A hundred homes, one reserve study, no records.
Common elements you're responsible for, and homeowners who'd be better off knowing their own.
The reserve study happens every three years and describes the roofs, the pumps and the private roads. Between those studies, the board's knowledge lives in one long-serving volunteer's head.
- How old is every common-element roof, pump, gate motor and boiler?
- What did the last board actually replace, and what did it defer?
- When a homeowner asks why the assessment is going up, what do you show them?
- What happens to any of this when the board turns over?
- How many of your homeowners have any record of their own systems?
What you'd have instead
Common elements as a portfolio
Every shared asset with an age, a replacement band and a window. Not a substitute for a reserve study — the thing that keeps one current between studies.
A record that survives the board
Held against the community, not the volunteer. A new treasurer inherits the history instead of starting from the last three years of minutes.
Something for the homeowners
Every household in the community can keep its own record — their systems, their warranties, their maintenance. Nothing about their home is visible to the board, which is what makes it acceptable.
Fewer arguments per assessment
'The pumps are nineteen years old and the band is $18,000–$26,000' is a different meeting from 'the reserve study says we need more money'.
And it stays filled in
The management company and the vendors already visit. Their visits fill the record in: a photographed label on a pump, a logged repair on a gate motor, a closed permit on a roof. The board's only job is to have said yes once. A records system that depends on volunteer time is a records system with a half-life of one election.
Start with the common elements
Send whatever exists — the last reserve study, a vendor list, an inventory if there is one. We build the record for your shared assets and hand back the age report and the replacement outlook. Then decide whether to offer it to homeowners.
Talk to us about a community