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Replacing a trusted vendor or finding a new one can be a challenge. How can you have peace of mind that the vendors you’re considering are right for you? Follow the tips below to help screen potential vendors and get the best fit for your association.

Cold weather will soon be upon us, so now is the time to make sure your condominium maintenance program is on track. As brutal as Ontario's winters can be, you certainly don't want to discover a leak in your roof during a heavy snowfall or have a boiler stop working during a record cold spell.

Does your homeowners association have adequate staff for the services that you provide? Learn how to staff your community effectively.

As the weather heats up and stay-at-home orders surrounding COVID-19 are lifted, it's important to remember the social distancing guidelines in place.

We’ve all seen what can happen when rules go too far, are not enforced or are enforced inconsistently. In a homeowners association (HOA), these types of issues can even pit neighbor against neighbor. So what can your board of directors do to make sure that your policies are fair and support your goals of establishing order and building a strong and attractive community? Follow these five recommendations to ensure your policies serve the needs of your HOA without being the source of neighborhood riffs.

We’ve highlighted four common board blunders and included some practical tips for avoiding them. It’s important to identify these potential blunders early to save yourself and your board time and frustration.

While maintenance, events, committees, and budget are all crucial aspects of managing a homeowners’ association, there's one even bigger challenge that board members face: HOA agreement and alignment. Read on to discover the secret to successful alignment among diverse individuals with distinct values.

These days, you can do almost anything online—buy groceries, look for a job or even find love. But what about voting on issues that affect your community?

Are you considering moving to a community with more lifestyle elements? How do you choose which one is right for you? Do you research and consider these five tips to ensure you find your perfect match!

How should your HOA board handle a pandemic like COVID-19? Start by tackling these 5 questions

Because on-site parking draws out strong opinions from both residents and board members, it’s imperative that associations be educated about on-site parking and understand what they can and cannot do, especially in regard to resident demands. With such a broad stretch of opinions, how do you approach on-street parking policy as an HOA member?

Having a diverse group of opinions and perspectives on your HOA board can be a great thing, but it can also lead to challenges because of conflicting personalities. To set you and your association up for success, here are 6 tips to improve board meeting dynamics.

Is your community interested in introducing a Strategic Community Plan? Read more to learn about the benefits of having a Strategic Community Plan in place and how to introduce them into your association.

There are often valid reasons to raise assessments, but in some cases, you may want to take a different route. Here are three cost-saving strategies.

Have you considered the importance of effective board communication in your recipe for success? Follow these HOA communication tools and tips for a path to effective communication.

Have you ever been in a situation where you didn't know who to call when an issue in your HOA came up because you live in a sub-association of a master-planned community that has two different community management companies? This is a consistent challenge for many homeowners living in multiple managed communities.

Like changing the oil in your car, regular maintenance on a building helps keeps everything working properly and safely. For stratas, some tasks are not optional, they are mandatory.

Security risks increase exponentially during the holiday seasons for high-rise buildings. Many residents travel for the holidays, move to warmer weather during the winter months, or have an influx of guests and family members in and out. These factors make it easy for intruders to make it into the building, especially if there are no procedures in place to track the many people and deliveries in and out of the building.

A strata management company never wants to find itself in the midst of an emergency, but it can happen anytime and anywhere. Whether you face an outbreak of illness, earthquake, or a flood, the impact of any devastating event can be minimized if your council has prepared for it. No doubt, your council meetings are already chock full of agenda items, but it’s important to make emergency preparedness planning a priority.

Up to 60 percent of strata home owners in the Greater Vancouver Regional District lack insurance. A good policy will protect your biggest asset and help you keep your head above water.

If your community is managed by a strata management company, you probably have an after-hours number you can call for urgent issues. But what if you simply want to take care of day-to-day strata business? “People don’t operate in normal business hours anymore,” says Rolando Hernandez, national customer care director at FirstService Residential. “Residents and council members need to be able to take care of strata business how and when it’s convenient for them.”

Humans are social creatures with a deep-seated yearning for connection and community. This is particularly evident in a strata corporation, where a strong sense of community can be the difference between long-standing residency and high turnover.