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March 3, 2025 33 mins

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Carol Laurence shares info on generational HOA leadership on community management, budgeting, and engagement!
✅ Is a Reserve Study right for you? 👉 https://www.reservestudy.com/

What does it take to be a successful HOA board leader? In this episode, Carol Laurence shares her years of experience managing a 75-unit condominium with a $400,000 budget, tackling challenges like miscommunication, rising costs, and homeowner engagement. Learn the essential skills HOA board members need to build strong communities, handle budgeting concerns, and create real impact. 

Chapters From This Episode:

00:00 Introduction to HOA Board Heroes
01:25 Carol Laurence’s Community Service Journey
03:10 Managing a 75-Unit Condominium & Budget Challenges
05:45 The Role of HOA Board Members in Leadership
07:30 Challenges with New Homeowners & Miscommunication
10:15 The Rising Cost of Insurance & Financial Management
12:40 Advice for New HOA Board Members13:34 Ad Break - FiPhO Score
14:55 The Importance of Networking & Community Engagement
17:30 The Federal Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) & HOA Risks
19:20 Impact of Rising Living Costs on Homeownership
21:05 Encouraging Homeowner Involvement in HOA
23:40 Future HOA Projects & Improvements
26:10 Final Advice for Homeowners & Board Members

The views & opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts & Guests, intended to provide general education about the community association industry. The content is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or organization. Please seek advice from licensed professionals.

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Transcript

Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Carol Laurence (00:00):
If you have questions or issues and you want

(00:03):
to make a difference in yourcommunity where you live, get
involved on either on a smalllevel, like volunteering for one
project, saying, I would reallylike to help with a flyer that
of information I think would beuseful. Consider running for the
board start small if you're ifyou think go to a meeting, just

(00:25):
going to a meeting and listeningwould be good for starters. You
know, just dip your toe in andsee what you can do.

Announcer (00:36):
A regular highlight of the hoe insights podcast is
our board heroes feature wherewe dedicate one episode each
month to celebrate theremarkable efforts of HOA board
members to us a board hero isone of the 2 million elected
volunteers who deserverecognition for excelling in a
role that often goes unnoticed.
Today, we're excited tospotlight one of these
exceptional board heroes andshare their inspiring story. If
you match our definition of aboard hero, or know someone who

(00:59):
does, please reach out to us.
Our contact details and those ofour sponsors are provided in the
show notes.

Robert Nordlund (01:07):
Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for
common areas. I'm RobertNordlund, and I'm here to share
the story of a returning boardhero named Carol Lawrence. This
is episode number 95 and if youmissed meeting our other board
heroes, including Carol'sprevious appearance in Episode
26 you can find them easily onour website, Hoa insights.org,

(01:29):
on our YouTube channel, or bysubscribing to Hoa insights on
your favorite podcast platform.
Now let's reacquaint ourselveswith Carol and hear a little bit
about the story she'd like toshare. My

Carol Laurence (01:41):
name is Carol Lawrence, and I have served as a
volunteer member at large, vicepresident and president on the
board of Allen Avenue squarenorth, on and off over 10 years
on, when I'm not wearing myboard member hat, I'm a
volunteer at the hospital as achaplain and a volunteer at the

(02:02):
police department, an avidreader and a loving grandmother,
a word of advice I would havefor being a board member is to
have broad shoulders and bewilling to take criticism. The
main story I'd like to tell you,if you really want to see
changes and make a difference inyour community, please get
involved.

Robert Nordlund (02:23):
Allen Avenue square North is a 75 unit
apartment style conversioncondominium community in
Pasadena, California with anannual budget of about $400,000
the building is 50 years old andabout 60% owner occupied. Carol
has lived in the community forover 45 years, and as you've

(02:44):
just heard, she served as avolunteer board member on and
off for about 10 years total.
When we last spoke to Carol, shewas not serving on the board,
but at this time, she's back onthe board now as vice president.
And what's more is that thislatest appointment came about
because their communityappreciated her prior work as a
board member so much that theywrote her in as a candidate

(03:04):
during their most recentelection, we decided to press
Carol for more details on thisstory. Yes,

Carol Laurence (03:12):
and I tied with my adversary, so neither one of
us got a whole lot of votesbecause I wasn't planning on
running again and that. Butthen, then they the lectu
company guy had asked us, do oneof you want to be a gentle
woman? And you know, so we don'tforced into a coin flip or

(03:37):
something, want to relinquish?
And everybody was like laughing,because they knew that wasn't
gonna happen. But then the onewho I'd campaigned for, who had
told me he was running Icampaigned for, like four
people. He announces he sold hisgym, and he's off the board. So
then that made it. So we bothgot on, and only one person got
fewer votes than the write in,and so all the people I

(04:02):
campaigned for got in, much

Robert Nordlund (04:06):
like Casey Holland, our board hero featured
in episode number 86 Carol waspretty surprised to have been,
as Casey put it, Shang hid intorunning on the board. Yet,
unlike Casey, Carol had alreadyserved on the board a number of
times, and the fact that she wasa write in candidate served both
as a testament to her abilitiesas a board member and the

(04:29):
community's faith in her simplystated they wanted her back. We
asked Carol what other positionsshe held in her previous times
serving on the board.

Carol Laurence (04:39):
Up until recently, I would only take the
Member at Large position. Ididn't feel the responsibility
was so great to I thought to betreasurer or president, or there
were other, mostly other peoplewanted to do it anyway. The last
two times I was on the board.
Before this time I gotappointed, and there was no

(05:01):
president because he died. So Isaid, I'll take president, and
nobody argued. The next time Iran, and we voted and we I
nominated myself for President,and I liked it. So now I'm not
afraid of being President. VicePresident Carol's

Robert Nordlund (05:19):
use of the word adversary when talking about the
most recent board elections,implied a certain level of
contention among the boardmembers in the community at
large. I'm sure many of ourlisteners can understand that.
We asked Carol what she thoughtabout the cause of that
contention. I

Carol Laurence (05:37):
would say the point of contention was we have
new homeowners, younghomeowners, who don't understand
condominium living and say a lotof negative things, like the
previous like we had to do thebalcony inspection, and we had a
plan, but the person who wrotethe letter said there was no
plan made by the previous board.
And I'm like, what? I wasn't onthe board, but that letter was

(05:59):
not accurate. We had a plan.
They just didn't follow it, andlike we just had a meeting with
our attorney, and they don'tagree with what the attorney
says, and they think they canjust go against his advice when
we've had the same law firm offand on for many years, they're

(06:22):
the only law firm we've everused in 47 years, we have people
that make inaccurate minuteslike, they this causes
contention. They say thingslike, that's too intrusive in
the minutes, or they saysomebody claims to do something
on the things that you justcan't. Oh, that's we. We said,

(06:45):
they said it's legal to do so,and so you can't. They're not
lawyers. They they can't saythat. You know, it's just
frustrating. The person whowrote the minutes wasn't there,
for example. So I, I'd neverbeen given that she'd corrected
the things that needed to becorrected. So we didn't approve
the minutes when she wasn'tthere and she wanted to know why

(07:07):
I said because you never gave mea copy of the changes you made.
She goes, I always change it towhat you say, Yeah, well, you
never told me you even got them.
How do I know you got them? Thatkind of thing,
miscommunications. We were

Robert Nordlund (07:20):
sorry to hear that Carol's board was going
through this rough patch, asit's something that many boards
and board members experience.
However, it was unclear to uswhether her board was
experiencing a culture clash dueto the age difference between
various board members or if itwas something else. So we asked
Carol if the age gap was a keyfactor.

Carol Laurence (07:39):
No, because all the board members are young,
except for me, and I get alongfine with the young. Met like
with the President's young andthe Vice President, I mean, the
treasurer's young. It's morelike the new to owning homes or
homeowners associations. One ofthem's coming around and she
listens to reason and she asksquestions. So I think that one

(08:01):
will be okay, but the other onedefends her. Her primary goal is
to stick up for her friends, notto represent it seems like the
whole Homeowners Association,which is what I do, I treat
everybody the same, all 75owners, even them, we're
neighbors. We should be friendlywith each other,

Robert Nordlund (08:21):
whether it was favoritism, inexperience, being
a homeowner, or simply a lack ofinstitutional knowledge. And
that's a phrase describing acollective knowledge leaders
gain from experience serving ina position. It certainly seemed
like there was a case ofmisplaced priorities among the
board members at Carol'sassociation. So we asked her if

(08:42):
she had any concrete advice forthose new board members. My

Carol Laurence (08:47):
advice is, it's an investment. We pay a certain
amount of money to have certainamenities, and we should get to
know our neighbors so that weknow when when we see someone
suspicious, it will come to ourmind that that's not one of our
immediate neighbors, like we'vehad squatters one time. And Are

(09:10):
you our building caught onwithin hours at our sister
building down the street, thosesquatters lived there for weeks
before anybody caught on,because nobody pays attention to
their neighbors down there. Butours also has its problem. For
example, we have we're aging outin this building, so they need

(09:34):
to be aware that people havehandicaps. And if you want to
make a fair housing, reasonableaccommodation, or whatever, you
cannot ask them what theirdistinct disability is. That's a
that's not allowed. You can askthem, How would this help you if
we make this accommodation orsomething, you know, but to just

(09:56):
dismiss it, the person told methere was so as much. Hostility
in the room, that she just letit go because she didn't. She
felt uncomfortable with it. Butpeople have lived here a long
time know what her disabilitiesare because she's lived here a
long time, but I couldn't speakup for her and say what. She
didn't give me a right todisclose them, so I didn't, but

(10:20):
I said next time we have to dobetter on this.

Robert Nordlund (10:22):
When we last spoke to Carol, she mentioned
that her best qualities as aboard member were her skills of
observation and her tenacitytowards continuing her education
on board member duties. We nextdecided to ask her if she still
believes that those are her bestqualities as a board member.

Carol Laurence (10:39):
The favorite quality that I feel I bring to
the board is I'm able to getalong with the homeless people.
Know them by name, greet them,not not it. They're not here at
our building, necessarily, butin the community, I'm able to
get along with the billionairesthat fly their jets. I'm I'm

(11:01):
able to get along, you know, Iattend a lot of civic functions
by making those contacts. Ithelps, like with my elected
officials, and also working tochange the laws in Sacramento,
which is where we live inCalifornia, or nationwide, some
of the laws work effectively tochange the laws to make it

(11:25):
better, more friendly, work withthe insurance commissioner to
try and get more favorableinsurance. I mean, I have the
ability to work with every kindof person, and just having the
context is good, even if I'm notactively working with them, but
I go to all the educationalevents I can. I belong to echo,

(11:47):
which is, you know, a lovelyorganization. I'm a prospective
members for Cai, like when thereserve study guy came, I wanted
to go up on the roof with him,but and, and that was okay with
the property manager, becauselast time the property manager
and I and him went up, but nowshe's comfortable that I can go

(12:11):
up there. You know, I thank thegarbage man every day I see him,
because if someone didn't pickup our trash, what would our
world be like? Not pleasant. SoI thank them, and sometimes I
give them, if I have some softdrinks in my car or something, I
think they might enjoy on a hotday, I give them to them. And
some people might say I'minfluencing the vendors. No, I

(12:34):
don't think so. I'm just beingkind to another human being.
Carol's

Robert Nordlund (12:38):
amicability and networking skills are a great
asset to the board at AllenAvenue square north, and it's
also a quality she recommends toevery board member. We're also
pleased to hear that while she'sa prospective member of Cai for
the National Trade Organizationwe've mentioned numerous times
on this program, she's a currentmember and a regular attendee at

(13:00):
Echo programs. You might bewondering, Echo is the
educational community for HOAhomeowners. It's a California
trade organization, and ifyou're a board member in
California and you're feeling alittle overwhelmed, they're
definitely worth looking into.
You can find echo at Echo ca.orgCarol also mentioned that her
networking skills have helpedher make contacts with both

(13:23):
state and national lawmakers,which prompted our next
question. But before we get tothat, let's take a quick break
to hear from our generoussponsors.

Paige Daniels (13:34):
Numbers matter, and we need numbers like game
scores and bank balances to letus know where we stand. The same
is true for your association isyours, thriving or struggling.
Let me introduce you to theFiPhO health score, like your
own personal FICO credit score.
Now in one simple number, ownersand boards can learn the
combined financial, physical andoperational health of their
association. The good news, it'sfree at ourFiPhO.com that's our

(13:56):
f, i, p, H, o.com, learn howyour association measures up,

Robert Nordlund (14:05):
and we're back.
Carol's last answer before thebreak prompted us to ask her if
there were any laws coming downthe pike that she was
particularly concerned about,and she immediately responded
with the federal corporateTransparency Act, or CTA. The
CTA was one of the topics wediscussed at length with Don
Bauman. Ca, eyes, Chief StrategyOfficer back in episode number

(14:27):
62 so here's Carol with herthoughts on the CTA and other
laws governing communityassociations. But full
disclosure, this interview withCarol was recorded in November
of 2024 so since enforcement anddeadlines have been changing at
a pretty rapid pace about CTA,her comments likely don't

(14:48):
reflect the latest status of CTAon the date that you're
listening to this episode. So

Carol Laurence (14:56):
I mean, I want, I don't think it should apply to
us, although I could. See, youhave to be really careful on
your finances like because Iattended another educational
class where they said, you know,bank statements can be
duplicated or altered with thehigh level of AI we have now. So
I actually want the bankstatement in the original

(15:18):
envelope to verify just to do myfiduciary duty. I trust our
property manager 99 and nine 10%but I still want to do my duty,
and not just because of, youknow, trusting because I have
made with everybody makesmistakes and trusting the wrong
person occasionally. The otherlaw is to do something. Okay, so

(15:42):
we're gonna, like, insurance hasgone sky high, ours, our
homeowners, the association, onewent sky high, and they that
board had to do a specialassessment. I tried to get it
budgeted so it's budgeted in andvoted to increase the
assessment, or made the motionthat got passed to try and avoid

(16:05):
the assessment. Also, I think itwould be a I go, I can't change
that law, FDIC, if we couldincrease it from 250 for each
bank, and then we wouldn't haveto spread it out over more than
one bank. I would like to seethat change. Are commissioners
inviting people in the the biginsurers back in? Who's going to

(16:30):
be paying for that? Becausewe're going to allow them to
increase it might be thetaxpayers like but if they
really do need, if they're notmaking money, that's probably
why they left. We probably haveto allow them a certain amount
of increase so they'll comeback. But I don't want to make a
whole lot of promises. And also,that's the other thing too. They

(16:51):
don't realize, if you raise HOAinsurance so high, that's one of
the first footholds for peopleto get in the own your own home.
Thing is a HOA, and if you pricethem out, we're going to we
might end up. It's conceivablewe would end up with fewer
people, um, being all in theirown home, and maybe some of them

(17:15):
on the street. But on the otherhand, I still have to do my
fiduciary duty to meet thebudget, even if it means some
people can't live here anymore,which is sad, but you have to
manage your affairs. And I haveto think of all the other 74
people, not just the two peoplewho can't pay their bills, or

(17:39):
four or five or six or seven oreight. You know what I mean? I'm
not a charity, and I am. I dohave, I do belong to 501, C, non
profits, where we're charities,but this is not a charity. No
matter how much we would like,you know, to help those people,
we can't interfere in theirbusiness of how they manage the

(18:00):
money Carol

Robert Nordlund (18:01):
is concerned about the rising cost of
insurance is shared among boardmembers across the country, and
especially in California,because of the high risk of
wildfires, and that raised ournext question to Carol about
whether she thinks the high costof living in association,
government communities hasbecome a detriment to the home
ownership among the youngergeneration, or if it's a simple

(18:24):
matter of miscommunicationbetween boards and the
communities they govern, here'sCarol's thoughts on that matter.

Carol Laurence (18:31):
I think people need to investigate what they're
going to buy more heavily, andunderstand when you buy into an
HOA, you're buying amenities youmight not be able to support a
lot of times that you might beable to afford it on your own,
like swimming pool saunas,carefree in that the board

(18:53):
manages, the gardeners, thecleaning services in Our
building, because we have abuilding hot water heaters. We
take care of that. We take careof the elevators. We take care
of a lot of things. You'repaying a certain amount of money
on garbage pickup, and it's allcombined, and you don't have to

(19:15):
worry about it. It can becarefree. If you leave a good
contact, you can go away for acouple months as long as you
have an access person. In casethere is an issue where we might
want to be able to get in toresolve a plumbing problem or
something in your unit, or ifyou die in your unit, which we

(19:36):
have had people die in ourunits, we don't have to call the
police to come and access it. Asa young person who bought in my
20s, I felt safer in thecondominium because I didn't
have to jump at every littlesound I heard, if in a hat when
I stayed at my mom's house, likeon a 10 acres, and I don't I was

(19:58):
every sound I heard, I wasafraid. Was a bear trying to get
in the window. I was afraid itwas a bad guy trying to set fire
because they were building acampfire outside. The fire truck
couldn't get up her road. Themoving truck couldn't get up her
road. I mean, there's manyconveniences to living in a
condominium. I looked at housestoo when I was buying, but my

(20:22):
friend, who was a broker, theyall her family, they all bought
in here for investments, and Ibought to live here, and so I've
been happy here, and I raised myson here. It was a good place
for me, and I still think it's agood place, but you have to, you
should investigate. They usuallytell people, you should read

(20:43):
like for condos, a year's worthof minutes. When I ask people,
when they start complainingabout, are you people? You
people this? Did you you justbought? Did you read the year's
worth of minutes? No, I justsort of looked at them. We're
doing pretty good, because oneother person on the board and I

(21:04):
are trying to do a welcomecommit, a little committee, like
I see somebody moving in. Iintroduced myself. I said, Would
you please, here's our number.
Could you call? We'd like towelcome you with a small gift,
you know, and also answer anyquestions. Some people have
lived here for months and didn'tknow we had five. We had
staircases at the end, each endof the building, which is

(21:24):
important to know. Some peopledon't read the signs out front,
and they don't realize howStickler the parking is here,
and how you can get towed withinone minute. I mean, we like to
tell people answer anyquestions, explain how the
mailbox system works, explainand the other person, she did a
good job and wrote up a littleone sheet information page for

(21:47):
renters, a little one sheet pagefor owners. And that was very
innovative of her, and I'm veryhappy she's stepping up.

Robert Nordlund (21:57):
When we first interviewed Carol, she had
nothing but good things to sayabout her community manager, we
decided to ask Carol if that haschanged in the last year and a
half since we last spoke, and ifshe has any constructive
criticism. She

Carol Laurence (22:10):
has really good people skills, where my voice
tends to go up when I getexcited about someone. What do
you mean? I never said that. Shehas good people skills, and she
can talk to anybody, and she hasreally good memories, so she can
remember what they said beforeabout that, and now they're
saying this, and she she canhold her own too, like when they

(22:36):
said, you said in a text. Shegoes, No, I have the text right
here. This is what I said, youknow, and she also is helpful in
grooming people. If they want tobe groomed like me, I'll say,
This is what I intend to say. Doyou think it's a good thing to
say? And she'll say, that'sperfect. Or I would try. I would

(22:57):
wait till the next month to saythat, you know, she's good at
grooming people because she's apaid professional, and she's
also good at responding toemails within the same 24 hours.
She even helped somebody made amess and we didn't want to get
in trouble. She helped me vacuumup the mess

Robert Nordlund (23:18):
in her last board hero episode, Carol
mentioned that the boardmeetings at her association were
held in person with some hybridflexibility if some board
members weren't able to attend.
Given the increasing prevalenceof virtual and hybrid board
meetings in our post COVIDworld, we asked her if this
continued to be the case and ifthere were any other external
factors,

Carol Laurence (23:41):
they are starting to go back to a hybrid.
But I have some concerns,because the laws say you're
supposed to have a super cut, acertain kind of camera, certain
kind of recording, and theydon't really have that. But then
I weigh with what some of thelawyers that I know say, weigh
the risk. Is it that great of agreat of a risk? You know, to

(24:06):
the board, is somebody reallygoing to know that, besides me?
You know what? I mean, no rules.
And also I worry, becausesomeone uses her internet to do
the Zoom meetings, and I'm notsure, because she lives near
that where we have the meetingso she can get her internet. I
would never call in on herinternet. I wouldn't, but I'm

(24:26):
always present at the meetings,except for the election one. I
wasn't present. I was in myhouse. We, mostly we, we asked
the original property manager,which was the guy who owns the
company, some homeowner, I mean,renter who's very problematic,

(24:47):
came to a meeting, and I said,the meeting is for homeowners,
not for renters. In that case.
Days. But we do invite therenters to like, what do you
call it, town halls. And when wehad a prime wave, we invited

(25:09):
them to call in so we could tellthem what happened. I mean, not
climb away. We have four carsbroken into over four days. And
so we wanted to tell them, youknow, what had happened, so
they'd be aware. And so wewelcome the renters too, because
they have cars there. And we doinclude like, when I talk to

(25:31):
people, I tell them what's evergoing on, renters or otherwise,
and they can read the minutestoo, because they're posted in a
box in the lobby. It was

Robert Nordlund (25:40):
pretty evident that either the prospective
buyers weren't doing a great jobof evaluating the Allen Avenue
square North Association beforesubmitting a purchase offer, or
that their sales agents didn'tknow much about the association.
Either way, we felt that Carol'sadvice about reading a year's
worth of meeting minutes beforedeciding on your home purchase

(26:01):
was terrific, but that'ssomething that can only happen
if the association or the sellermakes that information
available. So we next askedCarol if not making meeting
minutes available should be ared flag to prospective
homeowners.

Carol Laurence (26:18):
Well, it's it would be, except ours are
readily accessible on ourwebsite. But I tried to tell
them, we also should be doingthe old school way too, which is
having a binder that literally,literally for each year like we
used to. I have to be careful ofsaying this is how we did it in

(26:38):
the old days, but I still thinkit's a good idea to have a
binder, because some people,even some young people, don't
have computer lizards. See, youknow they don't do it. If
someone wouldn't, didn't haveminutes, yeah, I'd be it would
raise a red flag to me, but wedo have minutes, and they're on

(26:59):
our website. It it

Robert Nordlund (27:00):
was reassuring to hear that while Carol's board
was not involving the renters inboard meetings, they were
allowed to attend Allen Avenuesquare and North town hall
meetings. This was especiallyimportant because of concerns
all residents had for thecommunity, especially given the
frequency of car break inscommunication is key when these

(27:21):
types of incidents occur thataffect everyone living at the
association, no matter ifthey're owners or renters. So we
next asked Carol if she had anyideas for how her board could
adapt or actually improve theircommunication in the future.

Carol Laurence (27:37):
Well, I tried, I think if they would use some
outside experts to come in likea police officer, to come in and
say how to make the buildingsafer, or say how to make your
own personal safety safer, tobridge the gap, have more town
hall meetings where they caneverybody can come and we

(27:58):
provide every it's Usuallypotluck, so it doesn't cost the
board anything. And we inviteeverybody. We post notices for
everybody. But like, one personcomplained because we posted
that there'd been a break in inthe elevator, and she didn't
like that. That's not a youngperson. And then somebody, a
young person, pointed out to me,I put flyers for a coffee with

(28:19):
cops. Thing we have in the city.
We have, sometimes three in oneday, so you can come and ask the
police officers, the mayor, thechief of police, our city
councilman, any questions youwant about the safety or
whatever you want to ask. Andsomeone said, No, you shouldn't
be doing that, because it was agood point. I told her, she made
a good point, because if youleave a flyer there, someone

(28:41):
might think she says, I don'tcome out of my door sometimes
for days on end, and someonemight think I'm not there and
make me a target. I said, Oh, Inever thought of it that way. So
now I won't be doing that. A

Robert Nordlund (28:55):
recurring theme in this interview was that no
matter how long you've lived inyour community, there's always
something new to learn. Carol'sa great example of someone who
embraces a learning opportunityevery time it presents itself.
So we next asked her if therewas any particular changes or
projects in her community thatshe'd like to see addressed in
the next year. Well,

Carol Laurence (29:15):
because we had to tear up our walkways, I'd
like to see them all completed,and I want to continue on in the
next year. I would like to seeus do because we have budgetary
concerns. I'd like to see us dolike one balcony a quarter
repairs we did the worst ones.
Now I would like the contractorbill to pick the order based on

(29:38):
the engineers reports that hewants to do them and do them in
that order, unless somebody hasa specific need, like they want
to sell their unit, then I feelwe should move them up so we can
do their balcony repair. Whyit's empty.

Robert Nordlund (29:58):
Finally, while Carol already. Shared some
advice for the newer boardmembers in her Association. We
wanted to ask her if she had anygeneral advice for new
homeowners or anyone looking topurchase a home in a community
association. Here's what she hadto say. If

Carol Laurence (30:14):
you have questions or issues and you want
to make a difference in yourcommunity where you live, get
involved on either on a smalllevel, like volunteering for one
project, saying I would reallylike to help with a flyer that
of information I think would beuseful, or get a little more
involved. Volunteer to write anewsletter, if people are

(30:38):
interested enough, I like thatone of our homeowners who's
really too busy to do much ofanything because he has a heavy
workload. He's had two, youknow, at homes where he bites
people in and he providesdesserts and refreshments, I
mean, snacks and refreshments,trying to get his to know his

(31:00):
neighbors. He all comers. That'sreally a person who's trying to
make a difference. Maybe, if oneparticular thing, like, oh, the
the lobby board hasn't beencorrected, volunteer to be the
one to take on that task, if youcan do it safely, if you want
people not to throw dog feces inthe trash can by the lobby

(31:25):
elevator, you know, make a cutelittle sign and ask if we can
post it, you know. So I think,get involved. Consider running
for the board stock small ifyou're if you think go to a
meeting, just going to a meetingand listening would be good for
starters, you know, just dipyour toe in and see what you can

(31:47):
do. We

Robert Nordlund (31:48):
want to publicly acknowledge Carol for
performing a thankless job well,and compliment the entire board
of directors at Allen Avenuesquare north for taking their
responsibility seriously to actin the best interest of their
association. Thank you forjoining us, and we look forward
to another great episode nextweek. And remember, if you match

(32:08):
our definition of a bored hero,or know someone who does, please
reach out to us. Our contactdetails are provided in the show
notes

Announcer (32:21):
you've been listening to Hoa insights, common sense
for comment areas. If you likethe show and want to support the
work that we do, you can do soin a number of ways. The most
important thing that you can dois engage in the conversation,
leave a question in the commentssection on our YouTube videos.
You can also email yourquestions or voice memos to
podcast@reservestudy.com orleave us a voicemail at

(32:44):
805-203-3130, if you gain anyinsights from the show, please
do us a HUGE favor by sharingthe show with other board
members that you know. You canalso support us by supporting
the brands that sponsor thisprogram. Please remember that
the views and opinions expressedin this program are those of the
hosts and guests with the goalof providing general education

(33:06):
about the community, associationindustry. You'll want to consult
licensed professionals beforemaking any important decisions.
Finally, this podcast wasexpertly mixed and mastered by
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