Reserve studies for HOAs & PUDs.
Every HOA is different — different assets, financials, history and operating procedures. Each is taken into consideration to customize your 30-year budget and build a long-term savings plan that fits your community.
Fiduciary duty, and avoiding special assessments.
A current study tells the board what the association actually owns, what is coming due, and what funding keeps the membership from being blindsided.
Boards turn over. The plan should not. Most of the underfunding we see in homeowner associations did not come from a bad decision — it came from a plan built on the best information available at the time, left to run while construction costs moved and components aged on their own schedule.
A study resets that. We take each community's assets, financials, history and operating procedures into the model, so the report matches the neighborhood you govern rather than a template with your name swapped in. When the next board inherits it, they inherit something they can read.
The components a PUD is easiest to underestimate.
Without a building envelope to focus attention, it is the site work that quietly accumulates — and it rarely comes due one item at a time.
Roads, paving and drainage
Usually the single largest line in a PUD reserve. Freeze-thaw and drainage failures move the replacement date more than traffic does.
Walls, fencing and lighting
Long-lived, easy to forget, and expensive in aggregate because they tend to be replaced in full runs rather than in patches.
Amenities and irrigation
Pools, clubhouses, play areas and irrigation systems carry mechanical components with much shorter lives than the structures around them.
A funding plan the membership can follow.
The deliverable is a 30-year projection measured against what you are collecting now, written so a homeowner at an annual meeting can follow it. That matters more in an HOA than people expect: dues increases in a PUD are usually decided in a room full of the people paying them.
We present the findings at your board meeting, walk through the model, and stay available through the funding decisions rather than disappearing at delivery. If the board wants to see what phasing a project does to the curve, that is a conversation, not a change order.
Your board has a fiduciary duty to maintain the association’s common property and fund its future obligations, and a current study is how you meet that duty with confidence rather than guesswork. It is also the most reliable way to stay ahead of a special assessment. In a PUD the components are easy to underestimate because there is no building envelope to focus the mind — but streets, retaining walls, irrigation, fencing, lighting and amenities all age on their own schedule, and they tend to come due in clusters.
The method is identical — inspect, inventory, model, present — but the asset mix changes almost everything downstream. An HOA or PUD usually carries more site work and shared amenities and less stacked structure: paving, drainage, common landscaping, a pool or clubhouse. Those components have shorter, more staggered lives than a roof or an elevator, which makes the timing of your funding plan matter more than the total. We build the 30-year model around the assets and the operating habits you actually have.
Everything the association is responsible for replacing. Our inspector walks the property with you, then documents, photographs, measures and counts each asset — roads and parking, sidewalks and curbs, roofs and siding where they are common, fencing and walls, irrigation, lighting, drainage, play areas, pools and clubhouse systems. Safety issues and anything showing water damage get flagged first, because those are the items that do not wait for a funding plan.
With a proposal, and with less anxiety than you might expect. Associations without a current study are common, and the gap is almost never one board’s doing — it accumulates quietly while costs rise faster than dues. The first study establishes the component inventory and the baseline; everything after that is an update against it. Ask for a quote and we will tell you what the work involves for a community your size before you commit to anything.
Four weeks from the site inspection, and we stand behind that — the 4/10 Guarantee means your report within 4 weeks of inspection, or 10% off your invoice. Scheduling the inspection is usually the longer part of the calendar, so it is worth starting that conversation before your budget season rather than during it.
Also see condos & high-rises and For Boards.