HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - May 12, 2023
Published: Fri, 05/12/23
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HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - May 12, 2023
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In this week's tip, one of your peers explains how his community got approval from enough of its 821 owners to amend its governing documents to restrict rentals.
Jim Hammond, the president of Plantation Palms Homeowners Association in Land O' Lakes, Fla., says the time for communities like yours to act is now.
Hammond is the former president of a national software company who has now been his HOA's president for eight years. Plantation Palms is a 20-year-old, 821-household community.
"Little by little, our community had had an influx of rentals," recalls Hammond. "About nine percent of our homes are rentals. Half of those are individual people who own a couple of houses, and those tend to be OK. The rest are corporate rentals, which are really difficult to deal with.
"We have maintenance issues with regular homeowners," he explains. "But with those, it's so easy to walk up to their door and say, 'You have a problem here.' And if they don't fix it, we can issue a $100 fine rather than calling a corporate 800 number.
"So we were concerned with rentals and wanted to make a strategic move to limit their future growth," says Hammond. "We weren't in a panic mode—I knew of other communities that had up to 20 percent or more of rentals, and they were in somewhat of a panic mode. We just plain didn't want a ton of renters here in the community. We believe homeowners really wanted an owner-occupied property. And I thought, if we don't do it now, when will we do it?"
Hammond says he's not scared to do the difficult things necessary to successfully lead an HOA. "We have a few board members who are very active and do things like run the arts committee and other things," he says. "But I'd say that in the eight years I've been on the board, I've personally led big initiatives almost by myself, with the board being very supportive.
"After all the years of dealing with violations and difficult situations, I took this issue to the board," recalls Hammond. "I said, 'Let's start on this path, communicating first to the community to see what they have to say before we launch the program. Let's be transparent and see what we're going to get.'
"This was the obvious thing to do," he notes. "But that didn't make it easy."
Hammond's plan was clever, thoughtful, and without rancor. Find out more in our new article: https://www.hoaleader.com/members/4699.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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