HOA Management Blog

When you think of an age-restricted homeowners association, you might conjure up a picture of elderly couples in Hawaiian print shirts and khaki shorts, riding on golf carts, sipping drinks by the pool, or playing cards in the clubhouse. While sometimes this isn’t far from the truth, age-restricted Associations are much more than that!

Does your homeowners association have guidelines/specifications for installation of artificial turf?

Bill AB 349 makes the governing documents, architectural or landscaping guidelines, or policies of an Association void and unenforceable if they prohibit the use of artificial turf or any other synthetic surface that resembles grass.

Does your homeowners association have wildlife that has taken up residency in your community, specifically birds? Birds are beautiful, graceful and melodic. They give a sense of being close to nature and add to the feel of a community.

But too much of any one thing is never good. Whether it’s a trail of droppings, territorial aggression or destructive nesting and feeding patterns, birds can make life more expensive and a little more difficult or unpleasant for members living in your Association, maintenance crews, and managers.

Here are some solutions to help HOA board members be proactive.

Americans who live in community associations are overwhelmingly pleased with their communities. They are expressing strong satisfaction with the HOA board members who govern their homeowners associations and the community managers who provide professional support.

There’s always a lot of discussion about keeping the outside of your home looking good for the homeowners association; but the inside is important too – especially if you plan on selling your home someday. Try as you might to prevent them, spills, drips and splatters in your house are inevitable. Whether you, your family or your guests are the culprits, stains happen. Most, if not all, are treatable, especially if you act quickly and use the right stain-removing technique.

It's never a good time to lose your job so how do you survive job loss while owning in a homeowners association? The National Foundation for Credit Counseling offers the following tips for surviving a layoff:

Fact: About 63 million Americans live in a new suburban community or planned unit development, according to the Community Association Institute. Living in a homeowners association has many benefits – such as recreational amenities, maintenance services, and being part of a community – but it can only function well when the rules of the Association are clearly set and enforced.

It’s the responsibility of the HOA board to protect, maintain and enhance the Association. This comes in all shapes and sizes – from compliance with the Davis-Stirling Act to the type of grass members can have in their yard. In the current drought that California is experiencing, the latter may come into play more often as the homeowners association finds new ways to conserve water.

Do any owners in your homeowners association rent out their homes? What are the Association’s obligations to those renters? What are their rights in the Association? Can you control how many units in the HOA can be rented?

Standard incandescent light bulbs may soon become a thing of the past. We’re here to shed light on new bulbs being used. Under the Clean Energy Act, the sale of energy-inefficient incandescent bulbs were phased out over a two-year period and no longer sold by January 2014. Compact fluorescent lights (CFLs) have become the most popular replacement choice. The typical CFL uses 66 percent less energy and lasts up to ten times longer than an incandescent bulb.