Guide · For boards

Should your HOA hire a management company?

Updated September 2026 · 6 minute read

Most associations under a hundred units are self-managed, and most of them work. The question comes up when a treasurer burns out, a big project looms, or the board realizes nobody has reconciled the bank in a year. Here is how to think about it without a sales pitch on either side.

Signs it may be time

• Nobody on the board wants the treasurer job, and the person doing it has said so twice.
• Dues collection is a person chasing neighbors, and the person is tired of being the villain.
• A capital project — roofs, paving, the pool — needs bids, contracts and oversight the board hasn't done before.
• Turnover has eaten the records. Nobody can say with confidence who owes what.
• The community is large enough that volunteer hours don't scale: a few hundred units, many amenities, constant vendor traffic.

Signs it isn't

• The real problem is one task — usually dues collection or bookkeeping — and software would do it for a fraction of a management contract.
• The board wants someone else to make the unpopular decisions. A manager cannot do that; the decisions stay with the board no matter who is hired.
• The association's records are messy but the community is small and the volunteers are willing. Cleaning up the books once is cheaper than a monthly fee forever.

What a board can delegate

Day-to-day administration: sending invoices, recording payments, answering owner questions, coordinating vendors, publishing notices, keeping the roster current, preparing financial reports for the board. This is the work a good manager takes off a volunteer's plate.

What a board cannot delegate

Adopting the budget. Setting the assessment. Levying a special assessment. Imposing fines. Placing liens. Changing rules. Signing the contract that hires the manager in the first place. These belong to the elected board in every state we know of, and a manager who offers to "handle" them is offering something they can't deliver. The board can take a manager's advice on all of them; it must still make the decision and record it.

Keep control of the money either way

• The bank account stays in the association's name, and board members remain signers. A manager may have access to operate it, never sole control of it.
• Dues go straight to the association's account, not into a manager's pooled account to be forwarded. Ask specifically.
• The board can see the ledger in real time, not just a monthly report. If the manager's system doesn't allow it, that is a mark against the manager.
• Ending the contract must be clean. Records, logins and money all belong to the association. Ask in writing what you get on the last day and in what format.

A middle path

Many associations do best with software for the mechanics — dues, records, notices — and a manager for the parts that genuinely need a professional, hired for the project or the year rather than forever. Boards that hire a manager should still expect to be able to read the books whenever they like.

Where CommunitEze fits

CommunitEze works both ways. A self-managed board uses it directly. A board that hires a management company grants the company the specific things it may do — roster, payments, notices, finances — and can see everything and revoke everything at any time. The money never leaves the association's own account, and the decisions that can't be delegated aren't. How it works for management companies · How it works for boards.