The HOA annual meeting because it sets the tone for the coming year. For this reason, planning is of utmost importance. It makes everything much easier, and you can rest assured the meeting runs without a hitch. Not everyone knows how to plan for the HOA annual meeting, so here are some tips that can help you out:

1. Begin Planning Early

As the saying goes, “prevention is better than the cure.” Similarly, it’s better to prepare for your HOA annual meeting as early as you can instead of putting out fires as they come along. Set a date well before the meeting and make sure you have a good plan of action for the meeting proper.

In general, it’s a good idea to start planning 6-8 months in advance. This gives you and your board enough time to get everything in order. This includes finalizing an agenda and getting the word out in time. After all, you can’t expect a high attendance rate if you didn’t give the residents enough lead time in the first place.

2. Set Your Agenda

There is a lot at stake with the HOA annual meeting. Here, you and your neighbors will determine the direction of your community and its leadership for the entire coming year. Therefore, it’s important that everyone in attendance knows what is happening and why.

The best way to make sure this happens is by publishing a clear agenda and sticking to it. While the exact items will vary from association to association, it’s common to at least include time for:

• Reports from the board of directors (including financial reports)
• Upcoming projects
• Ballot items
• Board nominees
• A time to vote
• Q&A (member comments)

Great associations plan and agree on the agenda well in advance of the meeting. That way, everyone attending will know what to expect and have ample time to gather any documents or other materials they may need. As stated above, it’s good practice to plan your HOA annual meeting 6-8 months prior. When it comes to your agenda, it’s recommended to settle on a final one at least 30 days before the meeting.

3. Educate Early

Since the HOA annual meeting tackles a lot of issues — including board elections — residents must be aware of all matters. This is also why it’s important to set an agenda early on, so attendees know what they can expect from the meeting.

Informing residents of all necessary information helps meetings go smoothly. It becomes even more vital if there’s a hot-button issue that warrants a discussion. The definition of a hot-button issue can vary from community to community. What may be a hot-button issue to one association may not be any cause for alarm to another. Know your audience well.

4. Know When You Meet

It should go without saying that the HOA annual meeting needs to have a date. Luckily, finding that date is usually already done for you. In most community associations, an HOA’s governing documents contain provisions for the date of the annual meeting.

If it’s not given as a specific date, it will be specified as “The first Tuesday of April” or something similar. Because so much happens at this meeting, it’s important to have as much of the community involved as possible. Having the date determined well ahead of time lets you plan around it and get the word out early to maximize attendance.

5. Plan the Meeting Around an Event

Most HOAs have trouble keeping attendance up at annual meetings. This doesn’t come as a surprise at all, especially given that most residents have a preconceived notion that meetings are dull and boring.

To counteract this, consider planning your HOA annual meeting around an event. Parties make everything seem lighter and more fun, encouraging more people to attend.

Of course, not all associations have the luxury to make a big deal out of HOA annual meetings. You can’t rent out a venue and hire a caterer if you can’t afford it. When you’re on a tight budget, a simple meal at a local restaurant or free pizza and drinks can go a long way. By adding a little extra oomph to your HOA annual meeting, residents can look forward to it.

6. Understand Quorum and Proxies

Regardless of the rest of your agenda, the election of the board of directors is central to the HOA annual meeting. Big decisions like this require a quorum. Don’t be scared off by the fancy Latin name, though. A quorum is simply the minimum number of votes required for a vote to “count.”

This amount can usually be found in your association’s governing documents as a percentage of total eligible voters. Typically, this is 10% for general meetings like the annual meeting and 50% for board meetings. Business can’t be conducted and the meeting must be rescheduled if a quorum isn’t present.

Luckily, you don’t need to have all these eligible voters physically present at the meeting. To achieve this, many associations use proxies. A proxy is a document that allows one association member to vote on behalf of another. It’s important that this document is set up properly to avoid any confusion or legal challenges. It’s a good idea to work with a lawyer or your association management company’s legal advisors to set them up properly.

7. Notify Residents Early and Often

Even if your community uses proxies, you should do everything you can to get your members to attend the meeting in person. In-person attendees are able to be more active participants, asking questions, and hearing the discussion being had first-hand.

The best way to boost attendance is to let members know about the meeting early. That way, they can block off that time on their calendar before anything else comes up. Often, the notice period will be specified by your community’s governing documents. If not, we recommend sending notice 30 to 60 days ahead of the meeting via email blast or paper mailers.

If your community has a regular newsletter, the date should also be prominently displayed in each issue, especially as the date approaches. You can also get the word out through social media posts to groups on Facebook, NextDoor, and others. And if all else fails, promising food or some attractive community event is a great way to entice people to come out.

8. Consider a Suggestion Box

People have a lot of opinions, and the HOA board of directors simply can’t address them all in one go. These discussions — and sometimes unnecessary comments — can prolong the meeting.

To combat this, consider installing a suggestion box. You may think it’s tacky, but suggestion boxes actually improve HOA annual meetings. Whenever someone brings up an issue outside of the agenda, the HOA board can simply redirect them to the suggestion box.

However, that doesn’t mean the board can ignore the contents of the suggestion box. By no means is it just a way to pacify opinionated residents. Make sure to read through them all. Who knows? You may be surprised to find useful information.

9. Lean On Your Community Manager

Communities working with an association management company have a major resource in their community manager. The community manager is paid to take a lot of administrative burden off of the board.

In planning an annual meeting, they can review meeting agendas and give advice on what should and should not be included. They can also handle much of the communications with homeowners through scheduled email and physical reminders. For medium-to-large communities, a good community manager goes a long way toward getting annual meetings run smoothly.

HOA Annual Meeting Mistakes You Must Avoid

With so many moving parts, it’s normal to commit mistakes when you’re planning an HOA annual meeting. While some mistakes are excusable and easily repaired, others can be detrimental. Foresight can save you a ton of problems (and headaches, too). Here are some of the most common mistakes you must avoid:

1. Not Setting Up a Timeline

After setting a date for your HOA annual meeting, it’s important to plot your timeline. Since the date is usually a long way away, give you and your HOA board ample time to make preparations.

Start from the date of the meeting and work your way backward. Determine when you must finalize your agenda and when notices must go out. By working with a timeline, you allow yourself enough room to breathe and won’t miss deadlines to boot.

2. Not Checking Your State’s Requirements

Some states have laws in place concerning HOA meetings. For instance, in California, Corporations Code §7511 states that written notice must be supplied no less than 10 days or more than 90 days prior to the date of the meeting.

Failure to comply with the laws of the land — be it federal, state, or local — opens your board up to legal liability. As such, HOA boards must do their due diligence and familiarize themselves with these laws.

3. Failing to Take Notes

The minutes of the meeting are very important to an HOA. They are physical records of what took place at every meeting. They are something you can look back to for reference in case of any misunderstandings down the road. The minutes are made all the more significant when it comes to the HOA annual meeting, where so many issues are tackled.

Among the board of directors, it’s the secretary’s job to take minutes of every meeting. If they are absent or occupied for any reason, appoint someone else to take on the task. A copy of the minutes must then be sent to each homeowner. This way, those who failed to attend the meeting can catch up on what they missed.

4. Not Making an Effort to Improve

Not all HOA boards are made equal. Some are experts at planning HOA annual meetings, while others need more experience. If you belong to the latter, you must make an effort to improve. The worst thing you can do is to settle for what you have and keep holding subpar meetings.

Be open to new ideas and allow yourself to learn. Do some research or ask a professional for tips. If you work with a community manager, look to them for assistance. The only way you can get better at something is through initiative and hard work.

HOA board meetings — are they time well spent for your members? Being on a homeowners association board means volunteering your time and effort for the improvement of your community. For the most part, it’s an incredibly fulfilling role, but it also involves dealing with differences in opinion and finding time to get everyone together. Learning how to run an HOA meeting could just be the best skill you can pick up as part of a community management team.

How to Run HOA Board Meetings Successfully

Successful HOA board meetings need not eat up a lot of your time. Often, the shorter you can make them, the better it is for everyone involved. Smooth and effective HOA board meetings are ones your members will actually start looking forward to once they start to see how much they are getting done in a short period of time.

Most board members are volunteers who care about having a well-run community, and many of them are even passionate about it. It’s just a fact that each member may have different ideas, and association board meetings are important opportunities for them to give voice to their thoughts.

It can be difficult at times to maintain short HOA board meetings and come to quick decisions. Keep the following tips in mind on how to run an HOA meeting, and everyone can leave the table with a clear idea of which direction the group is going next.

1. Have a Well-Organized Agenda

Two main things are crucial for running successful HOA board meetings. The first is the attendance — association board meetings need everyone to be aware of the decisions that the group makes. The second is having a well-organized agenda for your meeting. This includes old business, new business, committee reports, a review of action items, the treasury report of the previous month’s finances, and an open owner forum.

What goes into your agenda depends on the requirements set forth in your governing documents and your state laws. That said, keep in mind to include only the necessary items in your meeting agenda.

Effective HOA board meetings need not cover every little issue. In fact, it may be counter-productive to start a meeting with a huge list of items. To keep the group engaged and focused, try to keep the association board meetings centered on just the most urgent item at the time, if possible.

2. Keep It Concise

The purpose of meetings should be appointed actions, on-topic discussion, and motions that move the association’s goals forward. Otherwise, HOA board meetings tend to get sidetracked, and that’s not a thing you want if you still have important matters to discuss.

It’s really important to set up guidelines for your agenda items. Anything outside of these should be handled at another time. Discussions can end up going in circles, but that’s normal when concerned people are involved.

In these cases, those running the meeting should know when and how to table it in a way that respects everyone’s opinions so that the meeting may move on.

Successful HOA board meetings are ones that cater to those present. For meetings among board members, you should also only discuss items that are high-level topics or in need of a vote from those involved. Also, keep in mind that you don’t necessarily need committee members to be present at each and every meeting. They should, however, be there for the regular board of directors meetings.

Just what makes HOA board meetings short and concise? Sixty (60) to ninety (90) minutes is generally a good running time to aim for the majority of your association board meetings.

3. Assign Times for Agenda Items

Always have someone monitoring discussion time on items addressed. Each agenda item should have a time budget to them – that’s one of the important things to understand about effective HOA board meetings. It’s easy for something meant to take 10 minutes to turn into an hour-long discussion if someone does not put their foot down. For a typical agenda item, if it goes 10 minutes over, wrap it up and move on.

It’s a good thing to remember that it’s also all too common for board meetings to turn into social hour. Make sure to designate specific times to start and end your HOA board meetings. That way, you can give everyone time to socialize later or attend to other things as they need to.

4. Limit Homeowner Speaking Time

The opinion of homeowners is invaluable for planning future improvements for the community. Of course, it’s great to invite owners to meetings, but you do have to manage their numbers. It’s also best to provide a venue for homeowners to express themselves, but you also don’t want comments from everyone basically taking over the entire meeting.

Allot time for them a few minutes before or after meetings. Better yet, have them submit questions and comments before the meeting so the board can know what to expect and better address them in a timely manner.

Keep in mind that not all homeowners will be familiar in detail with the HOA governing rules. It’s always a good idea to remind owners and members about meeting rules and the procedures to follow. This will establish a behavior boundary for everyone in the venue, and this can save you from having to deal with disruptions later on.

5. Be Clear When Wrapping Up

Effective HOA board meetings bring everyone on the same page, so it’s always a good idea to spend a few minutes to confirm everyone’s understanding of what was discussed. Before you end each meeting, if time permits, try to review action items and make sure each board member understands their responsibilities and role for each of them. It’s better to confirm from everyone while you’re still together so that there will be fewer disagreements afterward.

When we receive a request from a homeowner, our team will review the request, and correspond with the homeowner as necessary to obtain all of the information required for approval.

Once the request is complete, our team will send an approval notification to the board. The board members (or committee members) then approve the request through our online portal.

Our team is always there to assist when necessary!

Our team visits the community once a month.

During that inspection, we will notate any of the violations (according to the CCR's) that exist. We take photos (when we can) and report these findings to the board for approval.

We ask for approval so that the board is aware of what letters are being sent so there is no surprises.

Once approved, the letters are mailed via USPS and emailed through the online portal to the homeowner.

The letters contain instructions on what to do to remedy the violation, and who to contact once they take care of the issue.