Creating a tried-and-true recipe for success when it comes to HOA management takes the right blend of ingredients to get the final product to its sweet spot. Once you have a solid base to start from, it’s easier to make tweaks here and there, as needed, to deliver the best possible experience and outcome. Though there are several factors that go into creating a positive impact on any community, here are three things successful HOA management firms do.
1. Optimize Property Values
First and foremost, it’s a community management company’s inherent responsibility to ensure that the common areas of a community are maintained properly to positively contribute to optimizing property values for its homeowners. Successful HOA management teams not only operate and manage a property but make sure a community continues to grow, the vision of the builder is maintained, and residents feel their investments are sound as well. This is achieved through a few key actions.
First, through preventative maintenance to take care of the community’s common areas on time and deter bigger problems from occurring. Second, it’s essential for a management team to be proactive and stay ahead of common issues that may arise. In their role, responsible community management teams should conduct regular site inspections, recording and tracking violations according to the governing documents, and making sure all loose ends are closed out and followed up with as needed.
Lastly, positively influencing property values involves adhering to a HOA’s CC&Rs when it comes to making any external changes to community members’ residences. The process of managing architectural revisions is critical to ensuring a community maintains a cohesive and desired aesthetics. While the community management team does not make the decisions directly regarding the changes a homeowner is attempting to make, they are an integral part of ensuring the proper process is adhered to and will facilitate the board’s review and decisions regarding the desired revisions.
All of these individual responsibilities stem from the root of a common objective, which is to thoroughly understand the board’s vision for the community and implement a strategic plan and goal setting to support it.
2. Build a Sense of Community
Just as important as contributing to property values is building a sense of community. This starts by implementing consistent and constant communication. It’s best to ask for feedback of community members as to what communication methods work best so all demographics in the community have information relayed to them in their desired manner. Fortunately, community management companies like Keystone provide a variety of means to relay information to their community members since everyone prefers receiving messages in different ways.
Effective communication must also include transparency. It’s important that the entire community understands the goals and vision with regard to property values. A homeowners association management company helps to facilitate updates on the progress of goals, status reports on the community, and making sure financials are transparent and available for review.
Communication Methods at Keystone That Support Success
At Keystone, it’s standard for our homeowners association management teams to handle all email and phone communication with urgency and efficiency. In addition, there are robust, supporting pieces which ensure homeowners are well-informed and have the resources they need readily available. These include:
- Community Websites: Building websites is one of Keystone’s many services. It provides a central online presence tailored to what’s going on in the community, as well as serving as an information board for frequently asked questions.
- Board and member portals: The kppmconnection.com portal provides additional information, making it easier to communicate. For members, it allows them to make assessment payments, check on the status of any work orders or architectural submittals, as well as access to individual violation letters, if any. Additionally, board members can log into the portal and approve invoices, look at delinquencies, as well as run reports to have a community-wide overview at what’s going on with the property.
- E-blast platforms: For community-wide messaging, e-blasts may include newsletters, invitations to community events, and alerts for emergency notices as they arise.
In addition to communication, building a sense of community involves celebrating wins and achievements and activating different parts of the community to drive engagement and create a pride in ownership.
Ideas often include hosting seasonal or holiday events. Or social events can be focused on common interests of the association members, culturally or otherwise. Furthermore, participation and engagement can also be established by joining a committee or responding to surveys to feel like their opinions matter and they are part of the process.
3. Take Care of Team Members
Finally, to deliver on the first two promises, homeowners association management companies must take care of and invest in their own team members as well. It begins with creating an internal culture in which team members feel valued and supported, along with actively encouraging and providing opportunities to create a work-life balance.
At Keystone, we know that building an environment around mutual respect, encouragement, and camaraderie helps to facilitate a transference the same at the community level. We use an equivalence model to balance our managers’ workloads to keep them from feeling overburdened by too many accounts.
Though there’s a built-in operational aspect to the job, the role extends to service and hospitality. We want our team members to feel supported with what they need to excel in their role as well as in servicing our community members. At Keystone, it is our philosophy to treat each community as if it were our own
In addition, we offer a monthly in-house training program, as well as the opportunity to join local membership organizations to network and train further for relevant certifications. This contributes to the fact that Keystone has the highest number of credentialed managers in the industry. Overall, when taking care of team members, it’s important they have a clear vision of what the company is trying to do and have input on the direction it’s going through an open-door policy.
Furthermore, our Moments That Matter initiative redirects and focuses team members’ time on what matters most to feel supported in their role and that their contribution matters. Ultimately, successful HOA management firms are driven by these three key measures to solidify their impact and help create thriving communities.
Want to learn how Keystone can improve HOA management for your community? Contact us today to start a conversation.