
step by step on how to fill out an 1120-H and the State return
Calendar of when maintenance is due
step by step on how to balance a check book
step by step on how to write a check
step by step on how to access online banking
step by step on how to order deposit slips
etc.

Hence, you can provide the resource material for those who follow and how to do things.

Try to educate the person vs. finding a product. Otherwise, the individual may be able to do the tasks but won't really understand what they are doing.

65 home HOA, self managed since turnover over 25 years ago.

Historically the treasurer used Excel. Treasurer prior to me got QB (common accounting software) setup with free help from an accountant friend. When I became treasurer I stayed with QB with some minor tweaks to procedures (I don't have any accounting background, but do have background in customizing and modifying accounting software as a programmer).

After I left, new treasurer with no accounting background couldn't handle accounting software and went back to Excel.

I would suggest just staying with Excel because even if other software is better, it needs to be usable by least common denominator users.

Good point by Wendy. Our governing docs allowed for monthly payments, but early on boards encouraged owners to pay yearly, semi-annually, or quarterly and pretty much all owners went at least quarterly with almost half of owners paying annually. The board did sort of imply they would hire a bookkeeper if everyone kept paying monthly so the owners would save money by paying less frequently.

While I was treasurer only one house paid monthly, they told me they would pay quarterly if they could be just couldn't swing it. So as long as the dues aren't too high, most people will help out. Ours were only $500 a year. If the dues were hundreds a month, that might be another matter.

Our architectural committee would make a yearly inspection. Taking pictures of potential violations.

We had three categories:

1) Violation - remedy in 30 days
personal property left out, mowing/pruning, painting of handrails, fence pickets, etc.

2) Maintenance Required - remedy by next inspection If not remedied by next inspection, becomes a violation.
These were large ticket items that may take time for the owner to afford.
Painting of house, roofs, re-pointing of bricks, replace fence, etc.

3) Concerns - anything the inspector saw that might be a concern for the owner
erosion, animal burrows, things that might be another category the following year, etc.
Just making the owner aware.

Other then that, we did not go looking for violations but would respond if one was reported to the board.

We advertised when the inspection would take place and included reminders about the inspection.
Ideally, this limited the violations we saw.
Doing this annually helped the owner keep the property in good order and repair and kept the development looking good.

Hello,
I am President of 29 unit HoA. Very similar to what you describe. We converted to self management in 2022. Software we are using is very inexpensive and useful. I am an accountant and it is very necessary to keep everything g equal, keeps up with your violation, receivables. Banking, general ledger and everything you need. Just email me for name and referral as I cannot post it on the forum.
It will work with this system! We saved $8k a year. Converted those expenditures into free trash services and free lawn Weed & Feed. Members thrilled!
Ann

Ann, please send me the information for the software you are referring to [email protected].
Thank you very much,
Buddy

Hi Anita,

My E-mail is [email protected]

Thank you for sharing your experiences.

Just wanted to say thank to everyone who has replied to this thread.
The information and advice from every single person has been awesome!

Does anyone have any experience with using the platform starts with Build ends with M
Sorry I dont think I am allowed to actually post the name of the vendor?

Hi Wendy,

Can you share further information regarding the website that has google forms?

Thank you