5 ms·

Not in my industry but I'm part of an HOA and I swear 2/3 of what the people paid to administer it do seems streamlinable/automatable with lots of opportunity f

Not in my industry but I'm part of an HOA and I swear 2/3 of what the people paid to administer it do seems streamlinable/automatable with lots of opportunity for making money along the way. Every time I deal with them I proclaim to myself, STARTUP! Then I forget about it..

bmh100 10y ago
What would your HOA pay to automate and how much would it be worth?
tacostakohashi 10y ago
There's BuildingLink in this space. I think this is the kind of thing where selling software to existing, backwards organizations is a big marginal, and it might be better to be a property management company with good in-house systems, instead of trying to sell good systems to individual HOAs or small management companies.
snomad 10y ago
Have HOA and totally agree. So many key functions that could be improved: submit work orders and report security incidents online, pay dues and special assessments electronically, review association budget, monthly news and events, etc. Problem is these who would benefit (residents) are often disconnected from those against it (the employees). You would need boards that really are sold on the benefit.
LeanderK 10y ago
What does HOA stand for?
- bigmattystyles 10y ago
  Homeowners Association - Might be US thing - but basically Condos / Townhouses / even neighborhoods form associations to take care of the 'commons' / enforce a look for the neighborhood, etc... There's usually a monthly payment. Repairs / work orders / disputes are settled through them. There's bylaws...
  - prawn 10y ago
    Equivalent in Australia is a Strata Corp and the resulting meetings they involve.
- tashmahalic 10y ago
  Home Owners Association
callmeed 10y ago
2 of our 3 rental properties have an HOA and its quite annoying getting postal mail about things then having to relay messages to tenants. Or you get some action to vote on but have no clue if its a good thing or not because you're not involved in the politics part of it.
ransom1538 10y ago
I can confirm. HOA software is big. It's mainly managing PDFs and sending emails out. E.g. https://www.condocerts.com https://www.condocerts.com It's a decent industry my friend (not after this posting) makes ~300k a year working on it. However the race may be ending as these companies lock apartment managers into long complicated contracts. Not sure how many apartment managers at scale still need.
brightball 10y ago
I'm on my HOA and I imagine the hardest part of making this work would actually be sales. The sales cycle for an HOA would be multiple months between meetings and actually making a decision. Then there's the issue of rotating responsibility, retraining, no guarantees of technical skills among board volunteers. I'd tend to agree with the other comments that the hired out management companies would be a much better sales target since they have a real profit motive to efficiency gains. At best a neighborhood HOA is looking at periodically saving some time and being a bit better organized.
tyingq 10y ago
http://www.ciraconnect.com/ http://www.ciraconnect.com/ is a fairly young company in this space...

bmh100 10y ago

What would your HOA pay to automate and how much would it be worth?

tacostakohashi 10y ago

There's BuildingLink in this space. I think this is the kind of thing where selling software to existing, backwards organizations is a big marginal, and it might be better to be a property management company with good in-house systems, instead of trying to sell good systems to individual HOAs or small management companies.

snomad 10y ago

Have HOA and totally agree. So many key functions that could be improved: submit work orders and report security incidents online, pay dues and special assessments electronically, review association budget, monthly news and events, etc. Problem is these who would benefit (residents) are often disconnected from those against it (the employees). You would need boards that really are sold on the benefit.

LeanderK 10y ago

What does HOA stand for?

bigmattystyles 10y ago
Homeowners Association - Might be US thing - but basically Condos / Townhouses / even neighborhoods form associations to take care of the 'commons' / enforce a look for the neighborhood, etc... There's usually a monthly payment. Repairs / work orders / disputes are settled through them. There's bylaws...
- prawn 10y ago
  Equivalent in Australia is a Strata Corp and the resulting meetings they involve.
tashmahalic 10y ago
Home Owners Association

callmeed 10y ago

2 of our 3 rental properties have an HOA and its quite annoying getting postal mail about things then having to relay messages to tenants. Or you get some action to vote on but have no clue if its a good thing or not because you're not involved in the politics part of it.

ransom1538 10y ago

I can confirm. HOA software is big. It's mainly managing PDFs and sending emails out. E.g. https://www.condocerts.com https://www.condocerts.com It's a decent industry my friend (not after this posting) makes ~300k a year working on it. However the race may be ending as these companies lock apartment managers into long complicated contracts. Not sure how many apartment managers at scale still need.

brightball 10y ago

I'm on my HOA and I imagine the hardest part of making this work would actually be sales. The sales cycle for an HOA would be multiple months between meetings and actually making a decision. Then there's the issue of rotating responsibility, retraining, no guarantees of technical skills among board volunteers. I'd tend to agree with the other comments that the hired out management companies would be a much better sales target since they have a real profit motive to efficiency gains. At best a neighborhood HOA is looking at periodically saving some time and being a bit better organized.

tyingq 10y ago

http://www.ciraconnect.com/ http://www.ciraconnect.com/ is a fairly young company in this space...