Property managers and HOA Boards often get a bad rap because most of the communication with homeowners skews negative, such as, “you painted your house the wrong color and now you must redo all of it!”, or “hurry up and pull those weeds!”  While these messages to homeowners for compliance issues are necessary for community maintenance, often they are interpreted as personal attacks, or at least a nuisance.  With the warmer spring weather, homeowners are usually more interested in beautifying their homes, which presents a great opportunity to property managers for positive reinforcement.  Here are some ideas on how to use uManage and the eUnify homeowner portal - Community Link to facilitate positive community yard campaigns:

It is officially Spring in the Northern Hemisphere! Warmer temperatures are likely a welcome change for anyone hit by the recent Polar Vortex. Aside from warmer days and greener landscapes, Spring brings a number of HOA management challenges easily addressed with the aid of eUnify’s complete management software offerings.

eUnify enables remote working. Terms we wouldn’t have used much in the recent past are part of our everyday vocabulary. Terms like, “social distancing”, “quarantine”, and “flattening the curve” describe a social duty to keep distance from everyone outside our households in order to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. These terms also represent a massive challenge to many businesses. Major corporations have invested billions of dollars in the past several weeks in updating systems to allow for as many employees as possible to work from home.

Elections bring with it challenges inherent to neighborhood politics. Changes in dues, reshuffling of the HOA board, and ballot measures to amend governing documents or approve projects all carry the potential for charged emotions and political interest. On top of all that, there are the basic logistics of producing and sending out mailers to homeowners. In order to alleviate some of the headache that comes with elections, online voting is gaining popularity, and rules surrounding online election requirements are being detailed in state legislatures around the country.

In conversations with eUnify clients recently, best practices for leveraging the CommunityLink homeowner portal has emerged as a recurring theme. I have observed clients utilize the portal with varying degrees of success and have come up with a short list of ideas for making the most of the community portal. Basically, it comes down to building content. Think about your favorite news site. You probably visit it a couple times a day. If content isn’t constantly refreshed, you are easily bored and unlikely to peruse outdated headlines. While announcements, events, and documents in your community portal are slower to change than the day’s headlines, building a library of content will encourage homeowners to come to the portal site more often. Here are some ideas for maximizing usage of the eUnify CommunityLink portal:

Valentine’s Day is all about overt expressions of love, like roses, chocolates, cards, fancy dinners, and jewelry. While we might feel inclined (or obligated) to make such demonstrations on a periodic basis, we all know that true love is found in countless small, maybe even invisible selfless acts.

Technology for property management software has evolved.  Managers are replacing pen and paper with tablets and smartphones on compliance rides and even HOA boards are discovering the benefits of association portals with important functions, such as: online payments, text emergency communications.

eUnify believes in the adage that it is better to give than to receive. Skipping a full Christmas analogy, let’s simply say we have a “workshop” of dedicated developers, who really wouldn’t like being compared to elves, constantly updating and improving our products. While Christmas comes but once a year, the eUnify workshop turns out new “toys” every 2-3 weeks, striving to continually give to our clients in the following ways:

Being home with our loved ones is a way to celebrate family, friends, and the successes of the year. This year amid pandemic, it might look a little different as we gather in family homes, decorated for the holidays, the role of our HOA’s might become more apparent, especially when it comes to enforcing the rules.