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eBooks, Articles, & More

  • Article

Reserve Study Updates: How Often Should You Update Your Reserve Study?

How often is “proper” or “prudent” Reserve planning? With Reserve contributions making up 15% to 40% of the typical Community Association’s budget, this is an important question. So let’s look at the issues… Reserve contributions allow you to offset ongoing deterioration with appropriately sized Reserve contributions. The more deterioration there has been, the larger the association’s financial assets should be.
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  • Article

Don’t Reserve the Truth

Our country is in the middle of an economic downturn fueled by excessive optimism. Too many Americans borrowed money for a home, driving up prices, with little or no margin to handle mortgage payments. They were sure that their income would remain stable, and they were sure that the home would increase in value enough that they could refinance if things got tough. Well, things got tough, but not the way anyone expected.
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  • Article

Board of Directors as Fiduciaries

Duty of Care. Community association boards must give the business of their associations the same degree of care and diligence that prudent persons would exercise in their own affairs in similar circumstances. The duty of care requires directors to invest time and attention in association business, make reasonable inquiry into association matters to enable informed decision-making, and take reasonable, not arbitrary or capricious, actions.
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  • Article

What are the Four Funding Principles?

The Funding Plan is the recommended action plan by which the association provides income to the Reserve Fund to offset anticipated Reserve expenses. Reserve contributions are recommended for the initial year within the context of a 20- or 30-yr plan, the Funding Plan is created based on four distinct principles. Sometimes these four principles all point to one solution, sometimes they have to be balanced against each other in the best interests of the association and its members:
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  • Article

Special Assessments vs Ongoing Reserve Contributions

Why not just special assess for Reserve expenses when the expenses occur? It fundamentally boils down to fairness and responsible corporate planning. By nature, Reserve expenses occur unevenly through the years: some years will have minimal Reserve expenses, some years will be especially hit hard.
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  • Article

Loans: Paying $320,071 to get $250,000!

While more financial institutions are offering loans to community associations, this option is not available to all associations. To quality for a loan, an association must demonstrate enough fiscal health (positive assessment revenue stream) to demonstrate to the lender
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