Kevin Davis: 0:00

The end of the day, if you are a unit owner and you're looking at an increase in your assessments or special assessment, the first thing you wanna do is question their authority, their competency, their honesty, if they don't communicate it why it's needed, well enough. Again, go back to communication and transparency and openness, my only option is to distrust, and once I distrust, it's hard to get that back.

Announcer: 0:26

HOA Insights is brought to you by six companies that care about board members, association, insights, marketplace, association, reserves, community financials, Kevin Davis, Insurance Services, Hoa invest and the inspectors of election, you'll find links to their website and social media in the show notes,

Robert Nordlund: 0:42

Hi, I'm Robert Nordlund of

Kevin Davis: 0:43

association reserves, and I'm Kevin Davis of Kevin Davis Insurance Services. And this is HOA insights. We promote common sense

Robert Nordlund: 0:51

for common areas. Well, welcome to episode 125, where we're again speaking with insurance expert and regular co host, Kevin Davis. This episode was inspired by our recent episode, 110 on understanding board financials. And Kevin reached out to me and wanted to do a follow up to that program, helping our audience to understand the serious consequences community associations face when board members and managers fail to understand their financial statements. Board members are responsible to run the affairs of the association, so it's no excuse to say that you don't understand the financial statements. There's a real cost of being unaware or oblivious of the financial state of the association. Every board member, not just the treasurer, needs to understand how their association is doing financially. Last week's episode 124 featured a great interview with Jason Gamel, the CEO of Arda, the trader Association for the timeshare and vacation ownership industries. And just like with so many other areas of life, it really helps to understand something by stepping back and looking from a different angle, and that's what I enjoyed in my discussion with Jason, the ability to look at what being a board member is like from the timeshare and vacation ownership side of things. Now, if you missed that episode or any prior episode, take a moment after today's program to listen from our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, or watch from our YouTube channel, but better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms so you don't miss any future episodes. Those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mugs that Kevin and I both have, that we got from the merch store, which you can browse through from our Hoa insights.org website, or the link in our show notes, you'll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like mugs. So go to the merch store, download a free zoom background, take a moment look around, find the mug that you'd like, and if you're the 10th person to email me at podcast at reserves day.com mentioning episode 125, mug giveaway. We'll ship that mug to you free of charge. We enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you're facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, and we get a few of those, or a question that you'd like us to address. You can always contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast@reservesay.com but today's episode comes from Simon from Portland, who asked, I'm not good with numbers. I'm the rules guy. Is it okay for our treasurer to be the one handling all the budget and financial issues? So Kevin, a good question. What do you say to our friend?

Kevin Davis: 3:49

Simon, yes, for assignment. You know, when somebody asks a question like that, you know they know something is wrong, okay,

Robert Nordlund: 3:58

well, or they're they're nervous. They're nervous something might be wrong.

Kevin Davis: 4:02

Assume Simon's the president of his association, and every month he gets the financial statement. He says, you know Michael, you know treasure guy. Listen, please handle all this stuff, because guess what, my job is to enforce the rules. I'm a rules guy. I make sure that people take their trash cans in every single day. I make sure that the pools are kept I make sure they're not parked in visitors parking. But Michael, you handle all this financial stuff, and then guess what Michael's been handling for years. And guess what everybody's happy with Michael? All of a sudden, one day, Michael's gone. He disappeared. And guess what? What happened to Michael? So I don't know, I already moved or something happened to him, but we can't find him. And guess what else, you can't find the reserve account, the reserve with Michael, and that's the problem, having one person to handle it, and Robert. This is that's always been the issue. However, today it's a greater concern for me, and when I heard what episode 110, So I heard in him that you have to be aware of the financials. You have to understand them. And he never said, why? What happens? Is it a cost associated more today than ever before, but today we have incivility. We talked about the lack of civility, the lack of interaction. We know. We suspect everybody is being dishonest. We expect everybody being confident. We're looking at living in community association through a distorted lens these days. You know, we don't trust there's a lack of trust. And guess what? They'll not trust. The money. Part of it is significant, and that's when I heard 110 and please, if you go back to podcast 110 and you'll you'll learn, you'll get the basic understanding of the final statement. But today, that's why I was really concerned about it. So Simon, today, more than ever you have to be under you have to understand that financial statement. More than ever understood it before.

Robert Nordlund: 6:00

Let's talk about a couple of things. There's one thing about being an expert, and we're not saying everyone has to be an expert, but you need to understand. And I know some, some very sharp people. I know a doctor friend of mine, I know an attorney friend of mine, that are just wizards in their area of expertise, but they just don't know numbers, that's just not their strength. So we're not talking about a heavy lift of becoming an expert. We're talking about understanding, does the well, does things balance out? Do we? Are we ahead of budget or behind budget? Those are simple concepts to understand. That's where, that's what we're talking about here, right? Exactly.

Kevin Davis: 6:44

You have put yourself in a defensible position when somebody is looking you in the eye, if that your next door neighbor is saying, How could you let this happen? And you have a choice. You can say, Guess what? I reviewed the financial statement. I know the income for the month of June was down, and I know the reason why it was down, and we're working on it. That's defendable position versus, well, I don't know. I got a second, see, I'm looking at financials in a while, and, you know, the guy gave me all the stuff, and I really don't understand numbers, because I'm the guy who has to enforce the rules which one's defendable.

Robert Nordlund: 7:16

And there's so many side effects of that, if you say, I've seen it, and by the way, yeah, our budget is a little bit behind. And here in June or July or August, you should already start preparing for expectation that we're going to have higher homeowner assessments next year. That's just being conversational, that's having an awareness. And they say, Do we have enough money in the reserve fund for the roof project? And the answer is yes or no, or maybe you want to be able to answer that question, rather than, I don't know when you told me about you wanted to go down the path of this episode, I started to think back when I was the president of my association, and I honestly got a chill up my spine, thinking, what if someone asked me, how could that have happened? Yeah, I would never want to answer. Well, I just trusted Pam, or I trusted, in this case, Michael, isn't that why we have dual signature check responsibilities? That's why you have all

Kevin Davis: 8:18

responsibilities. Just to keep reality. What you wanna do is keep an honest person honest. Okay, let's go back to Michael, for example. Let's say Michael intends to do well. Let's say every week Michael does it, and all of a sudden he makes a slip up. He makes a mistake. And guess what? Nobody caught him, and nobody said anything. Ooh, what happens to Michael? Yeah, he goes on a slippery slope. Michael's not a dishonest guy in the beginning, and most people are not. They go, Okay, I got it. But then all of a sudden, if nobody looks over his shoulder, nobody say, Okay, I do the monthly reconciliation. I just make sure my job is as the president to make sure that Michael's doing his job, to keep Michael honest. You know, even if we just look at, you know, you have employees, let's say, all of a sudden, I have an employee. Let's say I don't look at their financial statement every month in terms of their expense report, and they go out and I said, Hey, you can fly, but you can't go first class, but I'll look at it go every once in a while. Okay, hey, did you? You didn't put with class? Okay? That means keep them on target. We don't want to make just honest people dishonest, and you do that by just ignoring everything.

Robert Nordlund: 9:21

You gotta keep your eye on the ball. Things can slip through and well, I was thinking on my phone, and all the different apps we you and I have, there's now two factor authentication, just double checking that kind of stuff. And again, we're not talking about being an expert. We're just understanding are the numbers going up or are the numbers going down? And show me where remind me. Remind me is that the is that the balance sheet? Is that the budget? Michael show me which one that is again, and Michael can show you, and you can say, oh, yeah, okay, now I see What was that last month. Remind me. Just. Getting an idea of is that moving in the good direction? Is it moving in the bad direction? And if it's moving in the bad direction, then your next question is, well, do we need to do anything about it? And Michael can say, well, through whatever we pay our insurance premium three times a year, so it will rebound, or we're heading into the summer months where we water more. So we're going to have higher landscaping or higher water, expensive find out what it is, so you can what have that conversation be?

Kevin Davis: 10:31

Conversationally capable. That's what we're saying. The idea is not to be an expert. It's just be capable. If Simon is capable, Simon says to Michael, I don't understand what happened here. And Simon is not going to be an expert, but what happens is, is when he goes to looks at the next door neighbor and say, Listen, I talked to Michael about the financials. He explained to me that this is going on, that's going I can't believe he lied to me when he was just honest to me. Now, when you say that, guess what happens? That's a defensible position. You're defending yourself. I did my job as the president Association. I looked over his shoulder, but he lied to me. Okay? He said, X, Y, or he lied. He lied about the financial statement, about the income. You know, now he didn't steal the money. He just he made a mistake himself, but it was his mistake, and he either a mentions or doesn't mention. But from Simon's point of view, he wants to be a defensible position. He wants to appear competent. Because guess what in the world we live in today, you know, because we live in a community association now that people lack trust. They lack trust in their experts. They lack trust in their board and their management company. They just don't trust them. And so you have to appear confident all the time.

Robert Nordlund: 11:52

I was just thinking about in the world in politics, the last few elections that we've had have been contentious. Is that fair thing to say? Yeah, you're right. There's more incivility, and so are we. And we've talked about this. Julie is a strong advocate or proponent about building community, and you want to be transparent, you want to be clear, you want to be open about things, and like we've talked about here today, having conversational capability with the numbers is where you are able to build trust at the association. Because I think, as you say, the natural thing right now we see, are people worried what's happening? Are you an idiot? Are you a thief? Are you a fool? All those, all those are bad things, and that's what they're wondering.

Kevin Davis: 12:45

And guess what? It's not that hard to do it. You know, go back to Simon, if Simon just learned some basic things that you look at a financial statement and you have a income and you have a balance sheet balance, that's a balance the income statement. Gotta have more income than expenses. Okay? And take a few minutes and look at them, because when Simon appears competent, okay? And he appears competent to the people who live there as a president Association, then guess what? Life is a little bit easier for Simon, you know, as opposed to, I don't understand, or guess what, Michael hands the ball. Can you imagine going before the board of directors or a unit owner, or anybody, and say, Guess what? Michael handles it all my jobs to enforce the rules. It doesn't pass that test. And again, we live in that world where we it's a distorted lens that we just don't feel comfortable. And we don't feel comfortable about society as a society thing right now. We lack comfort so, and you mentioned transparency, it is so clear that if we're transparent and say, Guess what? Here are the numbers. Here is Michael to explain the numbers to all of us, you know. And if Michael explains them, well, guess what, Michael, it's great. Let's say Michael starts to stutter. We start be concerned about Michael as the board president, as the Vice President, as the rest of the board. We say, Michael, we're kind of concerned right now, you know, an outsider to come in and review, review those financials. You know, it's comfort. We all have to feel, appear comfortable. And the problem is, like, like with Simon, what happens we don't feel comfort in a board member, a board member or community association. Do we go forward and say, explain it to me, or do you take a step back and go, Well, I assume he's doing the right

Robert Nordlund: 14:21

job. And then Kevin, you got me thinking about two more aspects of this. One is the team aspect, where a healthy board will speak as one will be unified. Obviously, there's going to be some different opinions, and not every vote is going to be unanimous. There's a lot of votes that are reveal more or less or conservative or aggressive or that kind of stuff. And I'm fine, but you need to be united as a team, and at least be facing the reality of our collections are suffering this year. We have a delinquencies problem. You need to be all on board with that, and then the whole idea of having a pipeline of new board members, if you. Are reliant on this Michael guy, then are you looking for another Michael guy, another CPA, another bookkeeper, or something like that, and that's a hard board member to replace when you're looking so narrowly. And so if you develop more general skills and people helping each other, all of a sudden it becomes easier to have a pipeline of new board members who keep the association healthy, and you don't get embedded secrets.

Kevin Davis: 15:27

The most important part we operate as a team. So now we as a Board have talked to Michael, and you got Simon and all the rest of us getting together, and now the board understands it, and we support and we support Michael.

Robert Nordlund: 15:39

Well, let me slow you. Let me slow you down. Now we, we support Michael. We as a board. I love that

Kevin Davis: 15:45

word, and it's so important because we as a board now, sudden, we go out before to the unit. That doesn't mean that they're gonna agree. Doesn't mean they're gonna like us. It still may even sue us, but guess what happens, though, we have a defensive position, so if we get sued, because guess what, they don't like the special assessment that we pass. We went through the numbers. We have Michael through the numbers. He's an expert. We all agree. We all understand it, and we go out there and say, We need a special assessment. Guy. No, you know, you have the authority. You did it too late. You don't have it's against the Civil Code. You can't do it. We're gonna file a lawsuit now. In that lawsuit, as the President Association and as my group, guess what, we okay, because we have insurance to pick it up. And guess what. And me, as an insurance provider, say, Guess what, I'm okay because you have to defend the position. It may cost 3040,$50,000 to defend you, but let's say, all of a sudden you in that same board meeting, and all of a sudden you had that meeting, and we all blame Michael. And we say, hey, guess what? That's Michael's job. I can't believe that Michael did this. Now, guess what that claim is going to cost three or $400,000 when there's no defendable position in there? You're talking about a$30,000 claim to 300 $400,000 claim. It's as simple as that. We're defending it. You're not even paying it. We're just spending because guess what happens now, you know, I live in unit number three. Okay, guess what? Robert, you live in unit number 10. We're going to talk to each other. And guess what's going to happen? You'll talk to the next door neighbor. Now, you have 15 unit owners there who said, Guess so. You want to have a special assessment. Okay? And I can't get Michael on the phone to tell me why it's needed. And Simon, you're not telling me why it's needed because you're telling me to talk to Michael. Nobody can reach Michael because he's at work. I don't trust what you're doing, and I don't believe you have the authority to do it. They won't say you're incompetent, okay, what do you mean? They may go that far and say you're incompetent, but don't have to. We say you don't have the authority to pass it. Now, if you are a committed board, the we board, guess what? We understand your concerns, okay, but we had to do it, and we need to do it for these reasons. Yeah, and then you walk away. You have to debate, do you have the authority? That the authority was what we've done as a board, it's defendable. Let's, let's take us to court. We okay, and you guess what? The insurance will look at you and go, Okay, you did your job. You did your job as a board of directors. Guess what? I don't have a problem defending you, but if you bla if Simon blames Michael or Michael's gone with the reserve account, guess what happens now? Now a $30,000 claim goes into three, $400,000 including the reserve account that he stole.

Robert Nordlund: 18:16

So there's different kind of costs. There's a cost of damage to community, the damage to the board, the damage to maybe home values, the damage to trust. Boy, how long it takes to rebuild trust, the damage to the health of the association. And then there's $1 damage. Just a lot of aspects to it, okay, well, we have some other things that we want to cover, but looking at the time, let's take a quick break now to hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we'll be back with more common sense for common areas and speaking more about the cost of not knowing what the numbers are at your association,

Paige Daniels: 18:54

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Robert Nordlund: 19:25

we're back. Well during the break Kevin and I were speaking more about this, and come back. It comes back to what Kevin has talked so many times about, the three primary roles that the board members need to fulfill. And Kevin, can you go down that path?

Kevin Davis: 19:39

And this is interesting, because if the Board of Director of condo understand that if they do these three things really well, that is, enforce the rules, maintain the association Okay, and handle the financials, okay in a proper way, yeah, that's it. Every board meeting, are we doing those three things? And again, we're talking about in a time where people. Who live in this community, associations are looking through the distorted lenses. If you feel confident enough to know that you're doing those three things really well, you in pretty decent shape. Now, the one key area, though, is that people's money, they take seriously, you know, yeah, okay, you know, I've parked in visitors parking. Okay, well, all right, okay, so that's that, you know, the trees have been trimmed. You gotta trim those trees. But when we start talking about money, special assessments, increasing assessments, you haven't paid your assessments, that means, guess what? Now, all of a sudden, wait a minute, do you really know what you're doing? Are you really doing a good job? It raises that level. That level is different when you talk about finances. So you have to have a basic understanding of the financial you don't have to be an expert. And I assume with Simon that Michael there, who handles the money, is a CPA or an accountant or something, that's why he believes that they can do it, and Michael could be that guy. But if you're in a meeting and Michael's on vacation that week, or Michael's anywhere, and Michael's not available, Simon, you have to be in a position to say, I understand what you were talking about. And guess what? Let me get back to you, because I do understand. And you have to get that feeling that you do understand, which means you got to understand you can't fake these things. You know, people look in your eye and say, Wait a minute. Why? The month of June, the income is lower than it has been for the past six months. The income should be pretty much the same every month, right? Yep, okay. And Simon, you have to go back there and say something simple. You don't have to be able to say, well, guess what? The reason why is because, you know, we do have some delinquencies, okay, but guess what we have, we have a system. We have a policy in place that worth that money. Yeah. Okay, and so now, what's going on? Yes. So now, since Simon is feeling more confident, okay, about his job, and it goes back to the we so now Simon is backing it up, Michael and the whole board acting together collectively.

Robert Nordlund: 22:02

Yeah, and I hope that Simon has gotten an appreciation, maybe not memorizing numbers. See, wow, is unit number 13 five months or nine months behind? And does that mean 13,000 or 15,000 I don't know, but something like that. And so you can say there is this one unit that is way behind, but the good news is they've posted it for sale, and so when it sells, then we'll get that money back from escrow. All this kind of stuff. Have just a working knowledge of what's going on, and then the working knowledge of every board member should know what's happening with their insurance premiums. What's happening with their reserve funding? Are we ready or not? Are we looking at trouble, or are we making progress? And just that that working knowledge. And again, it comes back to having multiple people being able to cover for each other. Because, you know what, if Michael breaks his leg and or is in the hospital for a month, you want someone else to be able to cover for and be able to talk it through. And then I was thinking about from the owner point of view, also the board members want to have an understanding and that clarity for a larger Association. Might it be a good idea to have an open budget meeting once a year so everyone gets to see the numbers, and you can share the numbers around at that point in time and say, This is our budget for the year. Notice that our delinquencies are nice and low at 2.5% whatever things are. Can you go further to be proactive and be open and share numbers with the owners also,

Kevin Davis: 23:39

that's exactly what it is. Because, again, if we're looking at through that distorted lenses, and we don't have trust, what's the best way to say trust? Hear the numbers. We're open. We're open. We're transparent. Here the numbers. Look at them, and again, one thing I have to remember, too, this is important. It doesn't mean they're not going to be mad at you and not going to sue you or make a claim against you, because that's the problem. Is that most people are afraid that if we do this and they see it, guess what's going to happen? We may get sued, we may get yelled at. May not like it, and that is the problem, because, yes, you still they may not like they may not like the fact that you got to wait until unit number 11 sells the unit to get your money back. They may sell. No, no, you should be doing it more. You should have a better collection policy. You should have this. And this a still may be mad at you, but you're going to say that, listen, our policy is what it is, and we're okay with it. And be okay with it and not panic, because if you get sued, you want to make sure that you have liability insurance to protect you for your suit. And if you are, you have a defensive position. If you don't have liability insurance, you want to have a defensive position that, guess what? We followed the rules based on the documents tell us to do? We have a collection policy, and we are implementing our collection policy. Here's our policy. Do you have any questions on our policy? Well, we don't agree. That's okay. You don't have to agree. We understand that you're not gonna agree to everything we have to say, but we're okay. Well. My lawyer will contact you tomorrow. That's okay. We're doing our job the way we are supposed to do it. We're having our board meeting, and we're treating our board meetings as a board meeting, not social club. When I talk about what's going on Netflix, you know, I talk about the we see what's playing the movie, it's a business meeting, and we're talking about the finances. And guess what? Here are the numbers right here. We're totally transparent.

Robert Nordlund: 25:22

Yeah, the whole idea that there is a growing amount of distrust, and you need to be prepared for that. And just as you were saying, someone threatening to sue you, that may be an idle threat. It may be a real threat, but if you're well defended, then it's a non issue, absolute non issue. Maybe you can get ahead of that with committees. Maybe you can get ahead of that with an open meeting. But okay, let's say you are Simon. What are Simon's steps to figure this out? Does He say, Hey, Michael, can you take me to coffee and we go through this are, can I meet you before the board meeting next month? And can you remind me? Please be patient with me. But can you remind me which ones which? And what they all tell me is that, is that how it starts?

Kevin Davis: 26:12

That's it. And the key thing is make sure it's Simon. Simon, you got to make sure you understand that Michael understands his job, because give him benefit that he's probably a CPA or captain, something like that. And you're going to have to be patient with Michael also, because we don't want to treat Michael like he is dishonest. Because the easiest thing to do is to say, oh, you know, we say at the end of this our podcast, right? Simon hears that, oh, I have a problem. We have a distorted lens. I only find what Michael's doing here. And he goes to Michael, Michael, I know what you're doing now. I'm also, Michael's starting to feel, you know, attacked, and my defensive, defensive. So Simon, whatever you do, don't attack Michael. Sit down with him like you're saying. Let's talk ahead of time, because I need to understand these things. I've heard this podcast. I gotta understand it, because there is a cost involved. I need to understand but make sure you don't you don't put Michael in a defensive position, because now all of a sudden, you know Michael's going to worry about him. Now, if Michael in a defensible position, you got to be careful, because why he's in a defensible position too, you know? So there's a lot to

Robert Nordlund: 27:16

it, yeah, but build the We, of us being on the board help me so we can present this. Someone asked me at the pool yesterday, how are we doing? And frankly, I don't know. And I don't like being in a position where I say I don't know, and that's isn't that what we're talking about here?

Kevin Davis: 27:34

Hey, Simon, go back to Episode 110 to get a basic understanding of the financials. That's probably the best thing that that assignment can do, because the basic understanding gives you that appeal, that you are competent. Because the end of the day, if you are a unit owner, and you're looking at an increase in your assessments, or special assessment, the first thing you're going to do is question their authority, their competency, their honesty. I mean, if they don't communicate it why it's needed, well enough? Again, go back to communication and transparency and openness, they don't do it well enough. My only option is to distrust, and once I distrust, it's hard to get that back. So the key to the whole conversation we're having right now is to understand the world is different. You know, we live in a world where we have difficulty trust issues. You know, we all have trust issues right now because we don't trust our government. We don't trust the people leading it. We just don't have trust in institutions overall and where's the ward they're not communicating, yes,

Robert Nordlund: 28:43

yeah, where's Walter Cronkite when we need him to tell me what the truth is and we go

Kevin Davis: 28:48

home. But now there's so many truths out there, because everybody has their own, you know, podcasts out there who gives their version of the truth. Best thing we can do is be open, transparent and

Robert Nordlund: 28:57

communicate. Yeah? Well, you've also said trust the process and work the process. I'm assuming that you have a good process at your association, whether it be collections, whether it be getting the information and then standing behind your policies. This is how we do things here. Obviously, if it's a dated and ineffective policy update, it talk to your attorney about that. But what about we skipped right over this. What if you get to the board meeting? Oh, two things. One is, what if you're getting your financial information late, and when you get your financial information, it's not right? I think fundamentally, you got to fix that problem. And there are companies like 110 was Russell. Wasn't it? Russell from community financials, yeah, yeah. This was him, yeah, that was him. Yes, there's companies like that. That's all they do, and they are good at doing it, because board members do need to have accurate numbers to make decisions based on so solve your problem of if you're if you're not getting good information accurate. Information in a timely manner, in time to prepare for your meeting. So you know what you're all talking about. You got to fix that problem. But otherwise, do talk about it be the we is that where we're at,

Kevin Davis: 30:11

and go back to honesty, you know. Okay, if you don't have it, you got to admit that. Guess what? We just got it the earlier day. We haven't got a chance to review them yet, but we review them, we'll get back to you. Okay, okay, honestly. You know, we saw some irregularities. Guess what? We're gonna find out and get back to you on it. Okay, so, honesty, honesty, honesty, honesty. Matter because we honest with people. Okay, they can feel your honesty if you say, Listen, we don't know right now, because we've got these reports in and we haven't had a chance to review them properly. You know, the board meeting. You know, we got them an hour ago. And, you know, it's just unusual to get them an hour. We usually get them, you know, two weeks in advance, or a week in advance, whatever it is, they're consistent. Now, if it's not consistent, and you always get them in the hour, say, Guess what? This is our last time we get them an hour ahead of time. For now, one we want them X days ahead of

Robert Nordlund: 31:01

time. Yeah, you know, it could be as I just think could be as simple as there's a new admin at the management company, and that person sent you the finances for the wrong Association, exactly like, Oh, gee, oh yeah, that's it. This is 120 unit Association, and we're 13 units and glad we don't have their problems. Well, Kevin, as always, it's great talking with you. It's fun. It's informative. Any closing thoughts to add at this time?

Kevin Davis: 31:28

I think we let out a lot of good information. I think when I concluded by communication, openness, transparency, those are things that keep the again, as we say all the time, get a temperature down. Our job is to not to elevate the temperature, like with the people were in civil we got to say, Okay, this, this, do our jobs in the best way we can. And guess what happens if we get sued? We're okay because we have a defensible position. That's all we want to make sure you have.

Robert Nordlund: 31:55

I like that, and you don't have to be an expert, but to have a working understanding of the financials at your association. Are things going up, things going down, and what are your problems that you need to solve? Well, we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Thank you for joining us today. We look forward to bringing many more episodes to you, week after week after week. We'll be here. It'll be great to have you join us on a regular basis, spread the word

Announcer: 32:25

you've been listening to Hoa insights, common sense for common 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.