Blog

By Jacqueline Vanacek

This article first appeared in The Communicator Magazine, Spring 2025.

When I moved from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Gulf Coast of Florida, I thought I was done being an HOA board president. Not so! Now I have one HOA foot on each coast.

It is fascinating to see homeowner associations end to end, from a builder board in Florida to an owner board in California. And boy are those board objectives different. In 2024, I attended CAI West Florida Chapter’s “Home On The Range” to learn about Florida’s HOA best practices. As a California board director living in a Florida HOA, I was looking for common ground.

WHERE DID HOAS COME FROM?

California has the largest number of homeowner associations in the country, with approximately 80% of multi-family residences in HOAs. Homeowner associations (HOAs), or common interest developments (CIDs), first appeared in the 1960s when high density housing exploded. Cash-strapped municipalities looked to “associations” to fund...

By Kimberly Lilley, CIRMS, CMCA

This article first appeared in The Communicator Magazine, Spring 2025.

Most of us have been impacted by the insurance crisis in California, and if we haven’t been impacted yet, we will be. California has billions of dollars of property that needs insurance, and as losses piled up between 2017 and 2022, carriers in CA tightened their underwriting criteria, limited the amount of property they would insure, or left the state entirely in order to stay solvent. This constriction in the insurance marketplace left many without affordable or adequate insurance, and too often, no insurance options at all.

In this vacuum, carriers are being creative in finding ways to write insurance in CA, while reducing their risk enough for it to be reasonable for them to do so. One way of managing risk is to spread it out over multiple carriers, so each only takes a small part of the risk, ensuring that none of them hold the lion’s share of the losses if one should occur.

By Maria C. Kao & Matt Meadors  Note: This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 Edition of The Communicator Magazine.

EVERY DEVELOPMENT GOES through a transition where the original developers hand over the management and operations to the homeowners. Such a transition will include the finances of the association. Here, we focus on an association’s legal obligations, but also offer real-life advice from a professional manager experienced in turning over a community.

The finances should not be overlooked during the transition phase, and it is of utmost importance to make sure the basics are set up correctly. They should include assessment calculations, reserve studies, a thorough investigation into the operating budget and many, more discreet issues. Let’s synthesize the legal obligation information together with operational know-how for those interested in setting up the future of financial stability for a transitioning project.

OPERATING

Pursuant to the Department of Real Esta...

By Ed Morrissey Note: This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 Edition of The Communicator Magazine.

HOW IMPORTANT IS a budget in operating a business? (And yes, HOAs are businesses. They are non-profit corporations licensed in the state of California.) The importance of a working budget and its implementation can be measured by the health and happiness of the homeowner’s association. 

A strong HOA community has underpinning practices that create an environment of neutrality and harmony when operated correctly. This promotes stability, which supports social equality. In order to achieve this, financial stability is a necessity. In other words, no monetary (assessment) surprises. Surprises destabilize HOA residences’ finances, particularly in lower income households, resulting in community pushback and the postponement of needed work. This scenario is the start of a downward spiraling trend that begins to envelop all aspects of HOA community life.

A budget is a wonderful thing ...

Understanding the Terms, the Funding, and Why They Matter. This article first appeared in the Summer 2024 Edition of The Communicator Magazine. 

By Zer Iyer, Esq.

RESERVE STUDY. The term is common in the HOA lexicon. Managers know their associations need them. Board members know they need them. But what is a reserve study, really, and why are they getting so much attention now? Well, it all comes down to – what else – money. Due to the number of unanticipated expenses that associations are now facing, (think: aging communities, increased insurance premiums, inflation impacting just about everything), financial planning for communities has never been more important, and reserve studies are the most effective financial planning tool associations have. Understanding what reserve studies are, how they operate, and the role they should play in an association’s budget is no longer something that only experienced or senior community managers need to know; it is knowledge that all community ...

By Nicholas Nociforo

Whether we like it or not, money is the fuel that keeps the world going round. Managing money at any level can be challenging, but managing a collection of funds, as in the instance of an HOA, comes with even more complications. So many things need to get done to keep the community beautiful and property values appreciating. And with so many services done routinely like tree work, or sporadically like sidewalk repairs, spending the money needed to get it all done is hard to do. I am an arborist who sells tree care services to HOAs and other multi-family properties. I have been in the industry for eight years and have worked with all types of boards and property managers in California. I am also a new homeowner who is now faced with service providers and proposals for all the things I need to get done at my house. The purpose of this article is to help HOAs manage their money with inside secrets from service providers. I will be writing from the perspective of tree...

By Robert M. DeNichilo, Esq., CCAL

After two straight years of significant success in advancing legislation on behalf of California’s Community Associations, CAI’s California Legislative Action Committee’s (CLAC) 2024 agenda seeks to continue simplifying and improving operations for California’s community associations.

We are well into the 2024 legislative session, and the bill introduction deadline has passed. While bills can still be amended, as of the writing of this article, no bills have been introduced that would make operations significantly more difficult for community associations. For its part, CLAC is working on several bills that will continue to improve the election process and make balcony inspections a bit easier to complete.

CLAC is currently working on three pieces of legislation it hopes to get passed in 2024. The first, AB 2114, will make completing balcony inspections required under Civil Code section 5551 easier by adding civil engineers to the list of professio...

By Kelly Zibell

Community Associations play a crucial role in maintaining community harmony and property values. In the past, HOA management involved intricate paperwork, face-to-face meetings, and manual administrative tasks. Due in large part to the recent pandemic, the industry is experiencing a rapid paradigm shift. This article explores the evolving landscape of HOA management and new tools available to streamline processes and enhance efficiency.

THE ROLE OF AI IN HOA MANAGEMENT

In case you were not watching the news in late 2021, Microsoft, Google, and other providers rolled out the first largely available AI tools. This set off a race between technology providers to add artificial intelligence tools to their products or tout the tools that already include this technology. In community association management, AI is revolutionizing the industry by streamlining administrative tasks, enhancing decision-making processes, and providing predictive analytics for financial or mainten...

Why Do People and the Media (Even John Oliver) Pick on HOAs?

By Nathan McGuire, Esq., CCAL 

HOAs are incredibly popular. And statistics show that the vast majority of people living in HOAs are happy with their HOA. But if that’s true, why does it seem we are constantly hearing that people hate their HOAs? It is simple: the few who don’t like them are incredibly vocal. And who loves a good negative story? The media. Even comedians are getting in on the fun.

John Oliver’s popular weekly late night HBO quasi news show, Last Week Tonight, devoted an entire 30-minute episode to badmouthing HOAs. The show aired on April 9, 2023. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend you watch it. You can easily find it online without a subscription to HBO. The episode is undeniably hilarious, likely even more so for those who live in an HOA or work in the HOA industry. I watched it the day after it aired. And I laughed. But after it was over, I felt another emotion – anger. Why was I feeling so angry...

There Are Many Reasons to Consider New Windows, Including Performance and Energy Savings

By Rana Bayadi & Bill Mann

When considering a window replacement project or drafting a policy and guidelines for owner replacement, it is not as simple as heading down to your home improvement store and picking out a window. There are many things that need to be researched and addressed, such as structural, fire, water, sound, and energy ratings. Your local building department may have a list of requirements and specific aesthetics standards that need to be met, as well. Existing window configuration may not meet the fire egress code or structural wind load ratings for your location.

In addition to structural and fire requirements, sound, energy, and fall hazard requirements play an important role in finding the right replacement window. If all the major requirements are not enough, the list goes on to include required planning aesthetics, historical preservation, and waterproofing integration. ...