Green Communities

The CAI Research Foundation has issued their latest "Best Practices" report.  "As community managers and association leaders, we hold in the back of our minds the question: Can we improve the world for future generations? Sustainability is, in a general sense, the capacity to maintain a certain process or state indefinitely. In recent years, the concept has been applied to humanity, expressed as meeting the needs of the present population without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Can we set sustainability goals? Can we measure how well we are achieving them? And can we produce a feedback loop to observe, communicate and celebrate our successes? This report seeks to answer some of those questions.  Read or download the entire report  (PDF)

Understanding Board Decisions and Judicial Deference: Two Recent Appellate Cases Illustrate When A Court Will Defer To The "Business Judgment" Of A Board of Directors

California law offers a limited protection to homeowner Boards of Directors: the rule of judicial deference. Arising from the 1999 California Supreme Court case of Lamden v. La Jolla Shores Clubdominium HOA, this rule states that when a board acts in good faith and in the best interests of its members in making discretionary decisions concerning its obligations, a court will defer to that judgment and not second-guess the board's decision-making. The Fourth District Court of Appeal confronted the application of judicial deference in two 2008 decisions: E. Miles Harvey v. The Landing Homeowners Association (the Harvey case) and Ekstrom, et al. v. Marquesa at Monarch Beach Homeowners Association. In the first case, the Court deferred to the Board's decision-making. In the second, it did not. The purpose of this article is to show why these cases arrive at different results concerning judicial deference to a Board's conclusions, and what lessons a Board should take from both.  Read more

Creating an HOA Nest Egg

Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) purchase most of the residential mortgage loans lenders make and set the standards those loans must meet. New rules were enacted in 2007 that require lenders to verify every condominium loan made that the HOA contributes at least 10% of its annual budget to reserves. In HOAs that don't comply, owners may have trouble refinancing or selling their unit. To ensure that this doesn't happen, boards that have avoided the reserve fund question in the past will now have to address it. The elephant in the room is about to take a seat at the table. Here are some best practices:       Read more

Surviving Each Other: the Art of Communication

Communication is a lost art in some HOAs. The majority of people just are lacking in people skills. They might be in a hurry, frustrated, impatient, uneducated, or harried. Volunteer board members tend to get more criticism than praise, and often find themselves spending much more time than anticipated on association business. Then along comes a curious, tenacious and sometimes downright abusive or offensive owner who makes what seem to be unreasonable demands. Sometimes the shoe is on the other foot and an owner suffers at the hands of an overly egotistical, power hungry, or just plain tired board member.          Read more

Landscaping for Less

The current economic climate has associations looking under every rock for cost savings, including their landscaping budgets. Landscaping expenses vary greatly depending on the location, size and terrain of the community property. However, one commonality prevails among all communities: landscaping and property value will always maintain an interconnected balance. “You can easily devalue your property by letting the landscaping go.” states Gary Chase, maintenance operations manager for Valley Crest Landscape Development in Brighton, Massachusetts. “It is important to keep that balance in check.” Are there strategies that communities can put in place that work to lower their overall landscaping budget without lowering the value of property? The quick answer: Yes! There are a number of strategies that associations can adopt and successfully maintain a professional landscaping “look” while cutting costs.    Read more

Retaining Your Good Community Association Manager

I’m sometimes asked why there is so much turnover in the community association management field. Why do so many managers quit, leave the industry and change careers? Why is it so difficult to retain good, quality individuals as managers? My management company has been in this business for over 38 years; to improve our service and retain employees, we conduct exit surveys with every individual who decides to leave our company. Over and over, the reasons are hauntingly the same; it’s not the workload, or their co-workers, but it’s the difficulty found in not being able to please certain board members. As community association management professionals, we've all encountered community association board members who were difficult to work with. Fortunately, they represent a small percentage of all community association board members. Overall, I have the utmost respect for community association board members and applaud them for their willingness to volunteer their time to run their association. The vast majority of board members with whom we work are demanding yet reasonable, dedicated in their service and talented, amiable people.   Read more

The Butterfly Effect

"Small variations of the initial condition of a dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system."  Have you ever seen the movie, "It's a Wonderful Life"?  It's the story of George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, a man who always wanted to see the world yet for various reasons gets "stuck" in his small hometown of Bedford Falls, where he owns the Building and Loan, a local bank.  One day, George's Uncle Billy loses $8,000 that belongs to George's company. The money is found by the evil Mr. Potter, who would like to see George in jail and out of the way so he and his business interests can take over Bedford Falls. Mr. Potter hides the money, and when a bank examiner finds George's Building and Loan short the $8,000, George realizes that he will go to jail and his company collapse.   Read more

Saving Mother Earth One Website At a Time

Nowadays, due to the volatile market and economy, business owners are looking for ways to save energy, materials and, most importantly, money by reducing their companies’ impact on the earth’s resources. With more and more companies using technology to “go green”, businesses are looking for alternative ways to communicate with their customers while cutting costs. Community associations, along with their boards, managers and homeowners, are no exceptions. Going paperless and using a community association web site is great way to green up your community. It is not only a way to provide information 24/7 to homeowners, it is also a way to help the board save time and money. With a community web site, residents who cannot attend a meeting or fail to read their newsletters don't have to miss out.    Read more

Rain Gardens

From damp basements to flooded walkways and backed-up storm drains, too much water without a place to go can be a huge problem for condominiums. In recent years, rain gardens have come to the fore as a make-ready solution to those problems. First created in the early 1990s by stormwater specialists in Maryland, rain gardens are shallow depressions in the soil that serve as planting beds for hardy plants and flowers. These depressions are designed to catch runoff water from impervious sources such as driveways, roofs and parking lots. The water is then filtered through a specially-formulated soil back into the groundwater system below. “The (finished) depression is usually six inches to a foot deep,” says Michael F. Clark, P.E., New England regional manager of Weston & Sampson, Inc., and an expert in the creation and design of rain gardens. “The runoff enters the garden, filters through the soil mix which interacts with the rain water to remove sediments, trash and litter but also reduces pollutants, specifically nitrogen and phosphorus.” The two to three feet of special soil in a rain garden can also bind up with other contaminants including oil and grease from car engines. “Instead of running off into lakes and ponds, the water filters back into the ground.”    Read more

Keeping Projects on Schedule

Nothing can take the fun out of a design project faster than missed deadlines and cost overruns—and naturally, both problems usually go hand in hand. Even if a project is certain to increase a property’s value and/or curb appeal, the upheaval and disruption to residents’ lives while work is going on can be a big pain. Any number of problems can contribute to a project dragging on and on for months or bursting its budgetary boundaries, but for the most part, there are a few repeat offenders when it comes to figuring out what went wrong and how it can be avoided in future. Quibbling over design elements, budget problems, lack of organization, and poor communication between involved parties can all contribute to the problem—preventing them can help your next design project go more smoothly and successfully.   Read more

Cutting Costs Today: The Right — and Dangerously Wrong — Ways to Do It

Co-op and condo boards are being forced to tighten their belts. Yet in this, as in most things, there are right and wrong ways to do it. You don't want to cut off your circulation by cinching your belt too tightly, nor leave it so loose that you get caught with your pants down. Before you economize, you must prioritize and scrutinize. These tight times demand a soft heart and a hard nose, long-term vision and microscopic scrutiny of expenses, and an ability to be tough and flexible simultaneously. Here's how a handful of boards around the city are striking this essential balance.   Read more

HOA Directors Have Great Authority, But It Is Not Unlimited

There can be a lot of good things about living in a planned unit development that is subject to CC&Rs (Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions) and that is governed by a Homeowners Association (HOA). But there can be bad things too. One of the bad things occurs when the HOA directors – for whatever reason – fail to enforce the CC&Rs.   Read more

Construction Defects "Expected and Intended" Despite Insured's Claim of Ignorance

Whether the insured  had sufficient knowledge of a construction defect to justify the insurer's denial of coverage was the issue in Far Northwest Dev. Co., LLC v. Cmty. Ass'n of Underwriters of Am., Inc., Case. No. C-05-2134, 2009 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 34521 (W.D. Wa. April 22, 2009).     In the underlying case, the Homeowner's Association claimed Mr. Ghoddoussi, the condominium manager, failed to adequately investigate defects during the development of the complex, resulting in significant damage to the condominiums.     Read more