Cohousing-L Mailing List: re: HOA dues

[Barb Andre (mba]

Okay Denise, you've spurred me into action.

At Greyrock Commons our HOA budget was broken into 4 major categories:

1) Common expenses (paid equally by each household)

  These include accounting/management fees; insurance of the common
areas; repairs and maintenance of parking spaces, LAN, and landscaping;
snow removal; common house telephone; irrigation water for common areas;
as well as any social expenses, legal expenses and miscellaneous common
expenses.

2) Expenses allocated by equivalent person (an equivalent person is one
year and older)

  These include property & casualty insurance of the common house,
reserve for replacement of appliances and other items in the common
house; repairs and maintenance of the common house and a fire lane north
of our common house; trash pickup; and common house utilities.

3) Insurance and exterior maintenance (allocated by square footage of
the houses)

  Insurance on the houses; repairs and maintenance of the houses;
reserve for replacement of roofs and siding.

4) Garage and carport expenses (allocated by garage/carport, with
carports equivalent to 75% of a garage; that is, if there are 10 garages
and 10 carports, that equals 17.5 "garages." If you own a garage, you
pay 1/17.5th of the fees. If you don't own a garage, you don't pay this
part of the dues).

   Repairs and maintenance, and reserve for replacement for garages and
carports.

We tried to be as equitable as possible in having people pay for what
they "use." It is a bit confusing to explain, and required some thinking
about how various expenses should be categorized, but once the formulas
are in a spreadsheet, it's not difficult to calculate.

Barbara Andre
Greyrock Commons HOA Treasurer
Fort Collins, CO

**All 30 households moved in. Hurray! Now working toward more major
decision making about community "extras" such as a garden, more
landscaping, and outbuildings. And me just wanting to make sure no more
of my bare hillside washes into the road.**