HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas

095 | HOA Board Heroes: HOA Leadership Across Generations!

• Hosts: Robert Nordlund, Kevin Davis, Julie Adamen • Season 3 • Episode 95

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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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Carol Laurence:

If you have questions or issues and you want to make a difference in your community where you live, get involved on either on a small level, like volunteering for one project, saying, I would really like to help with a flyer that of information I think would be useful. Consider running for the board start small if you're if you think go to a meeting, just going to a meeting and listening would be good for starters. You know, just dip your toe in and see what you can do.

Announcer:

A regular highlight of the hoe insights podcast is our board heroes feature where we dedicate one episode each month to celebrate the remarkable efforts of HOA board members to us a board hero is one of the 2 million elected volunteers who deserve recognition for excelling in a role that often goes unnoticed. Today, we're excited to spotlight one of these exceptional board heroes and share their inspiring story. If you match our definition of a board hero, or know someone who does, please reach out to us. Our contact details and those of our sponsors are provided in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund:

Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for common areas. I'm Robert Nordlund, and I'm here to share the story of a returning board hero named Carol Lawrence. This is episode number 95 and if you missed meeting our other board heroes, including Carol's previous appearance in Episode 26 you can find them easily on our website, Hoa insights.org, on our YouTube channel, or by subscribing to Hoa insights on your favorite podcast platform. Now let's reacquaint ourselves with Carol and hear a little bit about the story she'd like to share. My

Carol Laurence:

name is Carol Lawrence, and I have served as a volunteer member at large, vice president and president on the board of Allen Avenue square north, on and off over 10 years on, when I'm not wearing my board member hat, I'm a volunteer at the hospital as a chaplain and a volunteer at the police department, an avid reader and a loving grandmother, a word of advice I would have for being a board member is to have broad shoulders and be willing to take criticism. The main story I'd like to tell you, if you really want to see changes and make a difference in your community, please get involved.

Robert Nordlund:

Allen Avenue square North is a 75 unit apartment style conversion condominium community in Pasadena, California with an annual budget of about $400,000 the building is 50 years old and about 60% owner occupied. Carol has lived in the community for over 45 years, and as you've just heard, she served as a volunteer board member on and off for about 10 years total. When we last spoke to Carol, she was not serving on the board, but at this time, she's back on the board now as vice president. And what's more is that this latest appointment came about because their community appreciated her prior work as a board member so much that they wrote her in as a candidate during their most recent election, we decided to press Carol for more details on this story. Yes,

Carol Laurence:

and I tied with my adversary, so neither one of us got a whole lot of votes because I wasn't planning on running again and that. But then, then they the lectu company guy had asked us, do one of you want to be a gentle woman? And you know, so we don't forced into a coin flip or something, want to relinquish? And everybody was like laughing, because they knew that wasn't gonna happen. But then the one who I'd campaigned for, who had told me he was running I campaigned for, like four people. He announces he sold his gym, and he's off the board. So then that made it. So we both got on, and only one person got fewer votes than the write in, and so all the people I campaigned for got in, much

Robert Nordlund:

like Casey Holland, our board hero featured in episode number 86 Carol was pretty surprised to have been, as Casey put it, Shang hid into running on the board. Yet, unlike Casey, Carol had already served on the board a number of times, and the fact that she was a write in candidate served both as a testament to her abilities as a board member and the community's faith in her simply stated they wanted her back. We asked Carol what other positions she held in her previous times serving on the board.

Carol Laurence:

Up until recently, I would only take the Member at Large position. I didn't feel the responsibility was so great to I thought to be treasurer or president, or there were other, mostly other people wanted to do it anyway. The last two times I was on the board. Before this time I got appointed, and there was no president because he died. So I said, I'll take president, and nobody argued. The next time I ran, and we voted and we I nominated myself for President, and I liked it. So now I'm not afraid of being President. Vice President Carol's

Robert Nordlund:

use of the word adversary when talking about the most recent board elections, implied a certain level of contention among the board members in the community at large. I'm sure many of our listeners can understand that. We asked Carol what she thought about the cause of that contention. I

Carol Laurence:

would say the point of contention was we have new homeowners, young homeowners, who don't understand condominium living and say a lot of negative things, like the previous like we had to do the balcony inspection, and we had a plan, but the person who wrote the letter said there was no plan made by the previous board. And I'm like, what? I wasn't on the board, but that letter was not accurate. We had a plan. They just didn't follow it, and like we just had a meeting with our attorney, and they don't agree with what the attorney says, and they think they can just go against his advice when we've had the same law firm off and on for many years, they're the only law firm we've ever used in 47 years, we have people that make inaccurate minutes like, they this causes contention. They say things like, that's too intrusive in the minutes, or they say somebody claims to do something on the things that you just can't. Oh, that's we. We said, they said it's legal to do so, and so you can't. They're not lawyers. They they can't say that. You know, it's just frustrating. The person who wrote the minutes wasn't there, for example. So I, I'd never been given that she'd corrected the things that needed to be corrected. So we didn't approve the minutes when she wasn't there and she wanted to know why I said because you never gave me a copy of the changes you made. She goes, I always change it to what you say, Yeah, well, you never told me you even got them. How do I know you got them? That kind of thing, miscommunications. We were

Robert Nordlund:

sorry to hear that Carol's board was going through this rough patch, as it's something that many boards and board members experience. However, it was unclear to us whether her board was experiencing a culture clash due to the age difference between various board members or if it was something else. So we asked Carol if the age gap was a key factor.

Carol Laurence:

No, because all the board members are young, except for me, and I get along fine with the young. Met like with the President's young and the Vice President, I mean, the treasurer's young. It's more like the new to owning homes or homeowners associations. One of them's coming around and she listens to reason and she asks questions. So I think that one will be okay, but the other one defends her. Her primary goal is to stick up for her friends, not to represent it seems like the whole Homeowners Association, which is what I do, I treat everybody the same, all 75 owners, even them, we're neighbors. We should be friendly with each other,

Robert Nordlund:

whether it was favoritism, inexperience, being a homeowner, or simply a lack of institutional knowledge. And that's a phrase describing a collective knowledge leaders gain from experience serving in a position. It certainly seemed like there was a case of misplaced priorities among the board members at Carol's association. So we asked her if she had any concrete advice for those new board members. My

Carol Laurence:

advice is, it's an investment. We pay a certain amount of money to have certain amenities, and we should get to know our neighbors so that we know when when we see someone suspicious, it will come to our mind that that's not one of our immediate neighbors, like we've had squatters one time. And Are you our building caught on within hours at our sister building down the street, those squatters lived there for weeks before anybody caught on, because nobody pays attention to their neighbors down there. But ours also has its problem. For example, we have we're aging out in this building, so they need to be aware that people have handicaps. And if you want to make a fair housing, reasonable accommodation, or whatever, you cannot ask them what their distinct disability is. That's a that's not allowed. You can ask them, How would this help you if we make this accommodation or something, you know, but to just dismiss it, the person told me there was so as much. Hostility in the room, that she just let it go because she didn't. She felt uncomfortable with it. But people have lived here a long time know what her disabilities are because she's lived here a long time, but I couldn't speak up for her and say what. She didn't give me a right to disclose them, so I didn't, but I said next time we have to do better on this.

Robert Nordlund:

When we last spoke to Carol, she mentioned that her best qualities as a board member were her skills of observation and her tenacity towards continuing her education on board member duties. We next decided to ask her if she still believes that those are her best qualities as a board member.

Carol Laurence:

The favorite quality that I feel I bring to the board is I'm able to get along with the homeless people. Know them by name, greet them, not not it. They're not here at our building, necessarily, but in the community, I'm able to get along with the billionaires that fly their jets. I'm I'm able to get along, you know, I attend a lot of civic functions by making those contacts. It helps, like with my elected officials, and also working to change the laws in Sacramento, which is where we live in California, or nationwide, some of the laws work effectively to change the laws to make it better, more friendly, work with the insurance commissioner to try and get more favorable insurance. I mean, I have the ability to work with every kind of person, and just having the context is good, even if I'm not actively working with them, but I go to all the educational events I can. I belong to echo, which is, you know, a lovely organization. I'm a prospective members for Cai, like when the reserve study guy came, I wanted to go up on the roof with him, but and, and that was okay with the property manager, because last time the property manager and I and him went up, but now she's comfortable that I can go up there. You know, I thank the garbage man every day I see him, because if someone didn't pick up our trash, what would our world be like? Not pleasant. So I thank them, and sometimes I give them, if I have some soft drinks in my car or something, I think they might enjoy on a hot day, I give them to them. And some people might say I'm influencing the vendors. No, I don't think so. I'm just being kind to another human being. Carol's

Robert Nordlund:

amicability and networking skills are a great asset to the board at Allen Avenue square north, and it's also a quality she recommends to every board member. We're also pleased to hear that while she's a prospective member of Cai for the National Trade Organization we've mentioned numerous times on this program, she's a current member and a regular attendee at Echo programs. You might be wondering, Echo is the educational community for HOA homeowners. It's a California trade organization, and if you're a board member in California and you're feeling a little overwhelmed, they're definitely worth looking into. You can find echo at Echo ca.org Carol also mentioned that her networking skills have helped her make contacts with both state and national lawmakers, which prompted our next question. But before we get to that, let's take a quick break to hear from our generous sponsors.

Paige Daniels:

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Robert Nordlund:

and we're back. Carol's last answer before the break prompted us to ask her if there were any laws coming down the pike that she was particularly concerned about, and she immediately responded with the federal corporate Transparency Act, or CTA. The CTA was one of the topics we discussed at length with Don Bauman. Ca, eyes, Chief Strategy Officer back in episode number 62 so here's Carol with her thoughts on the CTA and other laws governing community associations. But full disclosure, this interview with Carol was recorded in November of 2024 so since enforcement and deadlines have been changing at a pretty rapid pace about CTA, her comments likely don't reflect the latest status of CTA on the date that you're listening to this episode. So

Carol Laurence:

I mean, I want, I don't think it should apply to us, although I could. See, you have to be really careful on your finances like because I attended another educational class where they said, you know, bank statements can be duplicated or altered with the high level of AI we have now. So I actually want the bank statement in the original envelope to verify just to do my fiduciary duty. I trust our property manager 99 and nine 10% but I still want to do my duty, and not just because of, you know, trusting because I have made with everybody makes mistakes and trusting the wrong person occasionally. The other law is to do something. Okay, so we're gonna, like, insurance has gone sky high, ours, our homeowners, the association, one went sky high, and they that board had to do a special assessment. I tried to get it budgeted so it's budgeted in and voted to increase the assessment, or made the motion that got passed to try and avoid the assessment. Also, I think it would be a I go, I can't change that law, FDIC, if we could increase it from 250 for each bank, and then we wouldn't have to spread it out over more than one bank. I would like to see that change. Are commissioners inviting people in the the big insurers back in? Who's going to be paying for that? Because we're going to allow them to increase it might be the taxpayers like but if they really do need, if they're not making money, that's probably why they left. We probably have to allow them a certain amount of increase so they'll come back. But I don't want to make a whole lot of promises. And also, that's the other thing too. They don't realize, if you raise HOA insurance so high, that's one of the first footholds for people to get in the own your own home. Thing is a HOA, and if you price them out, we're going to we might end up. It's conceivable we would end up with fewer people, um, being all in their own home, and maybe some of them on the street. But on the other hand, I still have to do my fiduciary duty to meet the budget, even if it means some people can't live here anymore, which is sad, but you have to manage your affairs. And I have to think of all the other 74 people, not just the two people who can't pay their bills, or four or five or six or seven or eight. You know what I mean? I'm not a charity, and I am. I do have, 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 their business of how they manage the money Carol

Robert Nordlund:

is concerned about the rising cost of insurance is shared among board members across the country, and especially in California, because of the high risk of wildfires, and that raised our next question to Carol about whether she thinks the high cost of living in association, government communities has become a detriment to the home ownership among the younger generation, or if it's a simple matter of miscommunication between boards and the communities they govern, here's Carol's thoughts on that matter.

Carol Laurence:

I think people need to investigate what they're going to buy more heavily, and understand when you buy into an HOA, you're buying amenities you might not be able to support a lot of times that you might be able to afford it on your own, like swimming pool saunas, carefree in that the board manages, the gardeners, the cleaning services in Our building, because we have a building hot water heaters. We take care of that. We take care of the elevators. We take care of a lot of things. You're paying a certain amount of money on garbage pickup, and it's all combined, and you don't have to worry about it. It can be carefree. If you leave a good contact, you can go away for a couple months as long as you have an access person. In case there is an issue where we might want to be able to get in to resolve a plumbing problem or something in your unit, or if you die in your unit, which we have had people die in our units, we don't have to call the police to come and access it. As a young person who bought in my 20s, I felt safer in the condominium because I didn't have to jump at every little sound I heard, if in a hat when I stayed at my mom's house, like on a 10 acres, and I don't I was every sound I heard, I was afraid. Was a bear trying to get in the window. I was afraid it was a bad guy trying to set fire because they were building a campfire outside. The fire truck couldn't get up her road. The moving truck couldn't get up her road. I mean, there's many conveniences to living in a condominium. I looked at houses too when I was buying, but my friend, who was a broker, they all her family, they all bought in here for investments, and I bought to live here, and so I've been happy here, and I raised my son here. It was a good place for me, and I still think it's a good place, but you have to, you should investigate. They usually tell people, you should read like for condos, a year's worth of minutes. When I ask people, when they start complaining about, are you people? You people this? Did you you just bought? Did you read the year's worth of minutes? No, I just sort of looked at them. We're doing pretty good, because one other person on the board and I are trying to do a welcome commit, a little committee, like I see somebody moving in. I introduced myself. I said, Would you please, here's our number. Could you call? We'd like to welcome you with a small gift, you know, and also answer any questions. Some people have lived here for months and didn't know we had five. We had staircases at the end, each end of the building, which is important to know. Some people don't read the signs out front, and they don't realize how Stickler the parking is here, and how you can get towed within one minute. I mean, we like to tell people answer any questions, explain how the mailbox system works, explain and the other person, she did a good job and wrote up a little one sheet information page for renters, a little one sheet page for owners. And that was very innovative of her, and I'm very happy she's stepping up.

Robert Nordlund:

When we first interviewed Carol, she had nothing but good things to say about her community manager, we decided to ask Carol if that has changed in the last year and a half since we last spoke, and if she has any constructive criticism. She

Carol Laurence:

has really good people skills, where my voice tends to go up when I get excited about someone. What do you mean? I never said that. She has good people skills, and she can talk to anybody, and she has really good memories, so she can remember what they said before about that, and now they're saying this, and she she can hold her own too, like when they said, you said in a text. She goes, No, I have the text right here. This is what I said, you know, and she also is helpful in grooming people. If they want to be groomed like me, I'll say, This is what I intend to say. Do you think it's a good thing to say? And she'll say, that's perfect. Or I would try. I would wait till the next month to say that, you know, she's good at grooming people because she's a paid professional, and she's also good at responding to emails within the same 24 hours. She even helped somebody made a mess and we didn't want to get in trouble. She helped me vacuum up the mess

Robert Nordlund:

in her last board hero episode, Carol mentioned that the board meetings at her association were held in person with some hybrid flexibility if some board members weren't able to attend. Given the increasing prevalence of virtual and hybrid board meetings in our post COVID world, we asked her if this continued to be the case and if there were any other external factors,

Carol Laurence:

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, a certain kind of camera, certain kind of recording, and they don't really have that. But then I weigh with what some of the lawyers that I know say, weigh the risk. Is it that great of a great of a risk? You know, to the board, is somebody really going to know that, besides me? You know what? I mean, no rules. And also I worry, because someone uses her internet to do the Zoom meetings, and I'm not sure, because she lives near that where we have the meeting so she can get her internet. I would never call in on her internet. I wouldn't, but I'm always present at the meetings, except for the election one. I wasn't present. I was in my house. 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, came to a meeting, and I said, the meeting is for homeowners, not for renters. In that case. Days. But we do invite the renters to like, what do you call it, town halls. And when we had a prime wave, we invited them to call in so we could tell them what happened. I mean, not climb away. We have four cars broken into over four days. And so we wanted to tell them, you know, what had happened, so they'd be aware. And so we welcome the renters too, because they have cars there. And we do include like, when I talk to people, I tell them what's ever going on, renters or otherwise, and they can read the minutes too, because they're posted in a box in the lobby. It was

Robert Nordlund:

pretty evident that either the prospective buyers weren't doing a great job of evaluating the Allen Avenue square North Association before submitting a purchase offer, or that their sales agents didn't know much about the association. Either way, we felt that Carol's advice about reading a year's worth of meeting minutes before deciding on your home purchase was terrific, but that's something that can only happen if the association or the seller makes that information available. So we next asked Carol if not making meeting minutes available should be a red flag to prospective homeowners.

Carol Laurence:

Well, it's it would be, except ours are readily accessible on our website. But I tried to tell them, we also should be doing the old school way too, which is having a binder that literally, literally for each year like we used to. I have to be careful of saying this is how we did it in the old days, but I still think it's a good idea to have a binder, because some people, even some young people, don't have computer lizards. See, you know they don't do it. If someone wouldn't, didn't have minutes, yeah, I'd be it would raise a red flag to me, but we do have minutes, and they're on our website. It it

Robert Nordlund:

was reassuring to hear that while Carol's board was not involving the renters in board meetings, they were allowed to attend Allen Avenue square and North town hall meetings. This was especially important because of concerns all residents had for the community, especially given the frequency of car break ins communication is key when these types of incidents occur that affect everyone living at the association, no matter if they're owners or renters. So we next asked Carol if she had any ideas for how her board could adapt or actually improve their communication in the future.

Carol Laurence:

Well, I tried, I think if they would use some outside experts to come in like a police officer, to come in and say how to make the building safer, or say how to make your own personal safety safer, to bridge the gap, have more town hall meetings where they can everybody can come and we provide every it's Usually potluck, so it doesn't cost the board anything. And we invite everybody. We post notices for everybody. But like, one person complained because we posted that there'd been a break in in the elevator, and she didn't like that. That's not a young person. And then somebody, a young person, pointed out to me, I put flyers for a coffee with cops. Thing we have in the city. We have, sometimes three in one day, so you can come and ask the police officers, the mayor, the chief of police, our city councilman, any questions you want about the safety or whatever you want to ask. And someone said, No, you shouldn't be doing that, because it was a good point. I told her, she made a good point, because if you leave a flyer there, someone might think she says, I don't come out of my door sometimes for days on end, and someone might think I'm not there and make me a target. I said, Oh, I never thought of it that way. So now I won't be doing that. A

Robert Nordlund:

recurring theme in this interview was that no matter how long you've lived in your community, there's always something new to learn. Carol's a great example of someone who embraces a learning opportunity every time it presents itself. So we next asked her if there was any particular changes or projects in her community that she'd like to see addressed in the next year. Well,

Carol Laurence:

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 see us do because we have budgetary concerns. I'd like to see us do like one balcony a quarter repairs we did the worst ones. Now I would like the contractor bill to pick the order based on the engineers reports that he wants to do them and do them in that order, unless somebody has a specific need, like they want to sell their unit, then I feel we should move them up so we can do their balcony repair. Why it's empty.

Robert Nordlund:

Finally, while Carol already. Shared some advice for the newer board members in her Association. We wanted to ask her if she had any general advice for new homeowners or anyone looking to purchase a home in a community association. Here's what she had to say. If

Carol Laurence:

you have questions or issues and you want to make a difference in your community where you live, get involved on either on a small level, like volunteering for one project, saying I would really like to help with a flyer that of information I think would be useful, or get a little more involved. Volunteer to write a newsletter, if people are interested enough, I like that one of our homeowners who's really too busy to do much of anything because he has a heavy workload. He's had two, you know, at homes where he bites people in and he provides desserts and refreshments, I mean, snacks and refreshments, trying to get his to know his neighbors. He all comers. That's really a person who's trying to make a difference. Maybe, if one particular thing, like, oh, the the lobby board hasn't been corrected, volunteer to be the one to take on that task, if you can do it safely, if you want people not to throw dog feces in the trash can by the lobby elevator, you know, make a cute little sign and ask if we can post it, you know. So I think, get involved. Consider running for the board stock small if you're if you think go to a meeting, just going to a meeting and listening would be good for starters, you know, just dip your toe in and see what you can do. We

Robert Nordlund:

want to publicly acknowledge Carol for performing a thankless job well, and compliment the entire board of directors at Allen Avenue square north for taking their responsibility seriously to act in the best interest of their association. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to another great episode next week. And remember, if you match our definition of a bored hero, or know someone who does, please reach out to us. Our contact details are provided in the show notes

Announcer:

you've been listening to Hoa insights, common sense for comment areas. If you like the show and want to support the work that we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing that you can do is engage in the conversation, leave a question in the comments section on our YouTube videos. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast@reservestudy.com or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130, if you gain any insights from the show, please do us a HUGE favor by sharing the show with other board members that you know. You can also support us by supporting the brands that sponsor this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the hosts and guests with the goal of providing general education about the community, association industry. You'll want to consult licensed professionals before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light video and marketing. With Stoke Light on your team, you'll reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the show notes to connect with Stoke Light you.

People on this episode

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Robert Nordlund, PE, RS

Host
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Julie Adamen

Co-host
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Kevin Davis, CIRMS

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