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  • Six Simple HOA Board Meeting Rules for Success

    A great board meeting should have a balance of diverse opinions and discussions that are rooted in your community’s overall vision. Start with these 6 simple HOA board meeting rules.
  • The Four Fundamentals of Effective Community Landscaping

    Landscaping makes an immediate statement about the brand of your community. The right landscaping can set your community apart from others and enhance property values. Here our four landscaping considerations.
  • CMCA certification: California HOA manager qualifications 101

    Acronyms like CMCA, LSM, PCAM and others are used to designate certifications for community management professionals. What do these certifications mean? How does this benefit your association?
  • 10 steps on how to plan a community event

    You’re planning an event for your homeowner (HOA) or community association. Congratulations! After the initial excitement comes growing panic, right? Well, not necessarily.
  • How to be a successful property manager: 12 key qualities

    When choosing the right property management company for your community, you will be asking a variety of questions to assess whether the company or manager will be the right fit for your board and your residents.
  • Tips for managing building projects & community construction projects

    So your homeowners association is going to undertake a construction or improvement project for your community. That can be exciting – and more than a little daunting, too. The construction project management process can be fraught with complications and frustrations – after all, with so many moving pieces, there are a number of things that can go wrong. To smooth your way, you can consult with an experienced property management company to obtain proven guidance and advice. But to get started, we’ve put together a dozen pointers to help your community construction project build towards success.
  • 12 To-Do’s for the Ultimate Community Spring Clean Up

    This winter, much of the country was hunkered down under thick layers of snow and temperatures so low that even the groundhog thought twice about going outside. But thankfully, spring is here, and with the blooming fruit trees and sunnier days comes the need to clean up, spruce up and get your community ready to enjoy the season.
  • Contractor Tips: 17 ways to get the best from your contractor

    When you hire a contractor, it could either be the best decision you ever made, or the worst. The stakes are high; a good contractor will execute your vision on time and on budget, whereas a not-so-good one will be the source of bad workmanship, unexpected delays, inconvenience and a whole lot of headaches.
  • Four Ways the Best Service from Your Property Management Team Starts Before You Even Ask

    For many communities, responsive service from a property management company is the best they can hope for when it comes to issue resolution. But what if you required more from your property management team? What if you held them to a higher standard, demanding that they address challenges early enough so that they never become full-blown issues at all?
  • Finding a property management company: 5 things to consider

    Your homeowner association (HOA) board has decided to hire a property management company. That’s a big step, and one not to be taken lightly. You might think because your board made this decision your community’s future is in good hands. But has your board done its research?
  • Avoiding risks of Airbnb and short-term rentals

    The sharing economy continues to grow, and this, in turn, is fueling the proliferation of home-sharing websites like Airbnb, VRBO and HomeAway. In our previous article on this growing trend, we discussed how the interest in short-term rentals is impacting multi-family buildings throughout the U.S. and Canada. Now we’re back with a game plan to help your condo board or strata council protect its interests.
  • Airbnb & Short-Term Rentals Part 1: How the Sharing Economy Can Impact Your Multi-Family Building

    One of the most recent societal shifts has been a move towards a sharing economy – and if you’ve ever been driven home in an Uber car, or reserved a distinctive blue CitiBike for a few hours to pedal across town, you’ve experienced this practice first-hand. In this article, we discuss how the quick growth of the sharing economy – particularly, home sharing – is impacting buildings in large cities, and we’ll follow up next week with valuable advice on how your Board or Strata council can address this mushrooming trend.
  • Four steps to creating building maintenance schedules

    Creating and executing a comprehensive building maintenance plan for your high-rise community should be a top priority for your board and property management company.
  • HOA bidding procedures: Simplification tips

    Picture this: your homeowners association has a big job that needs to be done, so you’ve got to find a qualified contractor to do it. How do you manage your vendor selection process to make sure you find the best one to fill your needs?
  • Understanding how property management software can help

    Can cutting-edge property management software increase personalized customer service? It’s not a trick question, at least when it comes to the property management industry.
  • How Property Management Experts are Making a Difference in Today's Competitive Housing Market

    FirstService Residential’s Tasso Eracles discusses Toronto’s building boom and the important role property management experts play in helping condominium developers and builders overcome challenges and compete in this dynamic marketplace.
  • Communication in the Community: Do you have a plan?

    Is your community always aware of upcoming events, scheduled construction projects and upcoming board meetings? Do they understand their responsibilities and the policies they need to comply with? Clear, effective communication from the board to the residents makes a difference in the overall well-being of any community. Poor communication, on the other hand, is a real problem that can negatively impact your community’s reputation and even your operating budget and property values.
  • How to create your HOA preventative maintenance schedule

    While community preventative maintenance keeps systems running in a way that keeps future problems from happening, predictive maintenance entails using existing data to determine when systems might fail. Creating your community preventative maintenance schedule will help you budget for these occurrences – and eliminate most of those nasty surprises. Here’s how you can do it.
  • A guide to community swimming pool resurfacing options

    Your pool is a source of fun for all of your community’s residents. Yet when it comes time to resurface it, it can quickly become a source of headaches. Knowing the facts about your pool resurfacing options can help minimize the hassle – and ensure your community enjoys a quality pool experience for years to come. The best decision is an informed decision. An excellent community association management company will be experienced in this area and can weigh in with some really good insight – and make a recommendation for a reliable pool specialist, too. But before you get to that point, you can start with these pros and cons.
  • 6 essential HOA pool rules to enforce in your community

    Summertime is swim time, and for the most part, it’s a plunge into carefree fun. But without the right swimming pool safety practices, your residents and association could be at risk.
  • Debunking the Eight Biggest Myths About Partnering with a Property Management Company

    Here’s one of the great ironies of the property management industry: though it’s incredibly big, it’s still a big mystery to most people. Let’s let the numbers do the talking. In the United States, 24% of homes are part of associations, with a total value of $4.65 trillion and $65 billion collected in assessments. In Canada, the industry generates about $6 billion in annual revenue with a healthy annual growth rate of 3.4%.
  • Understanding common community manager responsibilities

    The right support, the right personality and the right set of expectations from your community are critical for your community association management team to deliver exceptional results. Does yours have what it takes?
  • HOA nominating committee guidelines: Understanding HOA elections

    Elections are a big part of what make our community associations work. It’s what empowers members, galvanizes our community, and brings residents together for a common purpose.
  • Eight ways a property management company can help you and your community

    Being part of a Homeowners Association is rewarding – yet it can also be challenging at times. Board members are often tasked with difficult duties ranging from proper financial stewardship to navigating community conflicts, and much more.
Showing 49 - 72 of 514