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Posted By EllenS1 on 09/15/2009 2:30 PM
Karen,
It all depends on what type of owners you have. Naturally owners who move frequently could care less about a reserve fund while owners who intend to stay care more.
I'll argue this point till the cows come home.
Many older associations are now short in funds to pay for major repairs due to long time board members, aka long time owners, that based fee increases on a set percentage or what they thought the owners could afford. They took over the association from the developer and kept his low fees to begin with instead of coming up with what their actual costs were.
AND it's these same people now screaming that their fees are so high. Yeah, the fees wouldn't be so high now if they had just come up with proper budgets then. I would never base my association's budget on the doc's fixed rate. Spend the time to figure out what your costs are, the fixed and the estimated (what do you plan to do for repairs next year, plan it now in your budget). It's not rocket science and yet this is where so many boards get stupid.
Another thing to all you board members, in talking to seniors they can more easily take small rises in the fees each year rather then pay a big assessment in 10.
As a board all your doing in the long run by not setting up reserves now is setting yourselves up for failure. The longer you wait the more the past long term owners there don't want to pay for stuff they used up, although they should. And new owners won't want to move in because they will then get hit with an assessment for repairing the stuff they didn't wear out. No reserves lowers home values. Stress that to your current owners. Besides the point that Fannie and Freddie now require associations to have reserves and be putting so much in per year; although I feel their number to be nothing more than a "feel good" gesture.
Some associations don't fully fund their reserves; which is okay as long as the owners are aware that they are going to get assessed when it's time to replace a big ticket item.