HOA Maintenance Image Courtesy Pixabay.com
When you live in a Homeowner’s Association (HOA), you get some great perks, such as an HOA maintenance team. Some associations also boast parks and pools, full-service yard care. The maintenance teams usually keep those facilities in great condition. If you’re not familiar with how these associations can afford offer these benefits, they typically collect a monthly fee from all residents within the association. Usually agreement to pay these fees is a prerequisite to purchasing a home within the association’s communities.
HOA’s often include homes or condominiums in their communities. We’ve recently been working with condo-based associations that are having difficulties with keeping up their HOA maintenance programs.
In some HOA’s the management will need to make assessments and assess additional costs to the HOA members. Often the members will refuse to pay these additional costs, as they do not want to fund repairs to areas that are not directly part of their property. This leads to the association not having the budget to fix problem areas.
Associations that are really on top of things will keep their maintenance programs fully funded so that those teams can work on any potential structural issues as soon as they are discovered. That’s a great pre-emptive strategy that saves time and money in the long run. It’s also great for mitigating risk affiliated with personal injury on an HOA’s premises.
However, since many associations are under-funding their HOA maintenance budgets, their teams are not able to make repairs in a timely fashion. Often these teams will have to wait to make their repairs until an issue becomes a severe hazard or begins to cause damage to surrounding areas.
Some of the many areas associations have difficulty with are:
- Patios
- Exterior stairs
- Foundation movement
- Water exposure
- Termite damage
Patio covers and second story wooden balcony patios often suffer from improper flashing and water proofing. This can lead to water damaging the wood the balcony is constructed of. This may result in wood damage such as dry rot. Waiting to make repairs once an issue is identified can lead to disastrous results, such as balcony collapse or railing failures. Such problems can be avoided by improving water proofing, usually by painting the balcony and railings, caulking any seams and repairing damaged wood.
We also see the same issues with exterior wooden stairs. These stairs and landings are constantly exposed to the elements, for example extreme sun exposure or constant rain.
In situations like these our team is often called in at the last minute to perform emergency assessments and repairs. We will create all plans and specs for the repairs, as well as help plan and estimate cost on proper maintenance.
If you’re having problems with maintaining your HOA property, contact us.