Board & Management Company Communications

Our current PMC shows up for meetings and only does half of what we ask. We need to remind them to do monthly drive throughs, etc. Needless to say we are interviewing PMCs. There seems to be a direct correlation with price per home being higher for a more full service PMCs.

Monica,

I'm not familiar with the method used by mgmt. co's to determine what the mo. fee should be. However, I've been told that most of the mgmt co's require their managers to be assigned to a particular number of properties with no regard to the number of units per property. Oftentimes the manager will have so many units to take care of that it's almost impossible to be an effective in their duties.; Many board members are so out of touch with the operation of their assn that they just don't know the manager is not doing a great job. Now I'm not saying all mgmt co's operate this way, but I've been told many do. The source of my info is the manager of my assn. She now owns her own mgmt co (which is NOT operated in this manner) but previously worked for several companies in the Phx area and says this is how they all operate. Each manager may be expected to manage 10 properties; however each of those 10 properties do not total the same number of units. One manager may be managing a total of 10,000 units while another only has 2,000 units, but they both are resp. for 10 properties. Since you're now in the process of interviewing managers, it might be wise to ask how many "units" they manage, not just how many "properties".

Krystal, I'm sure you'll have as many different answers as there are HOA's. We get contact from the MC usually weekly with financial updates (paying vendors, updates on any monies that have trickled in from delinquent assessments or fines) plus news concerning the past week's ACC visits. (We have a group of three that goes around on Sunday afternoons leaving courtesy notices on doors, not MC drive thrus to save money).

We only see them twice a year, the annual meeting in February and then two weeks later at the meeting for the officers to be elected.

I've been President for almost six months, and what I've noticed is that we get about as much attention as we are active as a Board.

Duane

Along those same kind of lines, does you management company solicit and collect bids when you are looking for something? Or do they leave the BOD to do that leg work?

I ask because when discussing having a reserve study done, our manager said perhaps we should call the previous company and ask them to come out again. I had thought (perhaps incorrectly) that she would solicit a number of bids and then pass the result back to us.

Kirk,

I would think soliciting bids would be outlined in the contract with the mgmt co. From what I gather, that usually is a function of the prop. mgr.

Oh, and I forgot to mention that we have a very specific contract with the MC that outlines how many hours they spend on our community per month, what it includes, etc.

They will get 3 bids on any work that costs over $1,000, they get yearly bids for the reserve study, they will attend the annual meeting as part of the contract, stuff like that.

They also give us a list of other services with prices if we want additional help.

If you have a contract with the MC, I would read through it carefully to see what services are included and ask questions so you know what to expect from them.

Wow, what a difference! It took several months researching and interviewing several PMCs (a couple of them twice). We have been on line with our new PMC and WOW... night and day on the level of professionalism!