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Our Services - HOA Manager

That “sucking sound” you hear is the drastic decrease in transfer and re-sale disclosure fees over the last two years.

It is the twin specter of unemployment and foreclosure, and their combined affect on community association budgets.

If you raise management fees in this economy, you risk losing the client. If you're forced to reduce the fees, your margins get thinner.

With new developments on the decline, management companies will need to steal each other’s clients to grow.

However…..

There are strategies available that can insulate management companies from economic downturns such as this. One of those strategies is; “Work to thecontract.”  In other words, stop providing your clients with free service. Instead, give them unrivaled service… at no additional cost to you or them!

After more than 20 years as an HOA practitioner, I have yet to see a management company that was fairly compensated for administering the design review process in a custom-home community. On the contrary, many companies will actually bid lower to get a high-end, luxury estate-home community under contract!

It is the willingness of the manager and the management company to perform duties outside of the scope of their management agreement that perpetuates this problem.

Most full-service management agreements provide for the following:
1) Attendance at Board and ARC meetings
2) Maintaining files and records
3) Collecting and accounting for assessments
4) Enforcing the governing documents.

However, there are myriad administrative functions involved with plan review and construction compliance that must be mastered, if management is to have a positive expectation of success.

And then, there is the issue of compensation.

If you included the additional costs incurred in the design review process for custom-home construction, your fee would not be competitive. Consider all of the services you may now be providing, without compensation.

◙ Coordinate the plan submittal process
◙ Collaborate with the reviewing architect
◙ Communicate with all stakeholders involved in the process
◙ Increased level of phone calls and e-mails
◙ Additional meetings and inspections
◙ Develop specialized files & forms to track activity
◙ Obligation to derive and convey technical information
◙ Monitor specific compliance issues associated w/ each project
◙ Enforce builder regulations during construction
◙ Provide detailed reports to the ARC and the Board
◙ Damage Control (encroachment issues, view issues, sub-contractors behaving badly, unhappy neighbors, unapproved “field changes”, etc.)

Additionally, management has no leverage over the performance of the reviewing architect. There is no signed agreement between the architect and the HOA, stating what he will or won’t do, or when he will do it.  

So who really owns this process? The key is in the governing documents. Let us show you how to lift this “uncompensated burden” from your managers’ shoulders. At the same time, you will provide your high-end clients with an unrivaled level of service, at no cost to the HOA or your company.

Design review administrators llc has decades of training and experience in this sector of the HOA industry, and we’ve devised a business model that will put money back in your pocket and transform your managers from scapegoats to heroes!   Give us a call.