How to Improve Your Arizona HOA

Arizona is a paradise to many of its residents. 

Those from the north especially enjoy the dry, warm climate, sunny skies, interesting culture, great homes and neighborhoods, along with the enviable outdoor living and recreation.

AZ is a unique state offering special benefits and lifestyles. It has unique political views as well, which colors the rules and culture of its thousands of homeowners associations.

9,900 community associations operate in Arizona, housing 2.2 million people living in 875,000 dwellings. 30% of people in Arizona live within HOA communities. The state's population grew .89% to 7,431,344 from 2022 to 2023 and will likely welcome another 75,000 in 2024.

Residents appreciate the services of HOAs (81% satisfaction rating in the Western states) and respect their HOA managers (73% rating) thus the demand to buy homes in HOA managed neighborhoods will remain strong. The effort and expense of creating and maintaining amenities and services here requires competence in association management.

Image above courtesy of CAIonline.

Heat and High Costs are a Challenge

The scorching hot summer heat frightens some newcomers.  For the communities they live in it poses costs, limitations and dangers.

The desert state's unique hot climate results in some higher costs for homeowners and for homeowner association management teams as they try to keep buildings, air conditioning, roofing, utilities, roadways, and parks safe and functional. 

One study on HOA costs revealed that Arizona has the second highest costs in the nation. With fees averaging around $500 a month, residents will expect a well run community.  Today's post is on that topic of how to improve your HOA.

Given the challenges of building and living in AZ, homeowners associations play a key role in helping residents stay safe, enjoy their lifestyles, and maintain the value of their homes. Homes in Arizona HOAs are worth 4% more than the state average.

Launching an HOA in Arizona

The general process of creating a homeowners association is similar to that of Colorado HOAs, Texas POAs and Florida HOAs. Either a homeowner or group of homeowners, or a housing developer begin the HOA formation process.

Before beginning the launch process, consider your resident profile, those your HOA will serve, and their wants and priorities. Design the HOA's structure to generate the safety, lifestyle satisfaction and property protections they need.

Your HOA is a legal entity and meeting legal requirements is foremost.  The State of Arizona Government holds legal precedence and their rules are defined on the azleg.gov website.

You'll need to draft and file the Articles of Incorporation under the Arizona Nonprofit Corporation Act. These are the foundational documents identifying your organization legally. Once formed, you must develop your set of association bylaws and governing documents, including a Declaration, sometimes referred to as Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs).

You can follow the process provided in the Illinois HOA page, and get organized before speaking with an HOA lawyer for their guidance on making your organization legally air tight. Assume there will be legal challenges and conflicts and they will be resolved in court via the documents you're about to create.

AZHOAlaw.net reports on the most common issues you need to prepare ahead for.

How to Improve Your Arizona HOA?

Improvement begins with the process above, but the real organizational and financial success comes via improved operations.  Driven by your HOA management strategy and boosted by ManageCasa's automation and streamlining processes, your workflows will improve and goals will be achieved.

The tools and management strategy are here. You just need a pep talk to move forward.

Many HOAs are self-managed, however given the growing size and complexity of communities, management means you do have to step up tools and practices. 

An All in One Platform Makes the Difference

On that note, HOA management software built on the cloud as a software-as-a-service actually becomes a platform to operate your entire HOA. This point isn't promoted enough.  A platform describes an HOA system that helps you manage and execute all tasks expected in your association.

ManageCasa™ as an example, is built to be this kind of foundation. You can manage your invoicing, payments, resident communications, bookkeeping and accounting, access real time reports, and schedule work orders. Your elected board of directors will love the accurate real time information securely stored and accessible only by authorized users. That is the power behind great decisions from authoritative boards who inspire confidence.

Your HOA software helps orchestrate the business of managing your HOA, to save time, avoid errors and rework, and allocate staff time and other resources where they're most needed.

It's this matter of HOA efficiency that poses the biggest threat to HOAs.  Efficiency helps you maintain assets better and provides time to foresee and plan maintenance to avoid emergencies. Avoiding massive assessment fees for residents is one of the key priorities for any HOA manager.

In light of all the above, your HOA board will be wise to build a sizable reserve fund to meet future capital improvements, emergency weather events, etc.

Additional HOA Management Tips:

• prepare your communications plan and strategy: Resident's perspective, demands and responses will be highly colored by how you speak to them and the words, topics and advice provided.
• set realistic rules:  because it's easier to increase restrictions for behaviors that actually do arise.
• reinforce your policies as needed:  Too much unnecessary restriction will create resentment and friction, making it more difficult to meet your associations objectives.
• ensure you can be reached quickly:  listen proactively and professionally to resolve conflicts before emotions escalate.
• spend time vetting vendors/contractors: ensure they actually will provide quality maintenance/repairs and save your ongoing costs.
• hire the right staff:  those who have the self-management skills you need, along with communications and people management skills to help get things accomplished through people.
• use a professional level software platform:  to automate payments, invoicing, accounting, user information requests, mobile friendly communications tool, and schedule work orders.

Nothing can offer more value to your Arizona HOA than professional grade HOA software.

ManageCasa™ is a complete, all in one software. It's more than just an automation system. It's designed to deliver the most helpful overview of your association from cash flows and accounting reports, to resident compliance, and help inform your HOA board to enable better decisions while staying transparent and legal in its actions.

Being on the ManageCasa™ platform gives your team respect and credibility, which makes residents feel appreciated and confident that you have their best interests at heart.

Experience ManageCasa™ yourself by arranging a demo with one of our product specialists.