Our neighborhood HOA has a landscape easement in our front yard. For several years they maintained all of it. The last few years they’ve only maintained the front and ignored the rearmost portion facing our house, probably because the trees there are diseased and need to come out.
When we questioned it they said the rear part of the easement is our responsibility.
We are exploring software options to automate our accounting/bookkeeping, which is currently maintained in Excel spreadsheets. There is one specific nuance that makes our research a bit more challenging.
Our self-managed HOA has fewer than 75 homes and pays the expenses for a security gate and common access road also used by two neighboring groups of homeowners. One neighboring subdivision has fewer than 140 homes; the other is a small group of fewer than 7 homes that is not itself an HOA. We directly bill the individual homeowners in both groups for their respective shares of these common expenses, even though they are not members of our HOA.
We need software that can handle normal HOA accounting/bookkeeping — homeowner billing and receivables, payables, budgeting, financial reporting, etc. — while also properly incorporating these separate groups of non-member homeowners into the billing, receivables, and budgeting process. A homeowner portal and similar community-management features are not absolutely necessary for us.
QuickBooks is already on our shortlist, so we're particularly interested in hearing about HOA-specific or other software alternatives that can properly handle this arrangement. Is anyone in a similar situation, or using software they would recommend?
Thanks in advance for any suggestions or insight!
I’m sure many people have issues with their Board and I’m hoping someone can shed some light on what can be done about a Board that seems to be financially negligent. I live in a 96 unit condo in Chicago and the financials weren’t great when I moved here, but it seems manageable but the more I learn the worse it gets. I fear we might be a case that could get blacklisted with the Fannie Mae updated rules.
I recently attended a board meeting and brought up our lack of finances according to the reserve study. My board says the reserve study is just a guideline, acting like they know the building better, saying we don’t need to follow it, and that the $1.2 million that we are expected to need in the next 5 years isn’t an actual necessity. We have a loan for a roof that had to be fixed that is eating into our funds and our reserves will hit 0 this year. It’s projected to be below 0 but the property manager doesn’t want the point that out.
I thought of joining the board but the other board members would just vote against me all the time, and I would have to deal with them more, as well as a property manager that came out and said he has too many properties to be able to give us the necessary attention and that he will try to do better. I can’t deal with all the stress of negligence.
The accountant of the building doesn’t even live here and rents his place out so he doesn’t even feel the buildings issues when things go wrong from all the maintenance deferrals.
At the last board meeting I asked what the board had planned because the reserve study said we need 150,000 in reserves for 2026 and we are only putting in 75,000. The accountant got defensive and said they had already done the budget for 2026 before they got the reserve study so they haven’t changed anything this year. I have to ask them about 2027 at the budget meeting because the property manager said owners shouldn’t talk until the board meeting is finished (which took 2 hours) and the accountant said budget will be talked about at the budget meeting in October. So I was basically shut down from even talking about it.
I’ve only lived here a year and when I spoke up two of the board members basically said new owners as not knowing what is going or what has happened, but I think it’s pretty obvious that for decades, the board has under managed funds. Everything they said new owners don’t know I already knew from looking at finances in the year I’ve been here. The accountant even said the rooftop loan was from previous board negligence, but that’s when the property manager stopped everything and told owners to wait until after the meeting to talk. I feel like our reserves going down to 0 this year speaks for itself but no other owner even spoke up about this. I felt alone and stressed that financial negligence is going to cost me and other owners more money in the long run.
Sorry if this sounded a bit erratic and emotional. I’m not a great speaker, but the board has members that are too good at talking if that makes sense.
Does anyone have any advice? Buying this condo might be the worst decision I’ve ever made and I’m just alone and sad.
We are an 800 home single family community with about 20 cul-de-sac islands that we need to maintain. Over the years, some original trees or bushes have died off, and some have ruts from trucks cutting the corners. Residents have been brining up this issue the past year or so, and it's a valid concern when it comes to property values for those who live in the cul-de-savs.
We got a quote for about 45K to rehab these islands: ranging from adding mulch, new tall grasses, and re-planting trees/shrubs.
We do have plenty of reserve funds but there is debate surrounding if this should be qualified as a budgeted expense vs a reserve expense.
If we were to put this as a budgeted expense (if we did all at once) next year, we would either have to A) raise dues, B) piecemeal the work over a few years or C) combo of both plus cut other important expenses and reserve funding.
I understand landscaping projects typically doesn't fall in the reserve spending bucket, but my thought process is that this is a large one-time project to repair/restore what we had before compared to other annual landscaping projects. What is the opinion here?
My yearly assessment is $275.00 and now that it is in collections they want $750. What can I do about this?
I’m a Florida condo owner and I’ve started looking into the issues so many of us are facing after going through some pretty terribly things in my community. I would like to hear what other owners have experienced.
I’m interested in hearing about your experiences—financial hardships, special assessments, association or management issues, maintenance concerns, lack of transparency, or challenges faced as an owner. If you’ve served on a condo board, I’d also love to hear about your experience from that perspective.
What have been the most difficult issues you’ve encountered as a Florida condo owner, and what led to them?
Please share your experience in the comments or feel free to DM me if you’d rather share privately.
Here is a brief summary of what our community is going through currently if you'd like to talk and relate:
Large and repeated special assessments
Lack of financial transparency
Difficulty accessing official records
Contractor selection and bidding practices not followed
Unclear project scopes and expenditures/missing
Association debt and loans
Inadequate reserve planning
Deferred maintenance (who isn't going through this though?)
Water intrusion and drainage problems
Contractor oversight concerns
Governance and voting issues
Management company accountability
Rental and investor ownership concerns
Financing and resale difficulties
Most of these have been reported to the DBPR and has since moved up to an attorney and awaiting review, but it seems when one issue pops up we have another. I know this is not just our community.
Hello,
I am owner of a small 4 Unit HOA in Bay Area. I am also the only active Board Member-Treasurer. The President just sold. Seems like the others not interested in stepping up.
Any advice how to navigate this situation? My unit is not going up for sale yet. Hopefully, by the time I decide to put unit on market others will step up. Hopefully, my being the only Board member is not deterrent for prospective buyers.
Hi All- Our community of 200 units successfully recalled our entire Board of the past decade and even got a new management company. But there are still many challenges ahead to get a grip on our costs and rising HOA dues. One of the areas that we can possibly cut is the Landscaping. No one thinks they do a good job. Problem is, when I suggested we homeowners volunteer to do landscaping for at least one year to see how it turns out and put the savings towards building our Reserves, a couple homeowners got upset saying it would lower property values. However, with an empty Treasury and half are rented out (we will try to impose a rental cap but it takes major voting), your condo is not worth much to the banks anyway who refuse most loans on our community. Have you done your own landscaping successfully (we will keep a dedicated certified arborist which is a separate thing)? I assume you made volunteers sign a legal waiver about accidents or damage to landscaping tools. Or is this a bad idea with a lot of legal implications??
Original posts:
First off thank you all so much. I did not expect my posts to blow up the way they did and the support and advice in the comments genuinely helped me figure out what to do next. So here is everything that has happened since.
For anyone who missed the original posts — I'm 26, bought my house at 23, first time homeowner in Charlotte NC. A sheriff showed up at my door with HOA foreclosure papers for over $11k in fines. I had never received a single letter, email, phone call or notice about any of this. Not one. The first time I ever heard from my HOA or their management company was when I was being served foreclosure papers.
When I reached out to the management company to figure out where I was even supposed to be sending my HOA payments, they told me they couldn't help me and to call their attorney instead. I have that in writing.
The VP of the HOA told my neighbor over the phone that they don't send certified mail for violation notices. My neighbor is willing to put that in writing.
And out of the $11k they're claiming I owe, only about $840 is actual dues. The rest is fines. For a fence that was leaning when I bought the house — you can see it in the listing photos from 2023 — and a fascia issue that was also there before I moved in. The second I found out about the fascia from a neighbor I paid to have it fixed that same day. The fence I tore down myself.
So here's what happened after my posts
Channel 9 news in Charlotte reached out and came out to do an interview with me. They also contacted the HOA and management company directly for the last month with emails, calls and texts and didnt even get back to Jason Stoogenke, the reporter, once. The story is live now if you want to check it out:
Something I mentioned in the interview that I think a lot of people connected with — part of how I bought this house in the first place was from selling Pokemon cards from my collection. And now with the 30th anniversary of Pokemon happening this year, I'm in the position of having to sell my collection just to pay for a lawyer to keep that same house. Kind of a wild full circle moment.
I also now have legal representation. I can't say much about it yet but for everyone who kept telling me to get a lawyer — I heard you.
And then they hit me with another fine
I talked to someone from management company in person, as they drove though the neighborhood i flagged them down to try to actually talk to someone and work something out. When I was talking to her she told me that I am currently being fined for weeds in my flower beds. No notice. No warning. No time to fix it. No hearing. Nothing.
Same exact thing they did with every other fine in this case. Just shows up out of nowhere.
I'll let you guys decide whether that's a coincidence or not given the timing.
I'm going to keep posting updates as this moves forward. My hearing is November 23rd 2026 and there is a lot that still has to happen between now and then. But things are moving in the right direction and honestly none of that would have happened without the people in these comments pointing me where to go.
More updates to come.
New to condo ownership and am aware I have coverage for loss assessments included with my California condo owner insurance policy.
Where can I learn details about what this coverage provides, excludes, how it is triggered, etc.? Reading the policy legalese is a challenge. I’m reluctant to talk to my insurer directly as property insurance is hard to find in this area, and I’m afraid they’ll cancel/non-renew me if they catch wind of a forthcoming assessment.
Edit: Possible future assessment will be payable/due over two years in 50/50 increments. Any knowledge about how this would be handled by insurance would be helpful.
This is a bit odd situation, but I figured someone might have had experience of navigating this pre HOA. This situation is helping me understand why HOA comes in handy. I have no clue how to establish HOA either.
It is a tricky situation where the person owns a townhouse without HOA and there has been no progress with getting the roof repaired due to next door neighbor previous roof work causing the leak and has not been as cooperative and it has been too long by now.
The neighbor ripped off the roof on their portion, causing a tar seam on the roof between both properties ( shared roof) prior to my friend buying the house and it looks like it was never disclosed, and home inspector did not flag it.
The friend's realtor told my friend all neighbors had their roof replaced together and the roof was new, my friend never knew the neighbor had another replacement done on their unit only due to lousy roof work that was done originally with all of the neighbors collaborating for the new roof. Woes of first time buyer I suppose.
My friend is desperate to know their options and how to move forward as a seller or how to get this resolved to keep the townhouse. The latter seems dim at this point and it might best go to a new owner or inventor, someone who has more knowledge and resources as my friend had to move out of town for work and was hoping to be able to rent it out so they can keep the townhouse long term when they move back. Longer they cannot do repairs, they cannot rent it out, losing income.
I am not helpful as I know nothing about this situation and am hoping to get some pointers from someone who has more experience or resources on how to deal with this. This friend is also concerned nobody will want to buy, and will anyone with more resources be able to do what my friend could not do if they buy? Or foreclosure is the only option? How does HOA get established? How did those who lived in th or condo prior to HOA navigate this if you had experience before HOA was established? I sure have many questions. Thank you for your time.
On my board the secretary job is basically an unpaid clerk role where I have inherited all the mistakes and oversights of secretaries past.
Someone emails asking about a motion the board passed a couple years back. What was the exact vote? Was it in the annual meeting or a regular one? And suddenly you're going through old email threads, a shared drive somebody reorganized, and a folder of scanned PDFs trying to reconstruct it. An hour gone for a two-line answer.
Curious how other boards actually keep this from happening:
Do you keep a single running log of every motion and vote, or just rely on the approved minutes?
If minutes, how do you make years of them searchable? Ours were individual PDFs so full-text search is hit or miss.
Anyone standardize the wording of motions so they're findable later ("Motion to approve [X], moved by, seconded by, vote count")?
How do you handle it when the minutes from three secretaries ago are formatted totally differently? Besides the heavy sigh and face-palm method (already familiar).
Looking for process/organization habits that actually held up over time, not another tool nobody maintains after the person who set it up rotates off. What's worked for you?
Hello all,
I live in a townhouse hoa community. Just some background. It was sold as pet friendly. Every townhouse unit only has a very small patch for grass, around 2 feet of area. Rest of grass is common area.
The hoa is stating that pets can only relieve themselves in the small strip between the road and the curb. No common areas allowed.
Where exactly are bigger dogs that need to walk before they go supposed to go?
Emotions are a little high right now. It was a stressful weekend as we had heavy downpour in our area for about an hour. The gutter system outside of my window did not have the downspout extension attached (it was lying in front of the gutter, but no screws/bolts to secure it to the entire gutter). The water shooting out of downspout in front of my window, seeping into my condo (level floor). I’d say it was about 20ish gallons of water flooding my unit. I went outside during flood to attach the extension and the flooding stopped almost immediately.
It appears there may have been an issue with leak in the past. There is patching done on exterior building where my window is and the downspout extension was eventually added although not secure.
I now have water damage on baseboards, paid for wet vac/carpet blower fans, and floorboards are seeping with water. My fireplace had water pooling around it despite sucking water out over and over with the wet vac.
I contacted my property manager. she has no sense of urgency! Just told me to file a claim with my insurance, which I already did this morning. I replied asking if the gutter system will be repaired???? God forbid this happens again.
Our homeowner guide states that gutters are HOA’s responsibility. I have video of flooding, gutter, and damage.
Is HOA responsible for any of this? I’m waiting for insurance to move forward but in the meantime I’d like to know what I can do to support my case. I will tell my property manager that I am going to cover my bases with insurance and possibly a lawyer.
Please let me know what I can do!
Hi all,
I just joined my HOA Board. One of the questions posed to the community to vote on was having a Property Management Company take over. One man's opinion, it seems the board members may have bitten off more than they can chew going without one. A couple questions I have are is it worth it? Is it/can it be cost effective? What do you look for in a good company?
Thanks!
Has anyone done business with or considering doing business with CAM Collective?
Earlier today I walked over to the community pool to check on things. The pool has been closed for about two weeks due to mechanical issues. Said hi to the pool attendant and thumbed through the manual sign-in daily log book. The attendant came over said I could not look at the previous days because it a privacy violation. I responded I sit on this board, am the president. Pool attendant repeated looking at previous days is a privacy violation. I’m genuinely not understanding the privacy violation? Educate me.
I’ve volunteered on my Condo HOA board. The prior boards were asleep at the wheel and I thought I’d give it a go. I quickly became the workhorse - pitching and proposing to drive cost cuts and wasteful spending.
I have also become involved complex gray areas with homeowners matters. The property manager also needs replacing which is a big undertaking. I feel alone. As well as having a day job. They don’t provide any strategic help.
I’ve talked to friends who are in Condo HOAs and I hear even worse stories.
Some questions I’ve pondered and I’m posting below for the sake of my own curiosity.
Appreciate any feedback!
On June 24th, my landlord received notice of two violations that happened in June. Basically, the parking garage in my building has both an inner gate and an outer garage door. The property management has me on video closing the garage door, but not the inner gate. The outer garage door is the one that has the key code.
Fast forward 1 month, i’m completely oblivious to all of this. I get a notice that my account has been charged $500, $250 for each time in June that I only closed the outer garage door not the inner gate.
I checked all the previous communications, and they never sent me the HOA rules. I know this is my mistake for not getting the HOA rules, but I did check the parking lease, the master deed, and the property management rules and they do not mention anything about closing the gate. Also, I have seen other tenants fully leave open the outer garage door. I know this doesn’t help my case legally, but still!!
I feel like this is completely unreasonable to charge me $250 for two violations and then only inform me one month after about both at the same time, no warnings and no notice about the first violation.
The issue is that my landlord already payed this fine, and they’re now expecting me to reimburse it. It is written in my lease that I need to reimburse the landlord for fines based on my violations. I am moving out in two weeks on August 31st anyways, do I need to pay this $500 fee? And am I unreasonable for not wanting to pay this?
Have this condo rented out for 12 years without issues. New HOA and board are different story, HOA is a grubby company and I get the feeling people on the board are on a power trip.
These patio tables have been outside for 5 years easy (left behind by a geologist tenant friend that passed away in the condo). On 7/22 I get a note asking to move them in 14 days or get fined. I object, ask for a hearing (which is approved) but they say fine will still apply because the next board meeting is at least 4 weeks away. So they charged me $100 fine.
Below is all I see in the Rules & Regulations document. Also no documentation of how fines are applied, what is appeal/mediation process. I want to write back to the HOA asking for any relevant documents that a) show what an appeal process is, how fines are levied etc and b) hopefully dispute this removal order. What are some things you all think I should ask for? Argue with?
First timer. I already moved the shorter table so there's just one left. Its heavy!
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3.8 Items Permitted on Decks and Patios. Without advance, written Board approval, only the following items are permitted on decks, porches, and patios outside a resident’s Unit:
>3.8.1 Patio furniture that is well-maintained, in good condition, and weighted so as not to be blown over or away. Notwithstanding the foregoing, plastic furniture, folding chairs, camping chairs, and hammocks are not permitted.
>3.8.2 Plants with drip containers and with pots made of durable materials designed to protect surfaces, so long as they do not protrude from the are or overhang the railing.
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