With the end of the year having come and gone, both homeowners and board members are looking forward to starting the new year fresh! To help you get through your tasks, we’ve put together a list of important items your HOA should review every year.
Your HOA has three main categories of documents to review each year: association documents, homeowner documents, and employee/contractor documents.
Association documents that should be reviewed annually include your fyearly budget and reserve study, your insurance policies, and the rules for your amenities.
Yearly Budget Reserve
Check the reserve study to make sure that you have enough money put away to resolve emergency situations, such as a flooded clubhouse or broken fencing. Trace the increase or decrease of funds in the reserve over past years. If the funds are depleting, you may have to adjust your annual budget to put more money into the reserve fund. When reviewing the yearly budget, ascertain whether funds are being wasted, and if money could be used more effectively. If not, you may need to raise homeowner assessments.
Insurance Policies
Insurance policies are also important to review on a yearly basis. See if your policies need to be updated or changed. Are all pertinent risks still covered? Check whether your policy rate has gone up, or will go up, with needed additions.
Rules for Amenities
Lastly, reviewing the rules for the community pool and other amenities will help you gauge if these rules need to be updated for the new season. Did you receive multiple complaints about the same issues, such as large flotation devices in the pool or bugs in the clubhouse? Determine if you can modify rules to avoid prevalent problems.
You should also consider reviewing the homeowner directory, accounts, and ACC violations.
Updating your homeowner directory will help you guarantee that mailed correspondences have the correct names on them and that you have up-to-date contact information for homeowners. Next, check homeowner accounts for outstanding assessment or violations fees to construct a plan to resolve such fees and prevent future outstanding balances. Lastly, looking over the past year’s ACC violations will help you monitor trends in violations (such as door painting or shingling). With this information, you can decide whether to send a friendly reminder to homeowners about acquiring ACC approval.
Reviewing employee and contractor documents is a must!
Check that your vendors’ insurance policies are up-to-date and cover all required risks. Additionally, evaluate the performance of your vendors and, if necessary, make plans with the vendors to improve future performance. You might also consider replacing a vendor that isn’t a good fit for your community.
Other items you can consider at the end of the year include the following:
- A calendar of meeting dates. Planning the next annual meeting date and board meeting dates far in advance, even if these dates are tentative, will help ensure high attendance. No one wants to miss quorum! When reviewing meeting days, you might also plan when to send out board candidate solicitations if you will hold an election at the annual meeting.
- A calendar of community events. Holiday parties – such as events for New Year’s, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Valentine’s Day – are great ways to bring neighbors together and get them interested in the community. You could also plan informative events, such as safety talks by local police department representatives, or events to help your community do good by hosting a donation drive or recycling drive.
- Online content. Review your HOA’s website for outdated forms, newsletters, notices, budgets, photos, event information, and the like. Clean out unneeded information, so your homeowners will be able to find the new content more easily.
- Possible repairs or upgrades. Examine the community for any repairs that may need to be made in the coming year. If you and your fellow board members walk the community yearly to check for discolored fencing, dying/overgrown trees, run-down roads, worn clubhouse walls and roofs, and monuments in disrepair, you will be able to catch any issues before they become serious and plan to fix them accordingly. A small repair completed now is less costly and more quickly made than a large one in the future!
With so much on your plate at the beginning of the year, it’s good to have an action plan ready and waiting to complete your board of directors’ tasks, so you can spend more time planning holiday get-togethers with friends and family. We hope that these suggestions make creating such a list simpler for your association.
For more HOA management questions, contact the experts at Spectrum Association Management.
