Blogs

Every day Board members and property managers are asked by unit owners why something hasn’t been fixed or why some improvement can’t be accomplished at this time. Increasingly, the answer is that the association doesn’t have the funds right now and that they have other priorities. The...

Today, Association Officers and managers have found themselves in the position of being responsible for hundreds of thousands of dollars in revenue and expenses. In order to keep track of an Association’s finances it is extremely important to understand how and why a financial report is compiled...

Board of Directors in community associations are protected from liability in the course of operating and making decisions by what is known by the “Business Judgment Rule”. The Business Judgment Rule requires that the Board act within a reasonable manner and take the necessary steps to justify...

The Turner Construction Company recently released the Turner Cost Index report for the 1st Quarter of 2010. The index continues to decline, as it did all of 2009. Though the cost index is in decline, the rate of decline has slowed over the same quarter 2009. The results of the Turner Cost Index report...

Do you have a “drive by” property manager working for your Community Association? You know, the one that has the Board of Directors, the unit owners, staff and the service personnel frustrated and left to wondering what is going on? This type of property manager does not have the time to...

Throughout the years many community associations have found themselves in legal and financial disputes with contractors for work performed because they do not comply with the Florida Construction Lien Law. There are stories of community associations who have paid contractors all of the required funds...

As officers and directors of community associations, Florida Statutes, and the association documents require that all Board members have a fiduciary relationship in their positions with and for the unit owners that they represent and serve. What is a fiduciary relationship? A fiduciary relationship simply...

There is nothing worse in the management business than to negotiate, in good faith, a management contract with a new association, only to have them not do what they had agreed to and blame the management company for their failures! It is very difficult to properly manage a community association when...

We are often asked if we have or own subsidiaries that will provide landscape, janitorial, pool, irrigation and tree trimming services to prospective clients. Though it sounds like a logical step to have all of those services under the same property management umbrella, I will explain why this is unwise...

Because of the recent economic and mortgage related problems, we have seen a growing trend with Associations hiring new, low cost and low fee service companies. These low cost vendors and service companies that are coming into the marketplace are new, inexperienced and under staffed. These new companies...