(WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW YOU DON’T KNOW)
WHY IS THERE AN HOA?
When you purchased your home, what were your expectations in joining a “Shared Ownership Community,” also known as Condominiums (Chapter 718), Cooperatives (Chapter 719), Homeowners’ Associations (Chapter 720), Vacation and Timeshare Plans (Chapter 721) or Mobile Home Park Lot Tenancies (Chapter 723) under Florida Statutes?
Over the 21 years my spouse and I have lived here, multiple association members have questioned what our management company actually does for the monthly fee we each pay through our quarterly association fees (also known as assessments).
If you take a moment to think about it, did you really want to take care of all the issues associated with the common areas that you and all the other HOA members own jointly? I’m referring to all the items related to our golf course and the multiple skills and tasks associated with maintaining it; the same for our swimming pool, shuffleboard courts, tennis courts, clubhouse, gatehouse and community access, boundary walls and common areas grounds maintenance, our gated community’s streets and their paving, street lights, mailboxes, parking lot, landscaping, fiber optic with streaming television and Internet access, plus outside house painting for 110 individual homes every year for seven years. Don’t forget our restaurant plus all of the employees and vendors who make all these things happen without your direction and deliberation.
Our HOA representatives (Board of Directors), in coordination with the property management company’s on-site employees, represented by our Administrative Assistant (AA) and our Community Association Manager (CAM) along with their colleague’s collective expertise have contracted with a variety of vendors to accomplish these tasks to achieve the primary goals of the homeowner’s association; that is, the preservation and maintenance of our association’s assets in addition to maintaining its attractiveness and desirability for potential home purchasers.
These goals are pursued by a substantial number of property management employees who are ultimately responsible for the results you may or may not personally witness.
A sampling of the duties performed by the management company include:
• complying with Florida statutes pertaining to these functions, including the official administrative records and record storage requirements of Chapter 720;
• the receipt and coding of invoices by vendors who have performed work for the association;
• the timely payment for those invoices and the reporting of the funds expended by the management company on behalf of the association;
• analyzing and collating these financial records in order to provide the information necessary to prepare for the following year’s budget, including forecasting what will be needed for the reserve funds for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance;
• actions necessary to collect the funds due from delinquent receivable accounts;
• responding to the requests/complaints of the association’s members;
• providing the attendant personnel necessary for the conduct of the annual member meeting/election; and
• providing the communication means to inform/advise members of the association of modifications or improvements on a variety of topics germane to the efficient functioning of the association’s day-to-day operations.
