Repairing Common Elements by owners

Janice, Fence issues seem to be the dynamite issue for many communities. Check your Documents to see who owns them/each. Don't assume you equally own them. Often PMC gives misinformation. I paid for a certified survey to push-back on erronious PMC info. Check your Maintenace list to see who maintains them: paint, wood rot, sagging (owner vs PMC)?
Be clear on these issues before to try to rally the troops. Advil might help!

Ya' know, JaniceB? Your CC&Rs should make it very clear that the HOA repairs & replaces COMMON AREA fences. Your Board may not, then, make a decision that some owners may repair & replace common area fences. It would be a direct & serious violation of your CC&Rs.

It is possible that your CC&Rs state that owners "maintain" fences.

I don't have experience with fences,, but I think a couple of other posters might---if they check in.

(I think Jackie meant to write something different. The PMC (community manager) would never have the authority to make a decision about this.)

In short, if we don't have enough funds to repair common elements, we re-think our priorities and raise assessments accordingly. This is how it's supposed to work.

There are a number of problems with owners doing these repairs. These include issues with warranties (absent, voided, or in someone else's name), quality of work, differing standards of work, potential CC&R violations, insurance on the items, and potential legal wrangles in the future. The only way we would even consider allowing owners to do repairs or replacements at their own expense would be having them and the board sign an iron-clad agreement that protects all parties. This agreement would have to be written by a lawyer, whose time is expensive. It's cheaper to just repair the whatever.

The correct solution is for the entire community to get serious about maintaining their property, consider all reasonable options, and then collect the funds to make this happen.

Nobody likes to raise assessments. But by neglecting necessary maintenance, you're actually increasing your costs over time. You're burning through the useful life of various components at an accelerated rate, so they'll have to be replaced sooner rather than later. Or the community starts to look run down and shabby, which harms property values.

The cheapskate spends the most. Words to live by.

If the Board determines standards and approves contractors to complete the work, the owners wanting the work done can then make a donation to the HOA for the work to be completed on their unit.

If the adjoining unit can’t afford to participate in this, it sucks to be them. Part of the issue in your community is owners not supporting the board with sufficient revenues to complete required repairs.

A better option would be for the board to assess the homeowners and get the work done. If some owners can’t afford it, the association is better off with them moving.

Another thing to consider with allowing owners to repair items:

When savvy boards ask professional contractors to submit proposals, they require them to also provide proof of insurance and appropriate licensing as needed. Homeowners generally will have neither of these - and if they were contractors who submitted bids without these things, they would not have been considered at all. If the homeowners hire their own professionals to do the work, they may not think to ask for this. This can leave the association with an uninsured liability if a worker gets hurt on the job.

The board needs to step up and do their jobs.

I am a strong advocate of letting contracts to external businesses to handle repairs, upgrades, etc.

In our community we have certain skills (and people who THINK they have certain skills) and they like to do things themselves...."look what i did for the community" be it planting flowers, or otherwise handling things which are best left to a contractor.

Why?

Because it creates two issues:

First, i am special because i did such and such. The rest of you are just not good community members.

Second, and more importantly, when things go wrong, to whom do you turn? The person who screwed it up? Or bend their nose out of joint and hire someone to fix the fixing?

We hired a resident who owns a landscape business to install our common area irrigation. For two years now the water has been running into the street. And no-one wants to tell the resident (who supposedly "gave us a good deal"--he didn't) to come fix it. What we might have saved by hiring "one of our own" is now costing us in water bills, and somewhere is the cost to fix whatever it is that he screwed up.

Recently we had neighbors lay down a paving stone "patio" under a community bench. The problem is that the stones were laid in sand which is a no-no when it comes to laying pavers (the insects dig little tunnels under the blocks through the sand, and the rain washes away the sand over time and the pavers collapse with no underlayment). Who is going to tell the helping hands that the job is incorrect; and who is going to pay the cost of tearing up the patio and doing the job correctly?

Hiring insiders does nothing but create gloating and hard feelings. On top of that, it violates the spirit of keeping a level playing field. Ditto neighbors doing their own work on common areas.

The association should hire an external contractor, get the work done evenly across the board, and keep the "volunteer" hands out of it.