Homeowners Association (HOA) fee is a necessity for establishing and maintaining common use areas such as parks, pools, tennis grounds, common security measures as well, etc. This HOA fee is collected from the residents of all the houses of a community periodically – monthly, quarterly, or annually.
As a community manager, you have your process in place. Yes, we get it. But the process has some challenges. Allow us to paint a picture of your current and future scenarios. Today, you face many challenges when collecting HOA dues from the residents such as bounced checks and late payments. Late payments require you to follow-up regularly to ensure that the residents pay. It also needs you to stay on top of who is late, by how long, and how much fine to assess them. Doing these manually for one or more communities can be a full-time job.
Collecting and processing checks takes time and is a needless use of your valuable resources. The current mode of operation involves the residents physically handing over the HOA check or mailing it. This manual process introduces opportunities for errors, delays, and check misplacement. This results in delayed payments, causing further confusion. Addressing these delayed payments needs even more time.
The residents write these checks from different names and you’ll have to map it to your records and match the house address. The checks don’t always reflect the current home address – they may still have the address of their dorm! This also consumes your precious time.
When a tenant violates the HOA guidelines, the current approach involves sending a letter to the HOA by mail. After a few days, the HOA receives it (if it’s not lost in the mail) and then looks into remedying the situation. Time goes by for no valid reason.
While large communities may have a dedicated HOA manager, most HOAs are managed remotely. Some are even self-managed to save costs. As a property manager, you want to grow your business and cater to more communities. As a self-run HOA, you want to focus on your main job and your life. How can you do that if you are caught up tracking checks and paperwork? Delayed payments, misplaced checks, wasted time, delayed communications, and more operating costs will result in more expensive maintenance of common facilities or delayed maintenance.
Okay, you get the picture. In fact, you live this situation every day. What can we do to change this? Glad you asked! We have the right solution to address this situation!
Technology is changing property management
Instead of handling HOA the traditional way, take advantage of the developments in technology and cloud-based software.
Collect payments online and see which units are still outstanding. Send them automatic reminders to pay the balance. When they exceed the grace period, you can assess fines automatically. Set up your preferences once and let the software do the job for you.
Check processing costs time. According to the Association of Financial Professionals’ 2015 Payment Benchmarking survey, it costs $30,000 to process payments for 20,000 paychecks. Nearly 80% of the organizations are preparing for a transition from paper checks to an electronic payment system. Electronic payments are 10 times cheaper than checks.
HomeKasa offers one easy to use platform. No more paperwork, or dealing with checks with our online software, that can be accessed from anywhere anytime.
Residents can send you messages via the HomeKasa platform. You can communicate with residents, ask and schedule repair requests, pay services personnel, etc., all from one place. When things need your attention, you can use our software from the comfort of your phone to address them. Easily send a note to a resident reminding them to comply with the HOA guidelines.
By using HomeKasa, you can offer more value for your residents at a much lower expense and scale easily. It provides complete information in one place about the HOA payments and property expenses. This centralized data about the HOA fee management as well as other aspects of property management presents an opportunity for you to make data-driven decisions regarding your portfolio. It empowers you as a property manager with the next-generation digital tools and business solutions based on artificial intelligence, machine learning, data science, and analytics. Imagine not having to deal with guesswork in your decision making!
You can compare how your properties perform, see the profit and loss for one community or for all the communities you manage. You can identify which properties are expensive to maintain and which one is cost-effective – see which one is your drain and which one is your gain, and figure out which community you need to invest more time in to make it profitable.
HomeKasa tracks all the payment expenses. You can get valuable insights and data about your property business. Communicate with residents easily and address issues with tenants quickly. It improves the experience of living in a community as well as managing housing associations. This results in happy tenants, a better community, and personally a better experience for you.
Who says you’ve to be in the office to get work done? You should be enjoying life on a beach or a park while the repetitive and predictable tasks are handled automatically. Manage HOA payments, community interactions, remind the residents about community guidelines, usage terms, and restrictions all from the comfort of our software.
When 80% of organizations are already taking initiatives to adopt digital solutions for paperless payment systems, it is an intelligent choice to adopt the innovative and effective payment management system for you as well to remain competitive in your business. HomeKasa makes your HOA payment collection process an effortless experience with minimum operating costs.