The HOA-OS Blog
Practical advice, product updates, and community management insights for HOA boards.
HOA Maintenance Responsibilities: Who Fixes What
Governing documents decide whether the association or the owner repairs each component. Here is how to read yours and turn the answer into a chart residents can check.
How to Set Up an AI Assistant Trained on Your HOA Documents
A walkthrough of setting up a resident assistant that answers out of your community's own governing documents, respects the same permissions as the files themselves, and says so plainly when nothing covers the question.
Elections and Meetings That Hold Up: The Governance Playbook
Seven habits that keep an HOA board's elections, meetings and votes defensible, drawn together from a series on elections, proxies, recalls, packets and closed sessions.
Virtual and Hybrid HOA Meetings: Making Them Work
A remote or hybrid meeting only holds up if the statute allows it, the notice carries the access details, quorum is counted across both rooms, and the vote produces a count.
HOA Executive Session: What Boards Can Discuss Privately
Executive session is a narrow exception to open meetings, not a second meeting where the real work happens. Here is what belongs in it and how to minute it.
HOA Board Meeting Packets: What Goes In and Why
The agenda, the financials, the reports, and the draft motions, assembled far enough ahead that directors read them before the meeting instead of during it.
How HOA Board Recalls Work (And How Boards Avoid Them)
What a valid recall petition requires, how the removal vote works, and the transparency habits that keep owners from starting one in the first place.
HOA Proxy Votes and Absentee Ballots, Explained
A proxy sends a person. An absentee ballot sends a vote. Boards that treat them as the same thing end up with a quorum they cannot defend.
HOA Board Elections: How They're Supposed to Work
Notice, nominations, ballots, and certification, in the order a board has to do them, plus the procedural mistakes that get results challenged.
The HOA Risk Management Playbook Every Board Needs
Six habits that cover most of an HOA board's legal exposure, arranged as a quarterly rhythm any volunteer board can actually keep.
HOA Conflicts of Interest: Spotting and Handling Them
Conflicts are normal in a community where the board lives next door. Here is how to disclose, recuse, and document them so a fair decision looks fair.
HOA Document Retention: What to Keep and How Long
A retention schedule by document class for self-managed boards, plus what the IRS actually requires and why permanent records are the ones boards lose.
When Your HOA Needs a Lawyer (And When It Doesn't)
The short list of matters that always go to counsel, the work your board can handle itself, and how association attorneys usually bill for it.
Fair Housing Mistakes HOAs Don't Know They're Making
The Fair Housing Act applies to your HOA. Here are the four places well-meaning boards run into trouble: assistance animals, accommodations, families, and wording.
Best HOA software for self-managed boards (2026)
Seven HOA software options compared for self-managed boards, with every price carrying the date we checked it, a paragraph in our own section naming where each alternative beats us, and one section on buying no software at all.
D&O Insurance: The Coverage That Protects Your Board
What directors and officers coverage pays for, the exclusions that catch volunteer boards, and why the association's property policy does not help you.
Can HOA Board Members Be Sued? Liability in Plain English
What personal liability really means for a volunteer HOA board member, which decisions are protected, and the four habits that draw lawsuits.
The HOA Resident Engagement Playbook
Six moving parts that decide whether residents participate, assembled into one working order for a self-managed board.
How to Communicate an Unpopular HOA Decision
Sequencing, framing and the arithmetic residents will do anyway, for dues increases, new rules and assessments.
Should Your HOA Run a Facebook Group?
The case for and against a board-run community group, the moderation load nobody budgets for, and the line between social chatter and official business.