Creating a Maintenance Chart for Your HOA

Homeowners associations (HOAs) may spend a fair amount of time taking and completing maintenance requests. Maintenance is an essential part of HOA management, in terms of keeping a well-maintained community and providing value. It keeps current residents happy and helps preserve your neighborhood’s curb appeal for potential residents.

Yet for self managed associations, HOA management spans many tasks and responsibilities. Since volunteers are balancing these management duties with other life responsibilities, effective use of time and effort are critical. The last thing you want to do is spend extra time on repairs that should be the homeowner’s responsibility or clear up a legal dispute about who’s responsible when something is damaged.

That’s where your maintenance chart comes in.

What is a maintenance chart? In short, a HOA maintenance chart outlines every potential maintenance need within the HOA. This chart clearly details who is responsible for repairs in each instance. As opposed to typical wordy legal documents that are difficult to understand, the role of a maintenance chart is to quickly and easily determine who’s liable for any potential maintenance situation.

HOA management software gives you the ability to securely store, access, and share your maintenance chart and other critical documents. It will track maintenance requests and keep a permanent record of communications with residents. It also helps you set a maintenance budget and manage your finances throughout the year.

Here’s what you need to know about building an effective maintenance chart and how HOA management software can help.

Table of Contents:

1.      What Should Be in a Maintenance Chart?

2.      After Your Maintenance Chart Is Complete, What’s Next?

3.      How Does HOA Management Software Help?

What Should Be in a Maintenance Chart?

The purpose of a maintenance chart is to cover liability for every potential circumstance of maintenance and repair. Your Declaration of Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs), and other governing documents, can provide an important roadmap for building a maintenance chart. Keep in mind that the chart must conform to all existing rules within the community.

A maintenance chart should define whether homeowners or the HOA is responsible for maintenance, cleaning, or repairs in separately owned versus common areas.

For instance, a chart may detail who is responsible for maintenance of:

·        Walls

·        Ceilings

·        Floors

·        Windows

·        Doors

·        A/C units

·        Appliances

·        Driveways

·        Attics

·        Balconies

·        Berms

These are a few but not all of what your chart may include, and the specifics may depend on the unique details of your community and its governing documents. Effective maintenance charts will delineate key details about these aspects of maintenance—for instance, who is responsible for damage to interior walls versus perimeter walls, or whether a window frame is replaced due to normal wear or damage by a tenant.

After Your Maintenance Chart Is Complete, What’s Next?

It’s important to ensure that a maintenance chart does not create a risk of noncompliance, conflict with governing documents such as CC&Rs, or create other potential legal issues.

In other words, this is a good time to check both your chart and other governing documents for any potential missed information that could cause issues in the future.

HOAs should consult their attorney to verify that, using governing documents and their understanding of the law, your maintenance chart is correct and legal. You can then add your maintenance chart as an official part of the governing documents without fearing costly and time-consuming legal battles or issues with insurance.

Once the maintenance chart is complete, now it’s time to distribute it to HOA members. The right HOA management software can help store and share this important document, as well as streamline and automate many other critical HOA management tasks.

How Does HOA Management Software Help?

HOA management software provides a full-spectrum, all-in-one management tool for accounting, automated bulk billing and electronic dues collections, data storage, communication, and tracking violations and maintenance requests.

When it comes to your maintenance chart and other important documents, HOA software provides the ability to securely store these documents in a centralized, easy-to-search repository. This software can provide an important tool when drafting, storing, and disseminating this and other information. Here’s how.

Transparency

Your maintenance chart will be stored with other governing documents, and can be instantly and easily shared with homeowners through various communication channels, such as:

·        Direct communication through homeowners’ unique digital portals

·        Mass email, text and phone calls

·        Your HOA website, created using HOA software’s easy web building tool

·        Printed materials such as “welcome to the neighborhood” packets, mailed to specific residents at the click of a button using HOA software

Not only does HOA management software create transparency—so the homeowner isn’t caught off guard by potential violations—it allows HOAs to keep a record of all such communications, should they need to consult them later.

Security

Associations can have peace of mind using HOA management software to store their maintenance charts and other governing documents, knowing they are securely stored and backed up. Stored data can be organized into separate folders and set to be shared with specific groups. This data and past communications with homeowners about maintenance or other issues are also securely stored, all while knowing homeowners’ private information is safe.

A Holistic Approach

At the end of the day, HOA management software provides more than one solution to one management problem. Even when it comes to a specific area of management like maintenance, you can not only store and share your maintenance chart and other documents; you can also use HOA software’s powerful AI-driven accounting tools to carefully set and manage your maintenance budget according to these documents, as well as track and field maintenance requests.

All this functionality and data is stored in a central, easy-to-use digital hub for instant accessibility and problem solving, offering HOAs a holistic approach to management top to bottom.

PayHOA’s management software provides a digital solution for self managed HOAs that allows volunteers to streamline the role of an entire third-party management company, saving tens of thousands of dollars per year. Transition to PayHOA software today for as little as $40 per month, with a 30-day free trial to see if it’s the right fit for your management needs.

PayHOA offers an HOA management software solution for HOAs of any size or managerial priorities. To find out if PayHOA fits all your HOA management needs, try our software free for 30 days.