self-manage continued

John,
The members mail their fees and you physically put them in the bank? Do you pick the vendors,sign the contracts,do the accounting and taxes? Who deals with the violations. I told you I had a lot of questions.
thanks
Barbara

Self-Management is the same as PM Management 'cept there's no PM getting paid to do what our BOD now does.

Mind you, we're small, only 21 SFDs with no amenities save our 30+ acres of Common Areas.

We're fortunate to have a homogeneous, cooperative Membership which shows their appreciation of our efforts by paying their dues on time and not causing any problems. However, they rarely volunteer to do anything, so the three of us handle things - which is not a big deal once the structure was put in place.

We have a PO Box and two bank accounts (operating and reserves). Each December we mail out a packet containing 4 quarterly vouchers and 4 SAEs to mail checks.

We have 4 vendors to pay - 2 for landscaping (figure 10 checks/year), 1 for pond rehab (4 checks) and 1 electric co. (12 checks) for power for the fountain in one of our 4 ponds. Plus misc. debit card purchases for office supplies, printing the vouchers and anything else we require. The BODer hosting BOD meetings provides the Scotch.

We email Updates every 4-6 weeks including a detailed running Deposits/Expenditures breakdown.

The keys to our success are 3 dedicated BODers, few extra issues and no troublemakers.

But that's just us. Every HOA is different. It's not for everyone.

Susan makes a very wise suggestion.

We are self-managed, currently, but are in the process of hiring a company.

We (our treasurer) maintains the list of accounts, including "accounts receivables").

We have only an annual payment period, so that makes it a tad easier.

We (per our documents) must mail the first notice out in mid November, with a due date of December 31 for the coming year's assessment.

On January 2 we apply a late penalty to all assessments not received, and the second notice gets mailed.

In February we give one last notification that on March X (whatever the date of the annual meeting) we will turn all non-payers over to a collections attorney.

We have one board member who picks up the mail from the Post Office Box every other day.

He opens and compiles a list of all mail received, and distributes the listing to all board members by email.

If it's an invoice or a dues payment, the Treasurer picks those up from him and prepares the check for invoice payment or the deposit slip for the dues receipt. He mails the payment immediately and makes a bank deposit run once a week.

If we have a project that requires hiring a vendor, we create a Request for Quotation and assign/delegate the bidding to a volunteer committee.

If there is a violation complaint, a board member is assigned to verify/confirm, and, if confirmed, a notice goes to the violator from the Secretary, under the full board's "signature."

If there is a request for approval for the Architectural Committee, the chair of that committee picks it up and processes it accordingly.

We are a 300+ stand-alone/individual home single-family development.

We have no amenities.

We have a retention basin that we fondly refer to as our "Lake" that we must maintain, and a signature entrance with landscaping and 13+ acres of common ground to maintain as well.

We are moving to a PM company because the same 4 or 5 people have cycled through the various officer/board/director positions for the last 10 to 12 years.

We are tired and want to enjoy our community along with everyone else, without the "filter" of our "fiduciary responsibility" entering into every neighbor relationship we have.

A PM company taking over some of the more tedious elements (researching current owners, mailing and tracking assessment notices, mailing violation notices, etc) we hope to feel comfortable with continuity if we end up with only 2 or 3 directors from this point out.

Barb asks:

>>>John,
The members mail their fees and you physically put them in the bank? Do you pick the vendors,sign the contracts,do the accounting and taxes? Who deals with the violations. I told you I had a lot of questions.
thanks
Barbara<<<

1. Yes.
2. Yes.
3. We rarely have violations of the docs or delinquencies. But on those few occasions, a friendly call or email from our Prez has always straightened things out.