Encouraging Community Relations in Your HOA

Nurturing a strong sense of community is an important way for your members to maximize their enjoyment of their HOA. While most homeowners don’t even know their neighbors anymore, in your community, you can cultivate a culture of conviviality, reinforcing the image of your community as one filled with friendly, sociable neighbors.

Plan Events

The first step in creating a culture of conviviality is to create a social committee to plan events. The committee can either come up with activities and events on their own or survey HOA members for ideas on the types of activities and events that they would like to attend. Some examples of successful events and activities at the properties that we manage include:

• Book clubs – could have multiple clubs to cover different genres of literature
• Wine tasting clubs
• Caring committee – staff a local food pantry once a month, cook and deliver dinners for HOA members who are ill, call to check in on elderly residents
• Quarterly new member meet and greet get-togethers
• Labor Day potluck barbeque
• Halloween costume parade – for children and adults
• Formal dinner dance to benefit a local charity
• Winter holiday gift exchange for families with young children
• Cooking or baking contests, such as a chili contest or apple pie contest
• Movie nights either in the clubhouse or outdoors
• Superbowl party and /or viewing party for local football and baseball teams

HOA board members should plan to attend events so they can meet the homeowners and develop relationships with as many of them as possible. In addition, as a thank you to the homeowners who chaired events during the year, consider sponsoring a “Volunteer Appreciation Night” for board members to publicly thank the volunteers who ran events during the past year.

Spread the Word

For members to become acquainted with one another, there needs to be a mechanism for them to learn about upcoming events as well as communicate with each other. One option is creating a closed Facebook page that only HOA members can join. This page can feature news about upcoming social events, profiles of new and existing members, and general news about the HOA. Another option is creating an online newsletter that is refreshed monthly. A third option is creating a password-protected website for members-only. This could contain information on all upcoming events as well as HOA rules and legal documents to make it easy for residents to access any HOA information they need all in one place.

Creating a fun social environment for your HOA members can help them gain the maximum enjoyment from their HOA membership. It transforms the HOA from a dues-requiring governing body into a way of life. Not only will this improve the quality of life of existing HOA members, but it can also attract new members to the community as well. CCM’s property managers have lots of creative ideas about how to make your HOA a fun, desirable community. Contact us today to learn how we can help you.

Consolidated Community Management (CCM) is a full-service property management company specializing in condominium and homeowner association management in Broward and southern Palm Beach Counties.  We are committed to working together with community Boards of Directors to develop management plans tailored to the unique requirements of each community and their residents.

CCM provides a quality of service that is unique to our industry and consistently delivers a distinct competitive advantage.  Our concentrated, extensive local presence and knowledge of community associations results in lasting partnerships and superior service.  We have built our industry reputation on employing the best in the business and assigning only a limited number of properties to each Property Manager Team.

Our team at Consolidated Community Management provides expert property management services at competitive prices.  Contact us today by calling (954) 718-9903 or clicking on ccmfla.com.