2021-12-02
As a community association board member, you help maintain the environment in which you live while serving your community to help it thrive. However, without an effective board, homeowners associations can't maintain the quality of life that homeowners chose when buying a home and moving into the neighborhood.
Not all HOA board members have prior experience in their roles or how restrictive covenants work. To deliver the services, management, and integrity homeowners expect from a community association, boards are wise to consider training and insights from professional condo owner association managers. In addition, it's important to learn how to handle your role as a board member! Here's why your community benefits from HOA Board training.
1. Your Board Understands How to Handle Funds
Board members have access to community funds, which means they need to manage those funds responsibly. Working with accounts or a bookkeeper is just one aspect of being a community association board member. It also requires an understanding of budgeting best practices, tracking funds, reporting, and communicating with residents about how HOA dues are used. Rather than figuring it out as they go (and risking costly mistakes), condo association boards can benefit from specific training!
2. Your Board Communicates Better
Board members serve in a community management role responsible for hiring community association managers, working with vendors, communicating with residents, resolving disputes, and ensuring community living standards are met. To do that successfully, they must know how to best communicate with community members about concerns. They also need to encourage residents to get involved! Board members who work with an experienced community association manager learn effective communication tools, including online community websites where residents are encouraged to discuss issues collaboratively.
3. Your Property Values Are Preserved
Every homeowner wants to own the property they invested in without worrying about falling property values or deteriorating conditions around them. A condo community benefits when boards focus on preserving property values rather than causing damage or overlooking issues that can impact community livability. When community association board members have training, they learn how to work with community association managers for better results. Well-trained community managers conduct periodic inspections throughout the community and can help their boards identify areas of concern that could potentially cause problems for residents or property values.
4. Disputes are Properly Handled
Disputes within a community are common, but poor communication between boards and residents often makes the problem worse. When communities hire professional condo association managers or take time to benefit from training, it helps maintain resident relationships by reducing conflicts—rather than letting them fester. A well-managed approach to conflict resolution (including rule violations and collecting late HOA fees) creates less anxiety for owners who aren't involved in the community's day-to-day operations! Board members who understand their role as community leaders also tend to know what information to share with community residents who pose concerns.
5. Boards Make Informed Decisions
When community association boards make informed decisions, they tend to have a positive impact on community livability and property values. Boards that understand legal issues, HOA best practices, community manager qualifications, and community financial management are less likely to make bad decisions or overlook essential aspects of community management. When your community can trust board members to make the best decisions for the good of the neighborhood, residents feel safe, healthy, and happy!
6. Your Community Association Avoids Liabilities
With community association managers and proper training, condo community boards avoid potential liabilities when things go wrong. Boards that don't know their role or the community association's governing documents may not receive community manager reports at meetings, make decisions without input from managers, or unknowingly create bad policies.
When community associations work with well-qualified community association managers and community management companies, those professionals can help boards make informed decisions based on identifying risks. In addition, informed and trained board members know how to review and select the best association insurance coverage, take actions to keep communal areas safe, and handle residents in ways that avoid lawsuits.
Support Your Community Association With a Well-Trained HOA Board
These are just a few reasons why board member training is so essential! A community association board member can't succeed without a basic understanding of how a condo community works—from policies and procedures to the role of the board and its relationship with community association managers. If you're ready for your condo association board members to work successfully in their roles—and keep up-to-date on industry changes—working with a professional HOA management company can help.
Trestle Community Management provides training for condominium management boards and HOAs to strengthen then service to each other and their communities. With our experience and professional community managers, boards experience better meetings, streamlined operations, well-documented financials and reports, and healthy communities. If your board could benefit from training in any of the areas we mentioned here (or in other critical management areas), let us know! Reach out soon to learn more about our services.
Start training with the insights in our free ebook! Download "Best Practices for HOA Operations: A Checklist."
