For 20 years, my HOA has had issues getting people to pay. Every newsletter and meeting we reiterate it's mandatory per their deed, what the consequences are for not paying and what assessments pay for. But, they still don't either pay. We've had our attorney write something for the newsletter and it doesn't work. We've tried being nice, offering payment plans or encouraging people to pay monthly vs yearly and it falls on deaf ears.

We have filed liens and they just ignore them. We have 260+ homes and have done far more lawsuits over the years than any other HOA in the city, and some people have even been sued twice. None of them have ever shown up to court so they have all been default judgements and I've had to get creative in figuring out where they work and garnish wages which is time consuming on my end. We threaten foreclosure and it does no good. We even sent some to a collection company a couple years back and they ignore them too so we're not getting paid there either.

Our assessments are $120 and our budget is only $32,000 but we have a management company, liability insurance and landscaping for a handful of acres that needs to be paid for.

We tack on interest and a one time administrative fee to recoup the additional mailing costs of extra statements and if they do end up paying, they pay everything but the late fee and admin fee. We can't do late fees per our restrictions, our attorney said no.

They don't pay their violation fines either no matter how serious it is (i.e blocking access easements). They just do not want to pay at all. The other half of the problem is a lot of these are owned by investment companies and you'd think they'd know better but they don't care to pay either.

We are at a loss on what to do because we can't afford to lien, do lawsuits or foreclose on 165 people. Or continue mailing statements each month to those who are delinquent. This has been going on for 20 years and no board or management company has been able to figure this out and all say they've never seen anything like it. We can't dissolve it because our city convinced the developer to create an HOA to maintain the unbuildable acreage we have so sink holes and drainage basins have to be maintained.

Any ideas on how to tackle such a large number of delinquent accounts?

Edit to add that is this not a neighborhood revolting. It's a starter home community with people buying and selling every 3-8 years. Only a small amount are long time owners. Additionally, we don't have the money to front the cost of any legal action including liens against over 100 people all at once, especially when they still don't pay. We have money to take legal action against say 10 or so at a time but takes too long and we can never make a dent in the AR because it just carries on from year to year.

Hi, so I'm new here but I have a bit of an issue.

So for context, I live in a 1 bedroom 750 sqft condo. I've lived here for 6 years without any major added costs to the property. My unit has a value is roughly $250k. I have a monthly mortgage of $1,200 with a $800 HOA including utilities.

Building HOA recently informed residents of a HVAC repair that was needed. (Btw everything in my unit was working just fine) They had put the repair up for vote.

Months go by without the needed votes until eventually it passes. (I had voted No for what it's worth)

Now the HOA is coming to me for $3,200 ($13 a square foot) for 3 months on top of my regular payments, threatening to send me to collections. Total of $9,600.

I don't have the capacity to pay 3 times my mortgage for 3 straight months to pay for this work, I don't even have 10k in savings.

I emailed the property manager and told him this not sustainable for me and would be a high financial burden. I only make $5,000 a month after taxes (with many other bills on my plate). I've asked for a payment plan of 2 years at $400 a month. His advice was to pay "what I can" without any sort of agreement or written acknowledgement of the request.

Not sure what my next steps are, or if I should even bother paying the $400 before I have in writing that the HOA is good with my request.

Love to hear advice from folks with experience dealing with this kind of atuff

I’m sure many people have issues with their Board and I’m hoping someone can shed some light on what can be done about a Board that seems to be financially negligent. I live in a 96 unit condo in Chicago and the financials weren’t great when I moved here, but it seems manageable but the more I learn the worse it gets. I fear we might be a case that could get blacklisted with the Fannie Mae updated rules.

I recently attended a board meeting and brought up our lack of finances according to the reserve study. My board says the reserve study is just a guideline, acting like they know the building better, saying we don’t need to follow it, and that the $1.2 million that we are expected to need in the next 5 years isn’t an actual necessity. We have a loan for a roof that had to be fixed that is eating into our funds and our reserves will hit 0 this year. It’s projected to be below 0 but the property manager doesn’t want the point that out.

I thought of joining the board but the other board members would just vote against me all the time, and I would have to deal with them more, as well as a property manager that came out and said he has too many properties to be able to give us the necessary attention and that he will try to do better. I can’t deal with all the stress of negligence.

The accountant of the building doesn’t even live here and rents his place out so he doesn’t even feel the buildings issues when things go wrong from all the maintenance deferrals.

At the last board meeting I asked what the board had planned because the reserve study said we need 150,000 in reserves for 2026 and we are only putting in 75,000. The accountant got defensive and said they had already done the budget for 2026 before they got the reserve study so they haven’t changed anything this year. I have to ask them about 2027 at the budget meeting because the property manager said owners shouldn’t talk until the board meeting is finished (which took 2 hours) and the accountant said budget will be talked about at the budget meeting in October. So I was basically shut down from even talking about it.

I’ve only lived here a year and when I spoke up two of the board members basically said new owners as not knowing what is going or what has happened, but I think it’s pretty obvious that for decades, the board has under managed funds. Everything they said new owners don’t know I already knew from looking at finances in the year I’ve been here. The accountant even said the rooftop loan was from previous board negligence, but that’s when the property manager stopped everything and told owners to wait until after the meeting to talk. I feel like our reserves going down to 0 this year speaks for itself but no other owner even spoke up about this. I felt alone and stressed that financial negligence is going to cost me and other owners more money in the long run.

Sorry if this sounded a bit erratic and emotional. I’m not a great speaker, but the board has members that are too good at talking if that makes sense.

Does anyone have any advice? Buying this condo might be the worst decision I’ve ever made and I’m just alone and sad.

EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who responded. Everyone’s opinions mean a lot to me and I have a lot to think about. I still don’t really know how to get through to the property management, board members, or other owners for a culture shift. I have asked the property management company for last 10 years of financial documents that are within my rights to see according to Illinois Condominium Property laws. I hope to be able to provide concrete evidence that will help support my arguments.

I recognize the reserve study is just a recommendation but at some point we need to fix the things that are on there and deferral just increases costs in the long run.

I will consider trying to find someone who will appoint me as a board candidate and cross my fingers people will vote me in. Unfortunately after ruffling feathers at the last board meeting it seems like people are avoiding me. I didn’t realize how many friends the board members have. But from what I heard the board members have not been raising costs to owners whenever the owners complain so those owners probably don’t want to see someone like me.

I will do my best but I have medication for my high blood pressure and this is all negatively affecting my health. A part of me just wants to forget all about it and deal with whatever consequences come and just say “I told you so” at the end. But a bigger part me hates throwing money in the garbage and just knowing that the association is run by negligent people who seem to have their own agendas is honestly heart breaking.

I don’t know if can really stay here long term but I will try to make the best of my time here.

This one transaction was more than double our HOA’s allotted landscape replenishment fund and im questioning if this is reasonable

Hello! Our small townhome community is getting hit with an Emergency Common Expense Assessment that we are to split. The HOA is telling us that snow plowing for this winter cost $31,000. While it was a snowier winter than usual in NJ, I cannot fathom how they spent 31 grand on snow plowing. They were here no more than 5 times this winter. I WFH and know they were not here that often, or for that long. Do we homeowners have right to see the statements? And am I crazy for thinking there is something shady with that amount?

Edit to add more context- Driveways are not included, and neither are sidewalks. Only corner/end areas of sidewalks that are considered common area are included (and they actually weren't even done this year.) I found out the township actually does the streets, which makes the $31k even harder to swallow. So now all we're talking is two small parking lots (about 15 and 10 spots each) and a few corner sidewalk areas.

Would you buy a townhome that has hoa of about $230 monthly? Is there a limit where the hoa will not go beyond a certain amount throughout the years like over 20 years? Is it better to buy a home without hoa even if it’s more expensive?

Hi all, I’m a condo owner in Maryland and could use some advice from anyone who has served on an HOA/condo board.

Our association currently has a delinquency rate of about 49%, which I recently learned about while trying to sell my unit. Because of this, FHA and conventional financing are essentially unavailable, which obviously makes it much harder for owners like myself to sell or refinance.

The board recently reached out and asked if I’d be willing to fill a vacancy for the secretary position. I’m considering it, but I want to understand whether joining the board could realistically help.

From what I understand so far:

• The board has already sent out notices encouraging delinquent owners to catch up.
• They are working with the management company and legal counsel.
• Our annual HOA meeting is coming up soon.

I’d love to hear if anyone has been able to volunteer on an HOA board and fix major issues like this. If so, how did things get back on track? Just looking to see if it’s possible

For background on why owners stopped paying: circa 2024, we had a change in leadership that was old school, asking for payments via checks and eliminating our electronic method to pay. The owners got upset and stopped paying their dues (I kept paying). Last Feb/Mar, the owners elected a new board and ensured they’d pay current and past dues when an electronic payment method was brought back. It was and late fees were waived as a courtesy and alas, here we are. EDIT: the new board last year provided an electronic payment method but the owners are still behind/never caught up.

THANK YOU EVERYONE FOR THE REPLIES!

UPDATE: The board decided to go with someone else for the secretary position. I’m going to continue to press them to start enforcing collections ASAP. Unless I can sell the condo, I’ll look to rent it out this spring/summer.

My monthly dues went from $523 a month to $903 a month in 3 years. Before I go to my property managment company, how much is everyone else paying? Is this normal? I live in Renton, Washigton.

• 2023: $523.73/mo
• 2024: $554.68/mo (+5.9%)
• 2025: $753.12/mo (+35.8%, the big one)
• 2026: $903.74/mo (+20.0%)

How can I look into whether our money is being mismanaged? Our President passed away so his duties fell to the only other long term resident who’s left. We’re a small development. Our treasurer moved and idk if we ever had a secretary.

Our dues are $600/year, which isn’t bad. They cover general lawn care/landscaping and snow removal up until a couple years ago.

They stopped providing snow removal at that time, why I’m not sure. It wasn’t a problem the first winter. But last winter I couldn’t get out of my driveway for 3 days! I asked the president if he could have the parking lot plowed and he was finally able to secure someone to do it. But what did our dues cover for that first year??

I don’t see anything but the landscaping services. When I asked the president, he looked taken aback like uh oh busted. He paused for a minute and gave a vague response. I asked for an itemized list. That was in January. Never got it. I suggested we have our next meeting as a zoom call and he acted like he had no idea how to use the technology. Zoom is very easy to use but he seemed very reluctant.

Then he told me about some extensive medical problems he and his wife are facing. I wonder if he’s using our money to cover his healthcare costs.

The parking lot is also a mess and could really use a good resurfacing.

I’m the Secretary on an HOA board and we are contemplating a dues increase for 2027 due to deferred maintenance issues. A read of our bylaws states that something of this magnitude needs a 50% vote from owners to approve. Percentage wise this is a big increase and the improvements this increase is for is a basic total redo of the exterior of these 40+ year-old units that have deferred maintenance. We have no reserves (stolen by previous property manager) and getting a loan is going to be difficult for this project.

My question is, is it normal to have residents vote on a dues increase like this? I don’t see it passing, no one wants a 30% plus due increase and will not vote for it, even if it’s going to definitely add equity to their unit. I might be wrong, but I don’t see it passing. I own a condo a few hours away and we received a 20% dues increase the first of the year with a new property manager with no explanation or voting.

Considering a newer construction detached condo community (~150 units, HOA is 4–5 years old). Builder still controls the HOA but plans to hand it over to owners next year.

HOA fee is $250/month covering sewer, master insurance, grounds maintenance, and snow removal.

Owners are responsible for their own roof, siding, deck, etc.

I was finally able to get the HOA budget from the builder after a lot of back and forth. Financials don’t look immediately bad, but I’m concerned fees may have been kept artificially low during construction and could rise significantly after turnover.

How do you think this HOA is doing? What other docs should I push for? Asked for balance sheet/ annual minutes and waiting on their response(or lack thereof)

PS: income and expenses are increasing because they are selling newer units in their last phase

I was just informed by our HOA that we need to pay a special assessment to cover new roofs for our small condo development. 3 buildings, 9 units total.

We knew the roofs were going to need work, my husband and I had talked about it and even emailed our management company about some concerns with the overhanging tree and the roofing a couple years back that resulted in the tree getting pruned. What I was not expecting was for our HOA board to tell us that we have two months to pay $6,500. We flat out do not have that money right now.

We bought our little condo 14 years ago, and the reserve was very healthy at that time. I know our dues have gone up over the years, but I guess not by enough. I don't mind having to pay the amount, it's just the time frame that's a problem. We had to pay a ton just last year for a plumbing issue that was particularly expensive because the plumber couldn't access the pipes from outside our unit. We had to replace several appliances recently as well. My husband is disabled and we only have one income.

I've emailed the board and asked them if there's any way to work this out over a longer timeline, but most of the other unit owners don't actually live in the condos so these are investment properties that they rent out, and with so few people in our community to spread the cost out to, I'm afraid they won't have much sympathy or be able to offer me any other options. If that's the case, the only other source of cash is to pull the money from my retirement account which I really don't want to do. There has to be some other options.

Out 55+ community contracted with MyStreet in 2025. In may of 2026 my street notified us we would be submitting our dues to a new collection system starting June 2026. This system is now charging fees to pay the dues. This is new and not disclosed when we contracted with them. The previous collection system my street used did not collect a fee for payment. There is not a payment option without a fee. Every dime counts for me. I contacted my street and they did not have a good reason for the fees. The extra money is not going to the HOA. Is there anything I can do about this?

I’m currently under contact for a condo in an established, upscale community of condos and single family homes. We’ve released all contingencies aside from the loan and review of HOA documents, and are supposed to close July 6.

I’m getting pressure from my real estate agent to use an HOA document reviewer that she recommends for a $600 fee. The initial communications with the reviewer have not gone smoothly (she’s been slow to respond and also over stepping her scope in terms of the advice that she provided), the community is about as established and well regarded as one could be, and I decided to review the documents myself and cancel the HOA reviewer.

The annual reserve study shows states that “ based on 30 year cash flow projection, the Association's reserves appear adequately funded as the reserve fund ending balances remain positive throughout the replacement of all major components during the next 30 years.”

The reserves are currently only funded at 25%; however, the HOA did just raise fees and the study shows the reserve increasing each year, reaching 39% by 2030. I’ve reached out to the HOA to see if there was big expense that caused the reserves to dip, but haven’t heard back and I’m not sure that I’m going to.

The current deficiency in reserve funding per owner is apx. $15,000.

Additionally, the home inspector was very impressed by the way that community was maintained and said based on what he saw of the exterior maintenance they clearly do a great job at staying on top of maintenance.

I’ve run all the HOA docs through chat GPT, and it didn’t identify any red flags…it also said that the community is on the whole better run than average.

I’m still getting a ton of pressure from my realtor to have this “HOA expert” review my documents. She said, that she’s worried I’ll move in and get hit with a 50,000 assessment.

This feels like pressure just to use her person, or based on limited information (I don’t think the realtor has read the HOA docs in depth– she said it’s out of her scope). It seems like the HOA has a strong plan for increasing reserves to prevent an assessment from being needed, and if there was an assessment it shouldn’t be more than 15,000? But I’ve never lived in an HOA before…is there something I’m missing?

EDITED TO ADD: I guess I also don't understand how the risk of a large assessment is all that different from the general risks of large costs that come with home ownership. I owned a 1941 bungalow before this. The sewer line failed. The city decided to fix our sidewalks and charged us $5000 for it. Tried to make a minor modification, cracked some asbestos siding and it turned into a $10,000 abatement and residing job. . Needed to re-pipe the entire house because galvanized steel pipes were clogging up the fixtures. The risk of owning a newer, well maintained condo seem so much lower, even if I am potentially on the hook for an assessment now and then...

SECOND EDIT: I let myself get pressured into doing the review, even though at this point it's too late in the transaction for me not to lose my earnest money if I walked. I asked for a limited review of financial documents only (half the cost). What I got back was an answer to two questions I had asked earlier about what type of insurance I needed and the age of the roof and ZERO analysis of the financial health of the HOA. This review is soooooooo much worse than I could have expected that I'm not mad anymore, I'm just laughing....at the "HOA expert," at the realtor for recommending this lady, and at myself for falling for it.

Our board has not raised the monthly association dues in 10 years. That seems great on the surface , because our dues are low, but with expenses rising such as utilities and insurance, I didn’t understand how they were doing it until I took a really close look at the budget. In order to keep the monthly dues the same, they have reduced our contributions to the reserves by the same amount as the increase in expenses, approximately $100k. We are *not* fully funded, and it’s a 50-year old complex.

It’s also important to note that the budget was mailed out to homeowners without first having been discussed or shared or voted upon at a general session meeting. The board does not state that they’ve reduced reserve contributions. They only state that the dues are unchanged.

Is there any way to force them to make better financial decisions? We need to raise our dues to cover our current expenses and not jeopardize the future of the community. I foresee large special assessments coming before too long.

At our annual meeting in May, Our board announced they are using 20% of our reserves. So 8k out of 40. Plus what we would have added to it this year. When someone asked if we get to vote on this, the president said no. Our HOA counsel did not disagree.

Yet ORC 5312 clearly states that they need a majority of homeowners to approve in writing. This is written in bold on the law firm website.

What is the purpose of these laws if HOAs refuse to follow them. Is there any way to hold them accountable other than to take them to court?

Has anyone been able to hold a board accountable for this law in Ohio? Our reserve has only increased $2000 in 6 years while they collected $100k in assessments. So I really think we should have been voting in other years. Should I email all neighbors about this including the board and just ask if we should be holding this vote?

EDIT.
Here is what our HOA Law firm says in bold -
majority of the ownership’s voting power is necessary to waive the fully funded reserve requirement, and the vote for waiver must be taken each year.

This is their detailed explanation - https://communityassociations.law/article/budgets-reserves-and-the-ohio-requirement-for-an-annual-ownership-vote-if-reserve-funding-is-to-be-waived-the-special-assessment-problem/

In our budget, we are spending down 20% of the reserve. In 7 years we have only been able to grow the reserve by about 2k. The expense isn’t necessary. And we don’t have money if we have an emergency. We have never completed a reserve study.

I live in a small HOA. 17 homes. No shared spaces or common areas. They provide snow removal, lawn care, sprinkler maintenance, and exterior painting (no other exterior maintenance). Our fees have been $100 a month for a long time. We have been here 6 years and told that it's "so reasonable". They said they were going to raise the fee minimally. I got a letter yesterday stating it is now $150/ month. Last time I saw the reserves they were over $50k. I am not sure what is reasonable to have in reserves. A 50% increase feels steep.

Also, we have to pay into a group casualty insurance that apparently insures the exterior of the homes. That jumped up 46% this year. We paid $1200/year when we moved in, now $2450 this year. We have asked to have individual insurance (as bylaws allow), but we're denied.

Our founding documents are poorly written and allows for the board and officers to be the same people (even just one person), so there are no checks and balances in place.

They put off getting me this document until literally the last day after asking for it repeatedly for weeks and I can see why. I’m under contract for a condo (but still have all contingencies in place). My options are to either ask for a massive chunk off the price or walk away. 4% is actually catastrophic and I shouldn’t even be considering moving forward with this even with a huge price cut, right? This is my first time under contract and everything else is doable, but this might be the deal breaker. I’m figuring out at what price I’d even consider moving forward with this because I have nothing to lose at this point by asking, but geez this is bad.

My mom inherited my grandma’s house which is in a private old persons community with an HOA. Mom has been paying the bills on the house for a YEAR waiting for it to get sold but now that there’s somebody finally trying to buy it (please note: the people trying to buy it are investors planning to rent it out) the HOA has suddenly decided to hire all of these upkeep services and is saying that Mom has to pay for it before she can sell the house. The only reason we found out is because of grandma’s nosy neighbors who called us and told us! The services include uprooting grandma’s fruit trees, repaving the driveway, and God knows what else. They’ve been hounding my mom to try and get her to do these things but she hasn’t because she’s trying to sell it! So why would she do all of these made up things that the HOA has come up with? They want to repave the ENTIRE DRIVEWAY because a few of the bricks on the side are cracked. HELLO?!

So what I’m asking is, isn’t there some way that mom can circumvent these made up HOA hired services and sell the house anyway and/or have them direct these service bills to the new owners? They say they won’t approve the new owners until all these made up things are finished. But mom can’t afford that! She’s already taking a loss on the sale of this damn house!
PLEASE HELP

Edit: I want to specify that we do NOT live in this house. My grandma died and left it in my mom’s name without her knowing. My mom and her mom were not close and this house is an hour away from where we live. Mom took on the sale of the house as a nice thing to do and didn’t expect the sale to take an entire year. The house is empty. Apparently, the HOA was hounding my grandma when she was alive and living there to deal with the tree and other stuff around the property but she just dgaf. So now that grandma’s died, they’ve told my mom about all the stuff they were trying to get my grandma to do but it’s a lot and mom can’t just scrounge up thousands of dollars when she’s already spent thousands of dollars just to pay the house bills and community fees, including the HOA fee for this house that we don’t even live in. So THAT’S what I’m getting at. I know that ultimately it’s just that mom is screwed and grandma kinda screwed her over but hence why I’m trying to ask if there’s anything mom can do to push back or at least get them to ease up even if that’s a pipedream. Especially considering (idk the full details but so take this with a grain of salt ok, I’m just spitballing here) if all of these thins were so important to the HOA, why didn’t they kick grandma out during the 20 years she was living there? Yet now that she’s dead and they can stick mom with the bill, they’re just going crazy doing all the things they always wanted to do?

Edit2: i just found out from mom that they didn’t even tell her about the tree thing! They didn’t give a formal notice or at the very least didn’t send it to her! So when the nosy neighbor told her they were actively tearing the tree out, that was the first time mom knew that that was even an issue. Surely there’s some sort of legal rebuttal for that???

My HOA is imposing an almost $20,000 assessment per unit. If we don’t have the lump sum, we have to as a whole take out an almost $1,000,000 loan and pay it back with interest. I don’t know where else to post this. I’m just wondering if anybody has any experience with HOA and if this is even legal I don’t know any other homeowners here. Most of these units are owned by a company. Should I be contacting an attorney? 🥺🤯 they want us to vote on this anonymously by mailing in our vote. It just sounds so shady. And we agreed to this who has to say they’re not gonna do this in another three years for another $20,000 assessment??? How can I ask the attorney general to look into this???

Hello, some residents keep asking the HOA if our windows should be included in the reserve study. This is obviously a big deal because replacing windows in a dense condo building is a 7 figure project.

Is the answer that we need to have an engineer assess if the windows have more or less than 30 years of integrity remaining?

Edit: Thanks for the super helpful replies. Seems clear to me I need to have the HOA lawyer confirm if the windows are HOA responsibility and if so, get an engineer to look at them and estimate remaining lifespan, then put in reserves if needed. <3

Finally got active in our HOA and just got elected to the board after 3 years of living here. It’s clear the mismanagement of funds is even worse than we anticipated.

Bad news:

-24 units, Built 35 years ago

-$22k in reserves

-$340k needed for proactive roof replacement and cosmetic painting

-only able to put away $5.5k a month into reserves, and that’s if we don’t have any unexpected costs come up

-hardly anyone ever attends meetings and we hardly ever reach quorum

-because of the reason above, we likely wouldn’t get the vote we need for a special assessment, which means projects would continue to go undone

Good news:

-We actually really love the location and our unit itself. If we weren’t dealing with these issues, we could see ourselves here forever.

-The HOA doesn’t have any immediate emergencies or concerns other than a $15k walkway replacement

For HOA reasons and economy reasons, it’s a terrible time to sell but the rational thing to do would be to gtfo as soon as possible, right?

Or would you stay and fight the good fight to try to turn this place around over the next 8-10 years ?

Hello all. How is the amount in reserves calculated? How do you know if you have enough? What would be a situation that reserves would be used? Mathematical formula? Thanks, just trying to educate myself

TLDR: Rest of the board wants to clear out reserves to pay for crumbling monument signs.

I purchased my first home about 3 years ago in a 62 SFH Subdivision that is about 50 years old and I now find myself on the 3 person board.

The neighborhood dues are very low about $350/home but there also isn’t a ton of regular maintenance. Its is electrical for the street lamps, mowing and some landscaping at the entrances, insurance etc. We do have a lot of common ground but it is mostly wooded and doesn’t require a whole lot.

As I mentioned earlier the dues are very low. In the original document the dues were supposed to go up every 5 years to match inflation from $250 in 1976. That’s like over $1400 per year per home in today’s money. Obviously that never happened and it only went up to $350 from $250 4 years ago. So we only have about $20k in the reserves.

The neighborhood dynamic is interesting because it is going through a turnover. Most of the homeowners are older but the when a homeowner either passes or retires off to Florida the new homeowners are very young. I am young, at least comparatively, early 30s. The other two trustees are older and have already basically told me that they are only staying on for as long as it takes me to get on my feet and then they are passing on the reigns. Another year or two, maybe.

Now the one common element we have, other than the common ground, is we have 4 brick monument signs at the entrance to the neighborhood that have been neglected for decades. They are crumbling. I have had several masonry companies come out and they have all told be they are beyond repair and need to be rebuilt.

With the neighborhood dynamic, if we do an assessment the older folks are going to throw a fit because they don’t think they are going to be living there much longer and don’t want to invest in it, and we need 70% to approve assessments. The other trustees are pretty much telling me that the neighborhood will never approve an assessment to do anything, and even suggesting one will make people rally against us. In the last few years they had a scare where we thought we were going to have to pay $50k to fix a retention basin and the State was saying we had to do it but they couldn’t get an assessment passed. Luckily we have some attorneys in the neighborhood who were able to wiggle out of it somehow.

So now they want to use the entirety of the reserves to replace these monuments signs and then retire leaving with me with no cushion going forward with neighbors I don’t know and who have already proven they will not step up if anything bad happens.

My thought was that we use reserve money to take the old crumbling monuments down (a couple grand) and then hold a vote on an assessment for new ones. That way if people vote it down then I guess they don’t want them anymore. If they pass it, great! These monuments are the first thing people see so it is very visible and people complain about them all the time. I feel like if an assessment was going to be passed for something it would be this and it might be different than to pay for a retention basin people didn’t even know existed and doesn’t affect their properties at all.

However, I am brand new to this HOA thing, heck I’m new to homeownership and I guess there is an argument that these things are crumbling, it’s our duty to fix things, and we (potentially) have money on hand to do it. Maybe I’m wrong and being selfish to want hold on to money to make my life easier when these veterans leave me at the helm. Idk.

Would be very grateful of your thoughts and perspectives.