Holiday Décor Made Simple: How To Set Fair & Clear Guidelines for Your HOA
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As a property manager, you were not only hired for your fantastic skills and amazing personality, but for your ability to manage people. When it comes to people and relationships, emotional connections are necessary. Although software can drive profits, increase productivity, manage multiple teams, and cut costs, it can’t provide the emotional connection and in-person relationships that are needed in order to create a successful team. Relationships are the foundations of what makes business and people come together.
One particular group that is essential to an HOA community is the Architectural Review Board, better known as the Architectural Review Committee (ARC). A large responsibility of being a property manager is to provide your HOA committees and boards with the proper tools and guidelines to be successful. In this article, we take a deeper dive into how to help set your Architectural Review Committee for success.
One of the most important steps to setting your ARC for success is to know who and what they are. It’s also essential to have a strong understanding of their overall purpose, goals, and challenges that they may face along their journey as a new Architectural Review Committee.
An Architectural Review Committee (ARC) is a committee that reviews exterior changes to a home within a community, such as an HOA. This group of volunteers' primary purpose is to regulate and review all architectural changes, including requests set by the HOA and governing documents.
Although all Architectural Review Committees are different, their overall purpose is the same — to maintain and protect the property's value. There’s no success that doesn’t come with challenges. In order to better understand your ARC, it’s important to understand the challenges that come with the role.
One of the most important factors of being a successful team is by having a well-rounded and educated team. As a property manager, you have a large responsibility to help your teams succeed.
Providing a clear roadmap for your ARC committee is a great way to create transparency and clear goals for your team. When team members are provided with long-term goals and clear expectations, they’re able to build a stronger foundation.
We put together an example of what a roadmap might look like. Download your own template here to get started with your committee!
One of the most important tools that an ARC committee will need is proper software. A large part of the ARC committee's responsibility is reviewing their communities' applications. In order for the committee to keep requests and applications organized, software such as the TownSq Arch feature can be utilized as a way to quickly review, approve (or deny), and notify homeowners’ architecture requests.
As a property manager, you may have a set routine on how things usually work. As communities change and develop you will see new members come and go. In addition to this, you will experience new committee members that may want to express new ideas or goals. Keep in mind that change can be hard for some — especially when you experience an HOA community that is set in its ways. In order to experience success, you must keep an open mind for new ideas and change.