Doing regular maintenance is important for the security of your HOA. However, you also need to keep costs under control, and not go over budget. Here we examine 5 ways that you can reduce your maintenance costs without compromising safety.

1. Examine Priorities and Strategies

If your community has a lot of maintenance projects happening, or are in the pipeline, analyze them. What needs to be done now and what could be done at a later date? 
It is important to schedule maintenance and do it before the problem grows out of control. However, you also need to keep your budget and the health of your reserve fund in mind. So if it’s not an essential project, reschedule it so that you give yourself, and the community’s finances a break.

2. Preventative maintenance

It may seem counterintuitive, but doing preventive maintenance is the best maintenance style you can have. By catching a problem early and fixing it before it increases you can reduce maintenance costs hugely.

The key to doing preventative maintenance is to do regular inspections of your HOA and provide residents with a place where they can report issues that they notice around the community.

3. Negotiate Contracts

If you’re trying to cut costs, negotiating with vendors is key.

When you’re creating your budget, you should speak with vendors. Check how much they’re going to charge this year and negotiate that. If they can’t reduce their prices, or you’re not happy with their services then definitely shop around. 

You could ask other community associations what vendors they use, and how much they charge. If you can’t do that, then definitely read online reviews to see what people think. Be transparent with your vendors and make the final decision as a board.

4. Communicate Well to Reduce Maintenance Costs

Communicating with residents, explaining dues, and the HOA’s expenses will help them to understand all the work and money that goes into managing an HOA.

You should share details such as daily operations, repairs, services, window cleaning, landscaping, and fire alarm tests, with everyone who lives in the HOA. This can help to create a sense of community in your association. It helps residents to understand what’s going on, and why dues are so important.

You should have a communication plan to regularly get in touch with residents about community life, rules, news, events, and anything that’s going on. 

In addition to the day-to-day news, the board should explain rules to residents regularly. It’s one thing to know that if they leave litter or pull the fire alarm for a prank they’ll be fined. But if they know why they can’t, or the costs involved in doing something against the rules they should think twice before doing it. When talking to them about the reasons for the rules, it may be worthwhile to point out that costs that come from non-compliance may increase the dues they pay. 

Using HOA software can help you communicate with residents via email, texts, smart calls, or push notifications. This gives you options to communicate with everyone in the way that they prefer.

5. Use Technology to your Advantage

Several platforms can help HOAs be more organized and modern. Using a portal designed for community associations allows residents to upload maintenance issues that they’ve noticed around the community. From there, it can be routed to the right person who will then take action. They can also continue the conversation with the resident to ensure that the problem has been solved.

Using a platform that is made to solve your issues is immensely helpful for the board. HOA software cuts time the amount of time that you spend trying to run your community, and it saves you money. This includes reducing maintenance costs as you can manage work orders in one place.

Going beyond that, you can also post documents for the residents to view or in private folders for the board. Some portals also allow you to manage your assets so that you can easily view warranties, and what equipment you have. Finally, software allows you to hold online meetings so that you can hold HOA meetings more conveniently. This helps you to communicate what’s going on in your community.

Wrapping Up: Reduce Maintenance Costs

If you have clearly defined priorities and strategies, this is a huge help to reduce maintenance costs. Then, negotiate with vendors to get the best price and service for your community. Finally, share what you’ve been doing with the community using a platform that helps you to communicate with residents. Following these five steps, you will reduce maintenance costs and improve satisfaction in your community.

If you’d like help communicating with residents, and to cut time spent on manual tasks then book your free demo now! Neigbrs by Vinteum is an award-winning communication software that is designed to improve the board’s experience managing their community.