Being home with our loved ones is a way to celebrate family, friends, and the successes of the year. 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.

The holidays are like the weekend of the year. We work hard the rest of the time and look forward to the things we enjoy the most, shared time and meals with loved ones, overeating (overdrinking?), parties, gifts, laughter, etc., and just like the weekend, somehow it goes by too quickly and ends up more loaded with manual labor and demands than we’d like. Somehow many of us forget about all those demands over the ten months between holiday seasons, and many of us end up stressed out hosting guests and parties, making the house look perfect, and finding gifts for everyone. For those who live in HOAs, community rules, leadership, and events can be one more layer of stress. Board Members and Managers might consider the following to help keep the holidays happy for residents:

We all hear the Homeowner Association horror stories, because those are the ones that make catchy headlines. The truth is that at least 4 out of 5 of associations in the US are quietly humming along, keeping community order and preserving local home values. The remaining 20% give us a list of scary stories to celebrate the nightmare of suburbia created by dysfunctional HOA boards, predatory vendors, and petty neighbors alike, here are 3 stories:

Phoenicians look forward to monsoon with the eagerness of NASCAR-goers awaiting a car crash. There’s beauty in the destructive power of the unpredictable storms in this season. Two of my brothers who now live out of state plan visits during the annual monsoon season to satisfy a nostalgic craving for the theatrics of mile-high walls of dust, fierce lightning, and flash flooding, along with the thrill of waiting to see how much force nature will unleash. Just last night, the first of these cracked open the skies with an impressive lightning show, rain, and microbursts of wind. I had dinner with a friend and stopped for a second leaving the restaurant to take in the gorgeous yet ominous sunset with a storm looming in the distance, and then got in my car and thought nothing of it. I made it home before even the air stirred. As soon as I was home, I got a message from my friend whose house apparently was in the path of a microburst while we were at dinner. The message said, “OMG, the pool! It’s brown and there’s half a tree in it!”.

Summer is finally here!  And we need to make sure our HOAs stay cool and safe in the upcoming summer months.  Whether it’s the safety of children or pets or even complying with HOA rules and regulations, here are 5 good summer HOA blogs.  Click on the titles to read more.

Conserving water is a year-round activity. In fact, the best way for you to conserve water is to make it a regular habit. I thought I would take a little break from 'technology' and open the month by sharing the H2O Glossary I wrote for the CAI Central Arizona Chapter Community Resource magazine: HOA's and H2O.  While some of the "terms" are related specifically to Arizona (where I am based) many apply regardless of location nationwide.  Every state has their own local organizations and I encourage you to read up more on them. 

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:

Being home with our loved ones is a way to celebrate family, friends, and the successes of the year. 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.

We all hear the Homeowner Association horror stories, because those are the ones that make catchy headlines. The truth is that at least 4 out of 5 of associations in the US are quietly humming along, keeping community order and preserving local home values. The remaining 20% give us a list of scary stories to celebrate the nightmare of suburbia created by dysfunctional HOA boards, predatory vendors, and petty neighbors alike, here are 3 stories: