Creating a Preventative Maintenance Plan for your HOA

As summer starts to wind down and the fall season approaches, many HOAs are beginning to prepare for the 2023 budget season. This is also a critical time to re-assess the HOA’s long-term, preventative maintenance plan and ensure those key projects and components are getting replaced and staying up-to-date to maintain the health and safety of the HOA community.

Don’t be one of those communities that takes a reactive approach towards HOA maintenance. While it may seem easier and less time-consuming to fix something after it breaks, this strategy is actually less effective and can be detrimental or dangerous to your community (i.e. the Surfside, FL condo collapse). Reactive maintenance is actually about three to nine times more expensive in the long-run than proactive maintenance. Learn the steps today to create a preventative maintenance plan for your HOA.

What is Preventative Maintenance?

One of the primary functions of a homeowner’s association is to maintain common areas. That may mean a pool, clubhouse, or gym facility, or it may be limited to maintaining outdoor common space.

What your HOA doesn’t want to do is reactively maintain those areas. Don’t wait until something breaks to take care of it. Just like your own home, keeping indoor and outdoor spaces in good condition assures that they will be functional and attractive for as long as possible.

There will be aspects to preventative maintenance that board and community members do not fully understand. That’s okay. You don’t have to be a mechanic to know that your car needs regular service. And you don’t have to be a contractor to know that buildings require attention. It is simply your duty as the HOA member to ensure proper attention is given to the shared amenities and components that need upkeep over time.

Chances are excellent that your HOA is already doing preventative maintenance. Inspecting heating and air conditioning, regular cleaning, and landscape services are all examples of preventative maintenance.

However, these regular activities only scratch the surface. To prepare and budget properly, an HOA should have a detailed maintenance plan. Without one, components of the property will certainly go unattended and fail long before their maximum lifespan.

That’s a waste of the HOA’s resources. It wastes money, decreases property values, and increases homeowner assessments.

The Maintenance Plan

The Reserve Study

The first step to putting together a good maintenance plan is to review your reserve study. This document helps the board allocate funds for long-term and large projects. A lot of these projects are maintenance and upkeep of the property over time. Replacing a roof, remodeling a pool, or replanting a large greenspace are examples of projects typically budgeted for in the reserve study and take a chunk of the HOA’s resources and money.

The reserve study is compiled by a professional. It estimates how long things last and how much they will cost to replace. It is an excellent place to start as you begin putting together a comprehensive maintenance plan and repair plan for your HOA.

Think of the reserve study as a roadmap to designing your maintenance plan. Review each of the components and their expected lifespans to know when the reserve study analyst recommends that the HOA repair or replace them. Roofs, heating and cooling systems, and other large components are the big ticket items you want to look out for and have a date in mind when your HOA should have the money available to replace them. The reserve study will also recommend budgeting for unexpected repairs, since we all know life rarely goes according to plan. Being proactive is better than finding your community in a reactive, unprepared situation.

Beyond the Reserve Study

The best maintenance plan will go a step (or two) beyond the traditional reserve study. As components of buildings and properties age, they are more likely to need repairs and replacements. They need regular inspections. Pay attention to the age of your building. Many condos in the US are approaching 30 years old which is the time when many of those first big components need to be repaired or replaced.

You should also ensure that your reserve study was prepared by an experienced and qualified professional. If necessary, reach out to this professional and clarify any questions you have about the reserve study or seek an alternative reserve study update from another recommended professional. Every building and community will age differently and different analysts may provide slightly different recommendations. Manufacturers’ estimates for longevity may be adjusted based on location, wear, and other factors unique to your HOA.

For example, as your community center gets older, it’s likely to have more issues with everything from the rain gutters to the plumbing. Some of these items will not get included in a regular reserve study but are still outside of the regular operating budget.

They fall into the grey zone of preventative maintenance.

A reserve study preparer may also work under assumptions about regular maintenance. The homeowner’s association should provide the preparer with a list of regular maintenance, and when it was performed.

We all know that what is recommended and what actually happens are often quite different. If the HOA has the furnace serviced every three years instead of every year, the reserve study must reflect that reality.

The process of putting together a more complete, more detailed reserve study serves as a preventative maintenance roadmap.

Steps in Putting Together an HOA Preventative Maintenance Plan

• Acquire a current reserve study. Do your best to supply the preparer with relevant information from contractors, service providers, and community history.
• Determine which maintenance is based on time passed and which is based on usage. For example, a roof inspection can be scheduled once per year. An additional inspection can be added after a severe weather event.
• Include seasonal maintenance. Understand the aspects of buildings and property that need attention before cold or hot weather sets in.
• Schedule maintenance required to maintain warranties and meet manufacturer recommendations.
• Create a master schedule for a full year that is available to service providers, members of the board, and members of the community. Anyone responsible for carrying out maintenance tasks should have a master schedule.

This seems like a lot of work. If you had to do it all by yourself with a pencil and a legal pad, it would be truly daunting. But you don’t.

Using a service like Homey.io puts the tools you need at your fingertips. We’ll help you get organized and turn your reserve study into a dynamic graph making it easier to execute and stay on track of those big component replacements and HOA maintenance projects.

If technology seems out of reach, remember that we use it every day. Our phones and computers have made all of us more capable than we think. We use them to save time, money, and headaches.

Your HOA can do the same thing. Use software tools to help you understand your reserve study. Once you have a handle on projected needs and budgets, it’s far easier to put a preventative maintenance plan in place.

Let us help your HOA save money and better serve your community. Implementing a preventative maintenance plan is the best way to get the longest life out of every component managed by your organization. Keep your HOA safer and more financially secure by creating and staying on top of your preventative maintenance plan. You won’t regret it!