Charting Your Way -

If you have been involved with or responsible for association-related maintenance or replacement matters for any length of time, then you have been involved with decisions based on tough questions such as: Is this an association responsibility? Is it owned by the association or the homeowner? Is it considered common or private? Is this a limited charge for that homeowner or included in the budget as an association service? Do some or all of these questions sound familiar?

Ideally, you want to make decisions consistent with your community documents, plans and state laws. There is a tool that we have been using and refining for over twenty years to help make those decisions easier and more consistent. We call it a “Component and Responsibility Chart.” Other companies and regions use other terms, including a “Maintenance Matrix.”

As many associations maintain things they don’t own and often provide some but not all maintenance or replacement functions for the same item, your Chart has to be carefully developed. Complicating this further is that many of today’s associations have to perform certain services but the homeowners pay for those services when they are provided instead of the having them paid by the operating or replacement reserve budgets.

Building such a Chart requires you to identify each component of the property where there might be any question or issue to include it on your chart. You can create your Chart by first asking the following questions about each component:

• Who owns it - the Association or homeowner?
• What maintenance, operation, or replacement function(s) have been or might be required in the future?
• Who (association or homeowner) must provide each service?
• Are the costs for each service included in a regular association expense or reserve budget category and does the association have the authority to charge the homeowner if not?

Armed with those answers and the terminology from the association’s governing documents and/or state statutes, you can then prepare your Chart. Here are some examples of what might appear on such a Chart:

* Replacement subject to Association guidelines.

While those examples don’t necessarily apply to any one Association, hopefully, you get the idea. And the more your Association is involved with services to the home exteriors or lots, the more this Chart can help in addressing those tough calls.

As these Charts have evolved and state statutes have permitted more creative Association design, attorney’s have begun to utilize them as Exhibits to their primary ownership documents (Declaration, Master Deed, CCR’s). They have also discovered these Charts can simplify document drafting in areas that often take a lot of time.

So, if your Association doesn’t have one of these Charts and you think it has value, invest in the time to prepare one. Understand that you won’t identify all the components the first time around and you will need to refine. And ultimately, the Board, the attorney, and the management team need to be involved in this task before homeowners receive their copy. Good luck with this effort.

Steve Castle, CMCA®, AMS®, PCAM®
President
Mid-Atlantic Management
Plymouth Meeting, PA