Did you know that there are over 358,000 neighborhoods in the United States that have an HOA? If your neighborhood is one of them, you may be wondering how HOA fees get decided.
Read on to find out about what HOA services you can include in your HOA fees.
HOA Services
One of the main things that HOA fees should cover is the services that you provide for the community. These are things that your community uses daily or weekly.
Examples can include security to look after the community, landscapers to manage lawns and trees in the community, waste management to regularly remove the trash in the community, and more.
There are also paid positions that have to be covered by these fees. An example of this is a lifeguard that you may hire for your community pool.
If you are going to offer these services in your HOA, make sure that your homeowners pitch in for these.
Maintenance Needs
Another thing that you need to consider is what kind of maintenance needs your community has. There is going to be both routine maintenance and unexpected maintenance that comes up.
An example can be the maintenance required for homes. HOAs typically have to fix anything wrong with the exterior of a home. For routine home maintenance, homeowners typically have to set aside one percent of the home's worth annually.
You also have to consider maintenance needs for certain community areas. Examples can be when playground equipment needs repairs, fences, pools, and more.
Fines
Community rules are put in place to benefit the community and raise the home value for homeowners. However, when HOA violations occur, your HOA can include fines as part of the fees that homeowners have to pay.
An example of this is when someone leaves their trash bin out longer than the allotted time. Typically, this is about 24 hours. So, if someone leaves their trash bin out for three days, your HOA may decide to fine them.
You also have to think about things that can impact home value. This can be a homeowner deciding to paint their house a particular color.
Let's say that they wanted to paint their house pink. A color this notable may be polarizing to neighbors as well as potential buyers.
As a result, an HOA may make rules about what colors homeowners can paint their houses. If a homeowner violates this agreed-upon rule, they could face a fine from your HOA because they painted their house pink.
Manage Your HOA Fees
These are a few things that your HOA can include in HOA fees. Remember, the purpose of HOA fees is to help fund needs that the community has, as well as help increase home value.
That includes making sure that your HOA has the money to cover HOA services offered to the community, such as landscaping and waste management. Also, you can include certain fines as part of these fees to keep the peace as well as keep the home value up.
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