What Are Your HOA Responsibilities?

What Are Your HOA Responsibilities?

When you live in an HOA, you can depend on the Association itself to do certain things on your behalf: To preserve property values, to resolve disputes, and to offer some basic amenities and common areas, for example.

These are all great perks and fine reasons to move into an HOA community—but of course, they come with some strings attached. You have to hold up your end of the bargain: The HOA does certain things for you, but you in turn have to do certain things for the HOA!

That’s the rub for a lot of homeowners who may not be thrilled at the notion of having HOA responsibilities—but in reality, your responsibilities to the HOA are all pretty simple and common-sense. They can be divided into three rough categories:

Your Behavioral Responsibilities

First, there are those responsibilities that hinge on your personal, neighborly behavior. Simply put, an HOA is a community, and it only functions when everyone is willing to be kind, civil, and thoughtful. Your behavioral responsibilities might include:

  • Acceptable noise/volume levels.
  • Rules about food or glass containers in the pool area.
  • Parking guidelines.
  • Pet policies.
  • Rules about whether you can run a business out of your home.
  • And more!

Your Architectural Responsibilities

You also have responsibilities to help everyone preserve their property values; this means ensuring your properties look nice, relatively uniform, and well-maintained. Some possible architectural responsibilities include:

  • Submitting potential remodeling proposals to the HOA architectural review committee.
  • Not exceeding a certain fence height.
  • Not painting your home neon green or canary yellow.
  • Not letting your lawn or landscaping go.
  • And more!

Your Common HOA Responsibilities

Finally, you have the responsibility of being an informed and active member of the HOA community! This means:

  • Reading all governing documents.
  • Attending the annual HOA meeting.
  • Making an effort to get along with neighbors.
  • Paying your HOA dues.
  • And more!

Note that all of your responsibilities will be laid out in the governing documents and CC&Rs. Again, nothing you’re expected to do should be surprising or extreme… but it is good to make sure you know exactly what your obligations are!

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Bryan Kuester

Bryan Kuester

Bryan is the CEO of Kuester Management Group. He has over 15 years of managing community associations throughout North and South Carolina.

His specialties include Community Association Management - maintenance, budgeting for operational and reserve funding, long-range planning, covenant enforcement, amenity management, onsite management, large scale management.

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