Maintenance Free Living! Really?
“When a member asked me to address the belief of homeowners, that HOA living is maintenance free living, the zippy Green Acres theme song came to mind immediately. “Green Acres is the place for me, farm livin’ is the life for me… It continues on “The Chores.. The Stores.. Fresh Air… Town Square…”
I mean, the whole premise of the show was about Eddie Albert & Eva Gabor moving from a complicated city life to their own piece of “the promised land” to enjoy nirvana. Nearly all the comedy revolved around the Douglas’s interactions with “real” people and misconceptions about a simple lifestyle they thought they would enjoy.
This isn’t much different than the belief that moving from a single family home to an HOA would make life carefree. Well, without the comedy and Arnold Ziffle, the pig.
Where does the thinking come from?
In general, many developers sell units implying the Association repairs everything and pays for everything, via dues. They don’t explain that some items, like a leaky or clogged kitchen sink or a low battery in a smoke detector is the homeowner’s responsibility. They also don’t understand the concept of a benefit assessment – i.e. a certain element is used exclusively by one homeowner so the association assesses the cost of repair back to the unit owner who benefits from said element – like a waste pipe or a fence or whatever.
In addition, some people think they live in an apartment – or assisted living. People call the property manager complaining about smoke detectors beeping because of a low battery or burned out light bulbs in their living rooms and are aghast when I tell them I’m happy to send someone over there, but they’ll get charged for it. One woman called a manager 3 days in row to keep the manager updated on her fight with a spider web in her garage.
If you think that homeowners are entirely responsible for this thinking, you’d be wrong. In a quick search of one local real estate’s company, using the term “maintenance free”, there were over 1,200 homes for sale! There were even 4 farms listed as maintenance free. Now, that’s funny.
Senior communities tout the maintenance free benefits, and for good reason. Many of the seniors have health problems that keep them from doing a lot of maintenance. Townhome living is meant to be easy.
Think about the term “maintenance free” during the winter. I’m sorry to say, snow season is expected to make another surprise entrance in about 90 days. (Yuk) One of the biggest benefits of living in an association is that the lawn care is done, the driveway is plowed and the sidewalks are shoveled. Is there some maintenance required by the homeowner if the downspout is spilling water that freezes onto a sidewalk? It’s certainly not in the governing docs, but some common sense is in order here. What would a good neighbor do? What if you had a pregnant daughter coming to visit? Do you say well, it’s not my responsibility; C’est La Vie or do you get out there and do something about it? At the very least, call and let someone know about the dangerous situation or make sure the outside lights are working.
It amazes me that during a snowfall at an HOA, there are always a handful of people who shovel their driveway and sidewalk off, even before the snow has stopped and while our trucks are working down the street. I often wonder what drives these people to do something they don’t have to do. I just assume they care about their association and neighbors. Maybe they’re doing their neighbors sidewalk, maybe they’re trying to help us? If we all thought and acted like these neighbors, I don’t think worrying about light bulbs would even come up.
Association living isn’t responsibility free either. A homeowner who just sits back and waits for the board to decide everything to their satisfaction is not going to work out for that homeowner or anyone else in the association who might be experiencing the same thing. Boards & property managers really need more (quality) inputs from the homeowners so they can do their job.
Contribute your time and ideas to make your association a better place to live for everyone.
Don’t believe everything the developer and salesperson said about maintenance free living. What’s wrong with doing your part and maybe just a bit more to realize the feeling at the end of the theme song…”You are my wife.. Goodbye city life, Green Acres We Are There!”
Showing posts with label townhome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label townhome. Show all posts
Monday, October 11, 2010
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
The Case of the Missing Specs
A New Story.
How a free lunch can take care of your property management headaches.
It was a hot Monday afternoon in July and the humidity made it feel like an Indian sweat lodge...
The Case of the Missing Unspecified Specifications!
By Steve Hoogenakker
It was a hot Monday afternoon in July and the humidity made it feel like an Indian sweat lodge. The air conditioner was refusing to work through another day, much like the temp that was hired here last week. My desk, looking like it belonged to Andy Rooney was strewn with paperwork facing every direction.
Emails had come in over the weekend about sprinkler heads shooting fountains 15 feet in the air, and I’d received 2 calls from the Vice President of the board asking when the pruning was going to be done. I even got an email asking about the sidewalk edging. Sidewalk edging? Who asks about sidewalk edging?
I scrambled through the papers looking for the maintenance specs, then through my files. I called my assistant and asked her for the contract, but nobody had found it yet.
The contractor finally called me back at 3:00 PM. He didn’t think the pruning had been due yet.The edging might have been kind of done using a weed whip, he didn’t know. As for the sprinklers, how was he supposed to know? He said “I’ll get my irrigation subcontractor out there in the next week”. A week? Oh no.
At 5:45 PM, I left the office, never finding the specifications. I emailed the Vice President before I left and told her I was working on it, but didn’t feel like I had made a lot of headway.
Tuesday morning. Another email about wasting precious water due to the fountain sprinkler heads asking if I cared about the environment and if I was going to pay the water bill next month. I get a phone message from an angry resident about one of their bird baths being damaged by the mowers last week. With the edging and pruning questions still fresh on my mind, we did a full press search for the specifications. Voila, my assistant has saved us!
Well, saved might be a strong word. I start to read through it. Hmmm, I’ve never seen specs like these before, they’re only a couple of pages long, should be a piece of cake.
Let’s see here, mowing; “Contractor not responsible for damage to personal items left in common areas”. I don’t remember seeing that. I hope the birdbath was inside the sidewalk, but it’s not likely. I’m not looking forward to that visit and phone call. Ah, here’s edging. “Edging shall be completed once annually”. Well, no end date, so I guess they have until Halloween to finish. I’m sure they won’t wait that long, but when?
Then I found pruning. Pruning shall be completed twice annually, but after shrubs have flowered. What does that mean I wondered? Surely some shrubs have finished flowering, it’s July for Pete’s sake. Have they done any of it? OK, one more question, irrigation, let’s see if that’s any better. Irrigation: “Lawn Sprinklers will be started up in the spring and blown out in the fall. If adjustments or repairs are necessary, it is the responsibility of client to notify contractor.”
So, I feel good that I found the contract and specs, but I still don’t have a single answer to give to the association.
This story happens hundreds if not thousands of times in Minnesota each year in one form or another. The problem arises because there is no standardized specifications for grounds maintenance. The specs could’ve come from a book, or more likely, they’re using a contractors specifications. I’ve run the largest landscape maintenance business here through the 1990’s and I can tell you that 20% of the language in contracts being passed around is language I wrote in 1999, and I am not an attorney!
In the past the board probably took 3 bids with 3 sets of specifications and accepted one. If they were one of the lucky ones, they kept using the same specs even after the contract ran out. If not, when the bid was up again, they asked for 3 more bids and got 3 different sets of specs to try to compare and had a new board to re-learn everything all over again....
Part II tomorrow!
How a free lunch can take care of your property management headaches.
It was a hot Monday afternoon in July and the humidity made it feel like an Indian sweat lodge...
The Case of the Missing Unspecified Specifications!
By Steve Hoogenakker
It was a hot Monday afternoon in July and the humidity made it feel like an Indian sweat lodge. The air conditioner was refusing to work through another day, much like the temp that was hired here last week. My desk, looking like it belonged to Andy Rooney was strewn with paperwork facing every direction.
Emails had come in over the weekend about sprinkler heads shooting fountains 15 feet in the air, and I’d received 2 calls from the Vice President of the board asking when the pruning was going to be done. I even got an email asking about the sidewalk edging. Sidewalk edging? Who asks about sidewalk edging?
I scrambled through the papers looking for the maintenance specs, then through my files. I called my assistant and asked her for the contract, but nobody had found it yet.
The contractor finally called me back at 3:00 PM. He didn’t think the pruning had been due yet.The edging might have been kind of done using a weed whip, he didn’t know. As for the sprinklers, how was he supposed to know? He said “I’ll get my irrigation subcontractor out there in the next week”. A week? Oh no.
At 5:45 PM, I left the office, never finding the specifications. I emailed the Vice President before I left and told her I was working on it, but didn’t feel like I had made a lot of headway.
Tuesday morning. Another email about wasting precious water due to the fountain sprinkler heads asking if I cared about the environment and if I was going to pay the water bill next month. I get a phone message from an angry resident about one of their bird baths being damaged by the mowers last week. With the edging and pruning questions still fresh on my mind, we did a full press search for the specifications. Voila, my assistant has saved us!
Well, saved might be a strong word. I start to read through it. Hmmm, I’ve never seen specs like these before, they’re only a couple of pages long, should be a piece of cake.
Let’s see here, mowing; “Contractor not responsible for damage to personal items left in common areas”. I don’t remember seeing that. I hope the birdbath was inside the sidewalk, but it’s not likely. I’m not looking forward to that visit and phone call. Ah, here’s edging. “Edging shall be completed once annually”. Well, no end date, so I guess they have until Halloween to finish. I’m sure they won’t wait that long, but when?
Then I found pruning. Pruning shall be completed twice annually, but after shrubs have flowered. What does that mean I wondered? Surely some shrubs have finished flowering, it’s July for Pete’s sake. Have they done any of it? OK, one more question, irrigation, let’s see if that’s any better. Irrigation: “Lawn Sprinklers will be started up in the spring and blown out in the fall. If adjustments or repairs are necessary, it is the responsibility of client to notify contractor.”
So, I feel good that I found the contract and specs, but I still don’t have a single answer to give to the association.
This story happens hundreds if not thousands of times in Minnesota each year in one form or another. The problem arises because there is no standardized specifications for grounds maintenance. The specs could’ve come from a book, or more likely, they’re using a contractors specifications. I’ve run the largest landscape maintenance business here through the 1990’s and I can tell you that 20% of the language in contracts being passed around is language I wrote in 1999, and I am not an attorney!
In the past the board probably took 3 bids with 3 sets of specifications and accepted one. If they were one of the lucky ones, they kept using the same specs even after the contract ran out. If not, when the bid was up again, they asked for 3 more bids and got 3 different sets of specs to try to compare and had a new board to re-learn everything all over again....
Part II tomorrow!
Friday, April 2, 2010
Property Managers, a way to cut phone calls and emails
Property Managers, a FREE method to cut your workload, phone calls while making customers even happier.
By Steve Hoogenakker
As I was cleaning out emails from 2009, I noticed I had about 100 emails from a multi-family townhome customer from this summers’ service. Wow, I thought, I didn’t realize we had as many back and forth communications. Besides, this didn’t count the 40-50 phone calls over the 7 month period or my attendance at a few meetings. In addition, when I looked through a few of the emails, it wasn’t uncommon to find that 3-5 people had been in the loop on each email!
An example might be a request to fix a downspout that was crushed. The process started with a client or resident with a call to the president, to the property manager, to me, I would write up our work order, it would come back completed, then I’d email back to the property manager again, he’d contact the homeowner or the client. The inefficiency of this madness is amazing once you think about it, but what can we do?
If it were possible to cut out 1/4 of the emails and time from beginning to end, it would be a fantastic creation, but I’ve found a way to cut out over half, and it’s free (for now).
To do this, we’d have to have a single place where the information resides. A single place accessible by the property manager, the contractor and (optionally) the client or board. We developed a method that works today and it’s free!
1. A spreadsheet is created for a commercial site. The spreadsheet would have 6-7 COLUMNS listed across the top 1. ASSOCIATION NAME 2. WORK ORDER #,3. DATE, 4.SERVICE REQUEST DESCRIPTION, 5.WORK ORDER RECEIVED (by contractor) 6.WORK ORDER COMPLETED, and 7.COMPLETION NOTES.
2. The file is uploaded and converted into Google Docs (free). You can then share it with whomever you wish. It’s easily done by inviting people to join using email addresses. Maybe the head of the grounds maintenance committee, president, property manager and contractor. If you want it available to the clients or the whole board, you can easily set permissions that allow the primary people to edit and update it, or just to view it.
3. You can set up notifications so that anytime a change is made you can be notified once a day or immediately. It works like this:
a. The property manager enters in the work order request using your internal work order #. The notification automatically goes to contractor.
b. Worst case, our office prints up the work order, marks the spreadsheet so everyone else knows that the work order was received with the date and sends it out to the field the next day. When completed, the office can enter it in as complete the following day, automatically updating everyone, or the same day if the crew calls it in. Best case scenario is if my operation manager or foreman has a mini-laptop in his truck, he can enter in the completion the minute it’s done! We can immediately markup the spreadsheet, along with any notes. Instead of the client or homeowner calling the pres to the property manager, prop mgr to me, they can view it on the web, and it’s not 9 to 5. It’s 24/7.
c. Everyone can view that the work order was sent, received, date done (or not) and any information. No phone calls were made, no emails were sent. A complete record of all work orders can be kept all year long, although that would be a pretty long spreadsheet.
We saved all of the emails and phone calls. If I have mobile computing, I probably got the work order out into the field and the completion back 1-4 days sooner, and again it’s your favorite price, it’s FREE!
It’s a V-8 slap in the forehead moment. Why hasn’t this been done before?
Google Docs is just releasing a method to upload all kinds of documents. Instead of a spreadsheet, maybe the property manager has an electronic work order. It might be uploaded, shared and updated by me, the contractor the same way as a spreadsheet . As property managers start to customize this idea, I’d love to hear from you and collaborate a method to really tweak this solution to meet your needs. Call me at 763-213-2410 or email me at Steve@Landscape.Pro.
Steve Hoogenakker
Concierge Landscape Environments
7150 Madison Ave
Golden Valley, MN 55427
By Steve Hoogenakker
As I was cleaning out emails from 2009, I noticed I had about 100 emails from a multi-family townhome customer from this summers’ service. Wow, I thought, I didn’t realize we had as many back and forth communications. Besides, this didn’t count the 40-50 phone calls over the 7 month period or my attendance at a few meetings. In addition, when I looked through a few of the emails, it wasn’t uncommon to find that 3-5 people had been in the loop on each email!
An example might be a request to fix a downspout that was crushed. The process started with a client or resident with a call to the president, to the property manager, to me, I would write up our work order, it would come back completed, then I’d email back to the property manager again, he’d contact the homeowner or the client. The inefficiency of this madness is amazing once you think about it, but what can we do?
If it were possible to cut out 1/4 of the emails and time from beginning to end, it would be a fantastic creation, but I’ve found a way to cut out over half, and it’s free (for now).
To do this, we’d have to have a single place where the information resides. A single place accessible by the property manager, the contractor and (optionally) the client or board. We developed a method that works today and it’s free!
1. A spreadsheet is created for a commercial site. The spreadsheet would have 6-7 COLUMNS listed across the top 1. ASSOCIATION NAME 2. WORK ORDER #,3. DATE, 4.SERVICE REQUEST DESCRIPTION, 5.WORK ORDER RECEIVED (by contractor) 6.WORK ORDER COMPLETED, and 7.COMPLETION NOTES.
2. The file is uploaded and converted into Google Docs (free). You can then share it with whomever you wish. It’s easily done by inviting people to join using email addresses. Maybe the head of the grounds maintenance committee, president, property manager and contractor. If you want it available to the clients or the whole board, you can easily set permissions that allow the primary people to edit and update it, or just to view it.
3. You can set up notifications so that anytime a change is made you can be notified once a day or immediately. It works like this:
a. The property manager enters in the work order request using your internal work order #. The notification automatically goes to contractor.
b. Worst case, our office prints up the work order, marks the spreadsheet so everyone else knows that the work order was received with the date and sends it out to the field the next day. When completed, the office can enter it in as complete the following day, automatically updating everyone, or the same day if the crew calls it in. Best case scenario is if my operation manager or foreman has a mini-laptop in his truck, he can enter in the completion the minute it’s done! We can immediately markup the spreadsheet, along with any notes. Instead of the client or homeowner calling the pres to the property manager, prop mgr to me, they can view it on the web, and it’s not 9 to 5. It’s 24/7.
c. Everyone can view that the work order was sent, received, date done (or not) and any information. No phone calls were made, no emails were sent. A complete record of all work orders can be kept all year long, although that would be a pretty long spreadsheet.
We saved all of the emails and phone calls. If I have mobile computing, I probably got the work order out into the field and the completion back 1-4 days sooner, and again it’s your favorite price, it’s FREE!
It’s a V-8 slap in the forehead moment. Why hasn’t this been done before?
Google Docs is just releasing a method to upload all kinds of documents. Instead of a spreadsheet, maybe the property manager has an electronic work order. It might be uploaded, shared and updated by me, the contractor the same way as a spreadsheet . As property managers start to customize this idea, I’d love to hear from you and collaborate a method to really tweak this solution to meet your needs. Call me at 763-213-2410 or email me at Steve@Landscape.Pro.
Steve Hoogenakker
Concierge Landscape Environments
7150 Madison Ave
Golden Valley, MN 55427
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