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:

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.

Compiling a list of HOA horror stories has become somewhat of a tradition for us this time of year. Whether the Board overreaches, homeowners disregard rules, or pettiness takes root, HOA horror stories continue to make headlines. In the spirit of Halloween, here are three of our top picks for 2020:

eUnify’s main office is located in the suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona, which means that the advent of Fall is a long-awaited reprieve from triple digit heat and the start of chemically derived “pumpkin-spice” additives to be available on Starbucks menus. For places with actual seasons, Fall is a beautiful time of transition, with colorful leaves, crisp air, chunky sweaters, and boots. For HOAs, Fall is an important and busy season of budgets, elections, and messy yards to deal with. Consider how eUnify can help you manage each of these activities:

Cloud computing is no longer the future, it’s a convenient reality and if you’re not using it for your property management and/or HOA, you could be missing out on some valuable and handy features. Cloud-based software options are available for just about every function your management company or HOA needs to accomplish, from accounting and online payments, to CC&R enforcement (violations!) and communicating with residents.

There is no shortcut to building a unified community, but it’s worth the hard work to foster an environment of professionalism, inclusion, and validation in our community associations. We can achieve these ideals through:

A version of this article was first posted in July 2019. Here is repost again in preparation for Arizona's monsoon season and  (More 2020 Monsoon Details here)

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!”.

As businesses continue to adapt to this time of COVID-19, eUnify is working hard to offer important enhancements. One important word has come to represent a new standard in business operations, “contactless”. Food service have evolved to minimize person-to-person contact by offering sealed takeout packaging, contactless delivery, and curbside pickup. We often hear experts and local leaders state we are safest at home, and as many of us stay home more than ever before, it makes sense that the communities in which we reside are also considering ways to adapt to this new reality. eUnify is constantly evolving to address industry needs. Here are some of the ways we are helping you provide contactless service to your communities.

Summer is finally here! However, summer might look a little different this year because of the current status of COVID-19. We STILL need to make sure our HOAs stay cool and safe in the upcoming summer months, especially as parts of the country start to reopen.  Whether it’s the safety of children or pets or even complying with HOA rules and regulations, here are 5 good classic summer HOA blogs (that might need slight modification depending on where you live).  Click on the titles to read more.