Tips For Successfully Managing Your Small Homeowner's Association

If your small homeowner's association (HOA) is struggling with its management, then you will be pleased to know that there are many time-tested things you can do to make the process easier for everyone involved. To this end, here are some of the top tips for successfully managing a small HOA with the least amount of hassles:

Tip: Set Your Fees at a Reasonable Rate and Enforce Their Payment Due Dates

When people buy a home within an HOA, they understand that they will need to pay dues regularly in order to maintain the HOA's public areas and roads. As long as your small HOA sets their fees at a reasonable rate then the homeowners will not have a problem with paying their dues. If you set your fees very high to pay for board member's pet projects, then the membership will not want to pay their fees and will fight them. Once you have reasonably set fees, then you need to enforce their payment from your membership. Establish late fees and processes to ensure timely payment from every homeowner. By setting high late fee charges, you can encourage your homeowners to pay their bills on time.

Tip: Keep the Largest Reserve Fund Possible

Not only is it important that your HOA management is a good steward of the funds entrusted to them by the homeowners, but you should also take care to conserve money when possible and build up a large reserve fund. A larger reserve fund will allow your small HOA to deal with emergency road repairs and other unforeseen issues without having to make a special assessment charge to each homeowner. Since special assessments are likely to cause strife amongst the homeowners who have tight budgets or don't agree with spending "extra" money, being able to avoid them will go a long way towards keeping your HOA running well without a lot of drama and arguments.

Tip: Hire a Professional HOA Management Service

Finally, if your HOA's volunteers are overwhelmed with all of the work of running your small organization month after month, then you should consider hiring a professional HOA management service. The professional service will cost your homeowners a bit of money each year, but the service will greatly reduce the number of hours your volunteers will need to dedicate to the needs of the HOA each year. This goes a long way towards staving off volunteer burnout issues and helps your HOA to run in a more professional manner at the same time.  

Share