We are delighted to announce that we are continuing to work with the 100 Club and we plan to help them by raising money for financial assistance when tragedy strikes; Line of Duty Death/Non-Line of Duty Death, Line of Duty Injury, Safety Enhancement Stipends to keep our heroes safe and peer support to equip our heroes with the tools to find assistance when they need it. For almost 50 years, the 100 CLUB OF ARIZONA has assisted OFFICERS, FIREFIGHTERS, AND THEIR FAMILIES.

In the past couple of weeks, Arizona has sent over 150 of our first responders to assist with the wildfires charging through California. We are thankful for all of the first responders that are working tirelessly to keep the public safe and want to give back to them. To support the heroes that make sacrifices every day for the safety of all citizens.

Over the years AZCMS has aided other very meaningful charities, the AZCMS team has decided to give support to the 100 Club of Arizona. For more information regarding this charity please to www.100club.org. The link is also located at the bottom of the AZCMS website www.azcms.com.

Starting Monday, November 19, 2018, we will be offering a donation-based gift wrapping service to all of our owners. Donations for this service are welcome and will go 100% to the 100 Club.

Staff will be gift wrapping while you wait! This service is available through December 21st. For those HOA’s holding board meetings during these dates, we will also have an AZCMS staff member available for gift wrap.

If you do not have any gifts that need wrapping but still want to donate, please contact our Communications Liaison, Bret Barnes, at BBarnes@azcms.com or (480) 355-1190, ext. 114.

We are also offering this service at our corporate office, located at 17787 N. Perimeter Drive, Suite A111, Scottsdale, AZ 85255. If your HOA has an on-site office, gift wrapping services will be available at that location as well.

We thank you in advance for your support. Your donation is greatly appreciated and will be used by the 100 Club for our Arizona first responders and their families.

Sincerely,

Arizona Community Management Services, LLC

For over a decade, AZCMS has been providing educational programs known as "Dinner & Dialogues". These programs are made available for the benefit of our board member clients. They have become a popular venue, not only to receive education from industry professionals but for board members to exchange stories and information with each other. Our guest list consists of board members from a variety of homeowner associations; differing in size and having diverse demographics. With our communities being located Valley-wide, it is always interesting to hear about different codes or restrictions from other municipalities and how they worked or didn’t work, in a community.

The Dinner & Dialogue program has developed over the years, with much of its growth being the result of board member participation. In addition, the AZCMS staff has become very proficient in entertaining our clients. We enjoy seeing our repeat attendees; it’s a telltale they enjoyed their previous events at our office. We welcome them back every time. Our Training Room comfortably accommodates 35 people and is equipped with presentation technology. We commonly serve light dinners and beverages. We invite professionals to speak on industry topics. These include federal and state law updates from HOA attorneys, reserve study professionals, insurance brokers and CPA’s. These seminars have proven to infuse confidence in board members as they conduct their general and executive meetings.

I would like to share a few testimonies we have received following one of our events:

“Thank you so much for the interesting lecture last evening by Paul Hansen. We learned some new facts about fraud appreciate all that you did to prepare and present the lecture! Best wishes, Susan P.”

“Thank you all so much! Last evening was most informative. It is obvious that you put a lot of time and effort into these events, as a team, and it is greatly appreciated by your clients. Have a great rest of the week! Susan R.”

“Last night’s presentation was, perhaps, the best one that I have attended over the last several years, whether provided by AZCMS or others. Right on target for new and seasoned board members. I also appreciate the friendly hospitality and professionalism provided by you and others at AZCMS. I look forward to attending the next two presentations. Lorraine M.”

If you have not attended one of our Dinner & Dialogues, we would encourage you to take advantage of these opportunities. They are a wealth of information that will help you in your elected role to serve your community to best of your ability. The 2019 Dinner & Dialogue calendar will be published in the next AZCMS Press. Feel free to contact us at Support@azcms.com if you have any speaker requests.

Karen Kass, PCAM
President/CEO
Arizona Community Management Services, LLC

With August already behind us, many of you know the 2019 budget season is already upon us. Managers have already begun to pull various financial reports in order to start compiling their budgets to present to their Boards of Directors. As anyone in the industry will tell you, the budget process is a straightforward one, but it can be one of the most time-consuming projects of the year. As industry professionals, our boards rely on our expertise and experience to make sense of several pages of financial data. Being the perfectionists that we all are, we strive to compose our budgets with precise accuracy and go the extra mile to try to predict the unforeseen variables that come up every year. Oh and did I mention, this is all being done while still managing the day-to-day tasks and projects in our communities?

The most important thing to remember about budgets is that you do not have to do it alone! In all of our communities, talented professionals are waiting to offer their assistance. If you do not have one already, I strongly suggest you establish a Budget Committee. Send out a simple email blast, asking for volunteers to submit their qualifications to be on such a committee. You will be surprised by the number of responses you get. If there is one thing that motivates people to get involved, it is money. In this case, it is the allocation of association funds. When sending out your Budget Committee solicitation email, remember… CLICHÉ IS OKAY! Use phrases like, “Are you looking to make a difference?” or “Are you ready to be the change that you want to see?’ I could go on and on but I am pretty sure that you get the point. Remember, you need to inspire members to join your committee, so keep it light and positive. Avoid going into too much detail, which might scare them off.

Some of you may have boards that only want the budget process to involve them and them alone. That is okay. The whole point is to utilize the years of collective experience and knowledge that surround you. The truth is, not all boards want to be involved in the details of the budget. They want to see the end product and decide whether or not they feel it is adequate. If that is the case, pitch the idea of creating a committee to assist with the review and compilation process. If your board is wary about letting a committee be directly involved in this process, draft up a committee charter and present it to them. Charters are great tools because they detail the purpose, responsibilities, and structure of the committee. They also help the committee understand what their exact role is and will stop anyone from overstepping their boundaries.

So, you formed your committee. What next? Right out of the gate, you need to start with clear, concise, and efficient communication. Remember back in school when you had to do group projects? You either had a group that worked unbelievably well together, or you had the kind of group project experience that gives you nightmares to this day. There is only one difference between a group that succeeds and one that crashes and burns. Communication! Right after the committee is assembled, draft an introductory email to your committee members. In this email, you should reiterate the purpose of the committee, establish procedures for clear communication, and include a schedule for ALL future meetings. If you wait until each meeting to plan the next, you are going to create more work than necessary. Give your committee the ability to plan their attendance in advance.

As far as communication, it is critical to establish a communication procedure for the committee to follow. Assign one person, most commonly the committee chair, to be tasked with receiving emails from the other members and then passing along the messages to you, the manager. If you do not do this, you will regret it when you receive ten emails a day from each of the committee members and it is likely that you will overlook something.

Now that your committee is set up and structured for success, you are ready to get started. If the committee starts to exceed their boundaries, don’t be afraid to pull out that committee charter and remind them what their roles and responsibilities are. As long as you lay down a strong foundation for your committee, you will find it to be a huge benefit to you and your community. After having an established Budget Committee for a couple of years, it will start to run like a well-oiled machine. Remember, there are always volunteers out there that are waiting to help. As long as they are equipped with the right tools and a strong committee structure, they will turn out to be one of your greatest assets.

Bret Barnes, CMCA
Communications Liaison
Arizona Community Management Services, LLC

The HOA Industry, like many other industries, is always changing because of the rapid evolution of technology. Imagine, before the widespread availability of the personal computer in the 1980’s, office employees had to carry out day-to-day business with a typewriter. Being a Millennial myself, I will never forget going to my mother’s office and hearing the woman who did CC&R enforcement clicking away on some oversized contraption. Growing up in the technological age, I could not even imagine trying to use a typewriter. One mistake and you have to hope you can white it out and type over it or you are forced to start over? In today’s fast-paced HOA management industry, it would be impossible to accomplish what we need to with older methods.

The same is true with the advancements in online technology. In a prior article, I mentioned the rise in HOAs utilizing online voting to conduct their annual elections. The great thing about online voting is that it is not limited to being used for elections only. It is very common for older associations to amend their governing documents to be in compliance with the everchanging laws that are in place. For many associations, an approval of two-thirds of the community is necessary to carry this out. If your board has ever tried to amend their documents, you are aware that this can be quite a daunting task to achieve with paper ballots. More than likely, you have a committee of volunteers dialing through the resident directory to get those votes in.

With the online voting feature, it is easier than ever to solicit member participation. With the AZCMS online voting service, an individual site is created just for your association. This makes it easier for homeowners to vote because they don’t have to navigate through a third-party site to find their association. We are also able to track the progress of each online voting campaign and compile reports in real-time. This allows the Board of Directors to have the latest information on how many votes have been cast, what the number of votes are for each proposed action and who has voted for each (unless it is a secret ballot). My favorite feature of our online voting service is that I can email all of the homeowners who have not voted yet. Whether it is a secret ballot or not, the system knows who has and has not voted and will only send out reminders to the ones who have not voted. This is a great tool because homeowners who already voted will not have to worry about getting duplicate reminders.

As if all of the aforementioned features are not amazing enough, online voting can also reduce the cost of the voting process for an HOA. For the most part, governing documents tend to be quite extensive, especially the Bylaws and CC&Rs, because there are a lot of topics to cover. Instead of using snail mail to send out large packets of the governing documents, a simple letter that explains where homeowners can vote and view the amended documents will suffice. What if a homeowner absolutely refuses to utilize an online voting service? That is completely fine. On the letter that goes out to the owners, we include instructions on how an owner can request for paper materials to be sent to them. This allows every homeowner to be able to vote however they choose.

I encourage you to find out more about the benefits and savings of using an online voting service. Contact me today at BBarnes@azcms.com or (480) 355-1190, ext. 114.

Bret Barnes, CMCA
Communications Liaison
Arizona Community Management Services, LLC

As we enter the mid-year business with our associations and Boards of Directors, the AZCMS staff is preparing for our busiest time of year. With the budget season, the return of the winter visitors and planning for annual meetings, we are turning up the “teamwork”. This involves a combined effort of staff, as well as enhancing our organization’s performance. We like to refer to this as the AZCMS Synergy! However, our success is not entirely predicated on these adjustments.

Teamwork is often spoken about in leadership circles, but seldom does an example of it avail itself in situations involving the business’ clients, which is the third part of “teamwork”. The HOA industry is unique in that there is a very close working relationship with the staff and the clients. What other industry can you think of where the client is mostly responsible for making the decisions; whereas the staff members are responsible for ensuring the execution of the work?

For the purpose of this article, I will use a story about a rowboat, where eight-oared racing crew members came together as a team in their epic quest for a gold medal at the 1936 Berlin Olympics; a book titled The Boys in a Boat by Daniel James Brown.

One clear impression I had of rowing when reading the book, was the depth of challenges—what Brown calls “paradoxes”—involved in performing as a team back in 1936 and today. The racing shell is powered by large and physically powerful men and women, but it is commanded, controlled and directed by the smallest and least powerful person in the boat—the coxswain, who nowadays is often a woman managing an otherwise male crew. In 1936, the coxswain was a man called Bobby Moch.

Whoever the coxswain is, he or she must be an integral part of the team and understand how everyone is performing moment to moment, while not losing sight that he or she is part of the team as well. In the HOA industry, this might translate to the board president or the community manager. Does this remind you of a HOA board meeting you have attended? Coxswains must use empathy, knowing how each individual is experiencing their performance and supporting and enhancing this effort for all eight members so that they move as one in their goal to glide through the water as quickly as possible.

The challenge facing the team is to perform a complicated sequence of movements, where each member must execute with precise skill, knowing that as they increase their speed, knowing that as they increase their speed, the task becomes exponentially more difficult as the stroke rate increases. As the boat goes faster, the harder it is to row. As the speed increases, the penalty for technical miscues can be devastating: an oar touching the water a fraction of a second too early or too late; one crew member not breaking his arms at the right point in stroke; rowing out of unison as a boatful of individuals, not as a synchronized crew. The crew must exert the required amount of effort together and peak, as an orchestra crescendo in a musical score. This type of synergy would result in an ideal relationship between AZCMS and the Association.

All of these challenges are subsumed into the biggest challenge for a team: the psychological challenge. Individually, the members in the boat have strong egos, healthy self-esteem and self-confidence, abundant self-reliance and independence, and enormous willpower. They must be resilient, not only to the pain required in the effort, but resilient to the frustration of sitting in a long, narrow boat and dealing with others. Does this remind you of your board meetings? This work requires the complete abandonment of the self. No member is the star of the team. Rowers and the coxswain exhibit a perfectly synchronized flow of collective muscles and sounds: a collective will focus on the goal of propelling the boat through the water with the machine-like movement of the oars.

They must perform as a crew, with each adapting to the strengths and shortcomings of the other. The long-armed member must adjust to the stronger back of another member. Each needs to suppress their individual egos for the sake of the whole. Each must empathize with the other’s point of view, discerning what is needed and quickly adjust. Each must open their heart to every other member and be willing to get past their own feelings of disappointment. Each must give themselves up for the entire crew’s effort, rowing as the extension of the teammate, in front and behind.

Connecting The Boys in a Boat and crew to the HOA industry, specifically, the relationship between AZCMS and our Association’s Boards of Directors was an easy connotation. Teamwork is so much more powerful for goal accomplishment. As the President of AZCMS and the leader of our Executive Team, I am mindful of the impact that our business relationships have in terms of influencing others, exhibiting exemplary team behavior and avoiding pitting one member of the team against another to induce a desired behavioral outcome.

At AZCMS, we take it very seriously that we have entered a binding contractual relationship with your association. A relationship that develops over time and evolves into a “same boat” type of synergy as the crew in the winning boat in 1936. As professionals, we have firsthand experience of how the relationship between AZCMS and your association can be successful by working as a team.

Karen Kass, PCAM
President/CEO
Arizona Community Management Services, LLC

Reserve Study Basics

There are an estimated 342,000 community associations in the United States today and that number is growing rapidly, but only a small percentage of those communities have the financial protection provided through a professional Reserve Study to ensure the continued value of the common community assets.

It is well known that the board of directors of an association has the fiduciary duty and responsibility to preserve, maintain and enhance the value of the assets of the community because that value directly affects the value of each owner’s unit or property. A professional Reserve Study provides the board with the necessary information to perform its duty and make important financial decisions on behalf of the association.

To get started down the path of financial health for an association, a series of initial critical questions by each homeowner and board member needs to be asked including, “when should an original Reserve Study be created, and why?"

The timing for establishing a Reserve Study should be prior to setting the initial homeowner assessment. That means that the developer should initiate a Reserve Study prior to the first sale of a unit. Although in most states a developer is not required to establish a Reserve Fund, it is the most prudent and proper thing to do to start an association off on the right financial foot.

Since it is an indisputable fact that Reserve expenses are inevitable, the answer to the “why” question is simple really. Without a formal assessment and analysis of the capital components of an association, an association may well fall short in its budgeting requirements and fail to adequately fund when necessary to achieve proper care of its infrastructure.

This leads to another significant question; “How prepared are we financially to ensure that we can maintain the value of our community assets?" Since the duty of the board of directors is to make decisions that positively affect the value of the assets of the community, there must be a financial test to ensure this duty is fulfilled.

This test requires each board member to ask; “How do we stay financially strong and protect the value of our assets so as to avoid the need for a surprise special assessment, the borrowing of funds, or the loss of use of enjoyment of a community amenity?" Each board will accept their own respective level of risk, and the use of professionals in the field should assist them in their duty to assess the risk and provide them with information useful in reaching a decision for their community.

WHAT A CLIENT SHOULD LOOK FOR

A Reserve Study should provide at least four things for the client:

• A formal identification and analysis of each capital component that the association is responsible to maintain.
• An estimate of the useful life, the remaining useful life, and the current quality of each of the components identified.
• The cost in today’s dollars to replace, repair, maintain, refurbish, and/or enhance each of those respective components.
• A financial funding model that considers how the association will pay to repair, replace or refurbish the capital assets to an acceptable level of quality and use.

To provide valuable decision-making information to the board, a Reserve Study should determine the basis for a Fully Funded model. This financial model portrays the funding necessary to ensure enough money is available at the time that each asset is anticipated to be replaced, repaired, refurbished, etc.

Any amount of funding that is less than a Fully Funded model, presents a graduated risk to the association of having inadequate funds available at the time money is needed. Such risk may be acceptable to an association but may also result in the need for a possible special assessment, the need to borrow money, or the loss of use of an asset. Simply stated, the less funding the higher the risk, and the risk of financial inadequacy is measurable.

A more practical reason to Fully Fund the Reserve Fund is fairness. Everyone who uses or enjoys the benefit of an asset of the association over time should help fund the replacement or repair of that asset over the period they’ve used or enjoyed it. For example, everyone who uses the road should contribute to its maintenance and replacement – a simple, yet practical principle.

It is vital to the financial health of an association to provide for a Reserve Fund analysis of the capital, common-area assets, and then fund the Reserve Fund model desired to ensure the on-going quality that the members of the association expect and have invested in.

Remember that an association will need to use funds in the future to maintain its assets, it’s just a matter of how each one plans to acquire, hold and spend those funds.

RESERVE STUDY MYTHS

There are several “myths” about Reserve Funds that professionals hear and deal with on regular basis. Here are responses to a few of them:

“I won’t be here when that needs to be replaced!” It is true that certain members of an association may pay into a Reserve Fund without ever seeing the result of their savings, however, their use and enjoyment of those assets establishes their responsibility to pay for them and is an added value to their own unit when they do decide to sell. The buying public is becoming increasingly aware of the need to investigate the financial health of an association that they’re going to potentially buy into. An unfunded or underfunded Reserve Fund may signal financial trouble for an association resulting in a new buyer potentially being saddled with a special assessment.

• “If it’s not listed in the plan, we can’t pay for it out of Reserves.” A reserve plan is an estimate of values of major components. There may be an occasion when a capital cost to repair or replace something wasn’t consider in the funding model, but it is ok to use the Reserve Fund to pay for capital items that were not necessarily planned for in the analysis.
• “Shouldn’t this be an engineering analysis?” In some cases, it is necessary to have an engineering analysis performed on a major, critical capital asset, but since a Reserve Study is an estimate of future values for the purpose of establishing a fund, an engineering analysis is not necessarily required. In addition, an estimating service is generally far less expensive than the cost of an engineering analysis.
• “We can’t fund for that because we don’t own it!” Some associations have chosen to maintain or care for areas that are not particularly owned by the association but may impact the value of the community. As an example, unit doors may be owned and the responsibility of the unit owner, but the association may choose to maintain those doors to ensure a certain level of quality appearance.
• “We’re really a unique association so we don’t need a Reserve plan!” Every association is unique, but the basis for performing a Reserve Study is uniform (as described above). Each aspect of an association should be considered when developing a Reserve Study, and each report should reflect the unique characteristics of that association.
• We can’t Reserve for future growth.” It is true that a Reserve Study is based on existing assets of the association. It is highly recommended to talk to your accountant about such matters, but generally setting aside funds for growth in the association should occur through a “Capital Improvement Fund”. Once an improvement is initiated, it should then be added to the Reserve Fund to fund for future repair or replacement consideration.
• “The developer should have funded our Reserve plan more!” Well actually, that is only partially true. The developer is not going to fund the Reserve program from his or her own pocket. So, what the developer should have done was set the initial assessment at a level that would allow the association to start funding its own Reserve program from the beginning of its existence.
• “We can do this Reserve Study ourselves.” In some instances, this is true. Typically, when an association has few minor components. Getting bids from contractors to deal with those components is the best way to know what it will actually cost to maintain, repair or replace specific components. But generally, a Reserve Study involves a complicated analysis of identifying proper components and then developing true costs associated with repairing or replacing those components in the future.
• We’re not legally bound to put a Reserve Study together.” Although this may be a true statement in states where no state statute exists to require an association to do so, it is a basic principle of prudent business practice by a board of directors and fulfills their fiduciary duty.
• “But we had a plan done years ago - we don’t need another one!” Since maintaining the community assets in an association is an on-going practice, and since the only thing that’s constant is change, it is prudent for an association to update their Reserve Study annually to incorporate all changes to assets, and their financial situation.

Robert Felix, PCAM, RS
Owner
The Felix Reserve Group

You often will hear new board members ask their manager or management company just “what exactly is my responsibility as a board member?” While the Bylaws generally do a satisfactory job in explaining the day-to-day duties of each officer, they (Bylaws) often miss the mark on what the board’s main objective is. The main focus of the Board of Directors is to uphold the property values of the community through financial planning and responsible spending. It is incumbent upon all board members to make sure the assets of the community are protected and money is readily available to help protect those assets.

Over the last 20 years, I have run across some board members that feel their job is not to raise assessments. This notion could not be farther from the truth. While the residents may appreciate the consistency in keeping the assessment the same for a period of time, they will be less than thrilled, to say the least, when the association invariably has to either (a) raise the assessment sharply in a given year (unless otherwise stated in the governing documents: single family - maximum 20% in a given year; condominium-no cap) or (b) put forth a special assessment. The ladder of which can be a nightmare for some communities. The bottom line is that all of the aforementioned issues could have been prevented with simple long-range fiscal planning.

The cost of living increases each year, so why would anyone think homeowner associations aren’t affected by the cost of living and commodity increases? Board members and the management companies that manage their communities need to develop fiscally responsible policies which will govern the way their respective Associations are managed from a financial perspective. As managers and boards sit back and breathe a sigh of relief that budget season has finally come to a close, both should already be thinking about fiscal 2019-2024. As we all know, most budgets become antiquated by the end of the first quarter and some even sooner than that. The assets within your communities do not stop depreciating in between budget seasons.  So why should Associations go on cruise control until the start of the next budget season in August? The key to any successful business is financial planning for both, the short and long term. The majority of boards and managers tend to focus much of their efforts on the immediate future and leave little room for long-term strategic planning.

Below are a few simple planning tips that the manager and board can utilize at the beginning of each year to help aid in long-term fiscal planning.

1.Develop a 5-year budget plan:

a. Plan on increasing your assessments a minimum of 1-1.5% each year to keep up with inflation.

b. The plan should put forth a general idea of expected costs and revenues.

2. The plan should outline general community enhancements outside the scope of a reserve study.

3. The operating account should have 2-3 times the amount of average monthly expenses in it.

4. The reserve study should be reviewed at the very least on a quarterly basis. The objective of which would be to identify assets that have reached the end of their useful life and need replacement and/or assets that will exceed their useful life and replacement can be pushed out to a subsequent year.

5. Depending on the size of the community and number of assets, associations should plan to revise the reserve study every three years. Make sure you allocate for the revision in your budget.

6. You need to talk about the budget throughout the entire year and not just during the budget season. Go ahead and include a budget discussion at every one of your board meetings.

7. Create a Finance Committee to help the board with short and long-term planning.  Finance Committees can prove to be invaluable and offer the board another perspective on the association’s finances. Finance Committees also have the added benefit of getting other owners involved in the committee.

There are many other ways boards and managers can help themselves be better prepared for the future, depending on the size of the community and number of assets involved. The overarching point, however, is to make sure you plan ahead and are always thinking about the future of the association.

Frank Puma, CMCA
Vice President of Client Operations
Arizona Community Management Services, LLC

Communication between the association and homeowners, whatever form it takes, is a crucial part of successful HOA management. Consistent and open communication can mean the difference between a happy community and a mob of angry homeowners. If you ask any Community Manager or management company employee, they will tell you that the number one complaint from homeowners is that they feel uninformed and uninvolved in their association.

While your first response might be to tell them to seek an active role on one of the association’s ancillary committees, many homeowners will say that they do not have the time because of other obligations. Therein lies the conundrum. The simple truth is that you cannot force a passive homeowner to play a more active role in association affairs but there is an easy solution. Communicate, communicate and communicate some more!

Advancements in technology have made slow and ineffective communication a thing of the past. The figurative doors to association correspondence have been blown wide open! These advancements have changed the way we structure our communication channels. As an association volunteer, the structuring of these channels might seem like a daunting task for a board member and one that they do not have the time for. Let’s be honest, their role in the association, whatever it may be, is a volunteer role which means that they have other things they need to allocate their time and energy to.

This is where your management company steps in. It is the role of your management company to assess the needs of the community and develop an effective communication strategy, specific to the association. With that being said, the role of the Board of Directors is to determine whether or not they want to increase communication to the community.

Do the majority of the members prefer written or digital correspondence? This is the first step in determining what method you are going to choose. If most of your homeowners prefer to utilize their email, mailing out a quarterly newsletter would be an unnecessary expense. In this case, information would be received in a more productive manner through the use of an email blast. This is not to say that an email method would work for all communities.

While there are several methods to use for communicating information to homeowners, management companies and self-managed associations are turning to text messaging to keep owners informed. Think about how many emails your personal account receives on any given day. With the skyrocketing number of spam mail in our inboxes, it is easier to overlook the information that is actually important. This is why some associations are avoiding emails all together and sending it straight to the homeowner in a text. Several HOA website vendors have noticed this trend and offer some form of the service for a reasonable price.

Keep in mind, there are still people that prefer to receive their information in a hard copy format, hence why the newspaper industry still exists. The goal is not to discount their preferences, but to determine what is best for the members as a whole. For example, in an age-restricted community, a majority of the homeowners tend to view printed materials as a desirable source of information. If that is the case, there is no harm in sending out a printed newsletter to highlight upcoming projects, events and association objectives.

There are many benefits to increased correspondence. From a management perspective, there is a benefit in the reduction of administrative work. Owners that are more informed tend to have fewer questions or things they require clarification on. While this might seem like something that only benefits the management company, it benefits the Board of Directors and the homeowners too.

When there is less time spent responding to questions that could have been avoided, there is more time for the association’s managers and administrative staff to direct their attention to more pressing matters. The question that you have to ask yourself is whether or not the current communication efforts are satisfactory. If they are, continue to do what you are doing! If they are not, reach out to your management team and see what can be done to cost-effectively increase correspondence.

Bret Barnes, CMCA
Communications Liaison
Arizona Community Management Services, LLC