HOA Management Software and Climate-Focused Residents

Key takeaways: 

• Your HOA can do something about environmental sustainability by empowering residents to make changes.
• Younger generations of homeowners comprise a larger share of HOA residents each year.
• Millennials and Gen Zers value transparency, authenticity, and sustainability more than previous generations.  
• HOA management software can provide a platform for addressing neighborhood concerns and making transparent changes.

Millennials, once accused of destroying the housing market, are now becoming active participants in homeownership, significantly shifting the demographics your HOA management serves.

With that change in demographics comes a shift in expectations, which for millennials often means more transparency and a focus on sustainability. With the right HOA management software, your HOA board can increase resident transparency, facilitate open dialogue, and work to build a more sustainable community.

That could mean installing solar panels on their home or property, upgrading HVAC systems to be more efficient, and converting yards into gardens. 

Your HOA can lead the way by anticipating and encouraging residents to embrace progressive updates to homes, gardens, and shared spaces.

That’s why HOA management needs to show transparency and flexibility to make it easy for homeowners to stay informed on what is and is not permissible. In some cases, it can even be helpful to implement secure and organized two-way communication to facilitate conversations in a civil manner.

HOA management software, like PayHOA, can significantly affect how people communicate within a neighborhood. For one thing, it provides a platform for HOA members to quickly and easily retrieve neighborhood policies. The digital platform also makes it a cinch to receive feedback, conduct polls, and offer more transparency into the process so that your board can ultimately arrive at the policy that most HOA members agree on.

Receive resident feedback in a controlled environment

As the demographics of your community shift to a more digitally focused audience that expects transparency, you’ll likely need to offer communication tools that reflect their needs. But you can’t know that unless you ask. 

An open call for suggestions could produce an avalanche of responses, quickly losing sight of the neighborhood’s goals. On the flip side, restricting feedback gives residents the impression they are paying into a community they don’t have a say in. 

Board meetings are great because you often get more out of meeting people face-to-face, and it’s much easier to understand someone’s tone if you can hear them speak and see their body language. However, endless in-person feedback or open comments can quickly derail a meeting. And in-person meetings might not be practical for homeowners with busy families and packed schedules. 

Younger homeowners might want to upgrade their heating and cooling to be more energy efficient or even make more visible changes to reduce their utility costs and environmental impact. Perhaps they want to take advantage of a government program that gives them a rebate for installing solar panels or other eco-friendly home modifications, but the current guidelines don’t permit such changes. 

HOA management software simplifies the gathering of feedback from homeowners, allowing board volunteers to keep their finger on the pulse of the community and its concerns.

The best transparent HOA management software includes essential communications tools like:

• Community polls
• Online voting
• Secure forums
• Budget reporting
• Request forms

With better communication tools, your residents can engage with each other in one place. The digital community commons makes your board’s job easier, removing the need to constantly listen to and monitor social media feeds for neighborhood issues (or passive-aggressive community conversations.)

Gauge the community’s interest, and if a resident makes a suggestion that seems like a great idea, poll board members or residents before taking the next steps. 

Directly responding to real community member concerns, especially when the response is a community-generated idea, creates more buy-in and community momentum than a top-down policy created without bottom-up feedback. 

Creating an open dialogue with the stakeholders grants them a feeling of agency in the matter, plus there may be unexpected bonuses. Environmental sustainability can come with upfront investments but also significant financial savings. Residents passionate about these issues may have cost-saving and community-improving sustainability suggestions simply because they are closer to the issue. 

Transparent two-way communication tools can facilitate neighbor buy-in and strengthen communities as a by-product of more streamlined management. 

Examine and update policies that no longer serve you

A lot can change in a generation. Take chickens, for instance. The banned barnyard bird was once a staple for households in 1950s America before being banished to corporate pastures and factory farms. Without a direct need for eggs, neighborhoods called foul on the fowl, but fast-forward a generation or two later, and families are turning to backyard chickens as pets, gardeners, and egg layers.

There is a similar movement to convert grass lawns into gardens with vegetables and native pollinating plants that attract birds, bees, and butterflies. But, like with restrictions on farm animals, many HOAs have policies regulating lawn care that often include minimum watering and mowing expectations. And in many municipalities, those regulations directly conflict with local watering and drought restrictions. 

Changing your original bylaws and rules to meet the changing times can benefit younger homebuyers. By showing you are ahead of the environmental curve, you can entice younger buyers to your neighborhood by encouraging xeriscaping, water-saving measures, and solar incentives.

Apart from lawns, common HOA restrictions include recycling, energy-efficient HVAC systems, EV charging, and bicycle storage. 

Your board can even apply some of these changes to shared spaces, which would result in savings and, in turn, benefit residents. You’re already saving money through HOA management software, why not find other ways to increase efficiency and have more money left over for other needs, such as maintenance and upgrades to existing facilities?

Finding the right HOA management software for your neighborhood could be the key to balancing self-management with the resources residents need to contribute and feel heard as the world around them changes.

Common areas and sustainable green spaces

In some managed communities, green spaces go unused due to restrictions or poor design. Opening things up allows community members to turn underused areas into community gardens.

HOA members can employ HOA management software to organize a sustainability group or gardening club. They can plan a community garden, set up volunteer shifts to cultivate it, and provide the resulting produce to residents—a way of acting locally while thinking globally (and a great way to build connections between the generations in your neighborhood.)

Power a sustainable community with transparent HOA management software

Adapting to change can be difficult, but by using HOA management software wisely, residents interested in making their community more sustainable have a forum where they can plan, discuss, and address their concerns while building a stronger community instead of creating ideological divides.

Are you ready for a better way to manage your HOA?

Whether your community is asking for a complete sustainability overhaul or just interested in modernizing some of your policies, take a collaborative approach with PayHOA. 

Sign up today for a free 30-day trial to experience how PayHOA can improve your neighborhood.