HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - December 21, 2012
Published: Fri, 12/21/12
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What to Consider When Your HOA's Considering Going Paperless
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In this week's tip, we share details about the
growing trend of HOAs shunning paper.
"I don't know of any of our clients who've tried
to go paperless yet," says Nathaniel Abbate Jr.,
a partner at Makower Abbate & Associates PLLC in
Farmington Hills, Mich., who represents associations.
"I do hear talk about it, but so far that hasn't
reached our shores yet." Jenny Key hasn't seen
any clients go totally paperless yet, but they're
shedding paper as much as possible. "I don't know
of any association that's gone entirely and
completely paperless," says the Austin, Texas-based
vice president of RealManage, a San Rafael,
Calif., association management firm that oversees
properties in Arizona, California, Colorado,
Florida, Louisiana, Nevada, and Texas. "The law
requires some things to be on paper. For example,
some notices are required to be first-class mail.
But I see more associations trying to moving away
from documentation. We have some associations that
no longer send coupon assessment books unless owners
request them. Or they don't ask us to send
financials every month."
In Ohio, Kaman says more of his clients are on board.
"We're probably nearing the 25 percent mark, where
for that percentage of our clients, everything current
is being retained paperless," says the Columbus-based
partner at Kaman & Cusimano LLC, which has offices
in Columbus and Cleveland. "A lot of management
companies are saying to their boards, you're paying
$100 month for this storage garage. That's $1,200
a year, and $12,000 over 10 years. But for $5,000,
we can scan all that information. It might be a
few years before the process pays for itself, but
in the meantime, it'll be easier to find records
because everything's scanned.
"We're also seeing managers saying that everything
from, say, January 1 forward is going to be
electronically stored," Kaman adds. "Now it's all
on digital files. It's pretty cool because we used
to see an association go from management company
A to B, and B had to rent a truck to go get the
association's files. Now manager A is handing to B
a couple of storage drives with everything on them."
What should you factor into your decision if you're
thinking of taking a save-the-trees path?
Find out in our new article:
http://www.hoaleader.com/members/793.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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