Rolf Crocker: 0:00

There's a bandwidth problem in terms of what a manager can reasonably do within a period of time. How many operations can one person reasonably control without losing bandwidth? That number is seven to 10, which means a manager can manage seven to 10 associations, a supervisor can manage seven to 10 employees, direct reports. Beyond that, you can get help, but still the bandwidth thins out to where it would not be effective.

Announcer: 0:27

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that care about board members: 0:29

Association Insights and Marketplace, Association Reserves, Community Financials, Kevin Davis Insurance Services, and the Inspectors of Election. You'll find links to their website and social media in the show notes.

Julie Adamen: 0:42

Hi, I'm Julie Adamen, President of Adamen Inc,

Rolf Crocker: 0:45

and I'm Rolf Crocker, CEO of Omni Community Management in Northern California.

Julie Adamen: 0:49

And this is HOA Insights, where we promote common sense

Rolf Crocker: 0:52

for common areas.

Julie Adamen: 0:54

Hi everybody. Well, we're doing something a little different this episode. Normally, you notice it's Robert Nordlund or Kevin Davis or me or all three together sometimes, but now we're branching out a little bit. Robert has passed the reins for a little bit of the time to Kevin and I to start interviewing other folks. And with me today is Ralph Crocker, as said he's the president of Omni Communities, an association management company located in Northern California. He's also my best industry bud. So we thought we would regale you with all of the information we have about management companies and their relationships with boards and boards' relationships with management companies, but first I have a little bit of housekeeping to do. So last week's episode was episode 153 This is episode 154 and that featured Kevin Davis and Sherry having another great discussion on HOA insurance, and just want to remind everybody that if you've missed any of our episodes, you can go to our website, which is HOA insights.org or search for HOA Insights on any one of your favorite podcasts, including YouTube, and remember to subscribe, because then you will not miss an episode. For those of you watching on YouTube right now, I can tell you we have our own merch. Look at that, Rolf. Don't you wish you had.. Oh yeah, that's my old hair. I need to have a note with my new hair. This is a problem for women. It's always a problem. But so you can go to our merch store on HOA insights.org and we have some free gifts on there for board members, and you can get things like these mugs and other stuff as well, so download a free Zoom background. We have that for board members, and take a moment, just look around. Also, we do enjoy hearing from you, board members. We get some very interesting questions and interesting stories that go on. So, if you have issues that are facing you at your association, you have a hot topic, crazy story, or a question, or what often happens is we get a big vent from board members, which always gives us stuff to talk about. You can always contact contact us at 805-203-3130 or email us at podcast at HOA insights.org Okay, so with that, we're going to dive right into this, so when I asked Ralph to be on the podcast with me today, I thought, you know, I think we should just talk about some of the basic things that board members typically don't get to talk to any experts or people who are embedded in the industry about, and that is what should we as board members expect from our management companies, now typically HOAs are managed by a company that each of their managers has a portfolio of accounts, meaning they have 567, 1012, whatever it is, depending on the location, the type of accounts, etc. etc. but it always seems to be a tension there between what the management company is providing, and what the board members expect. So, Rolf, I want you to speak to that, and let's first talk about the thing that always comes up, the full service management contract, which you and I have been pulling our hair out about for, I don't know, 40 years something now. So, why don't you go ahead and talk about that from the management company perspective, and where you see where it goes off the rails, or at least misunderstood by board members, especially those new to being managed, they could have been self-managed previously, or something like that.

Rolf Crocker: 4:12

Well, first of all, thanks for having me on. It's a pleasure to be here. It's always good to hang time with you is always great, but being able to talk about this issue, because this really is the central focus for most boards who are professionally managed on some level, you'd mentioned self management, and then there's onsite management, or full time management, and then, but most boards will fall into a category we call portfolio management. Portfolio management is more like timeshares, people understand in a timeshare, you buy into something where you get a slice of time, so many days a year to be able to utilize it, but you don't get to use it whenever you want, however you want. When we sell management services, the tendency is not trying to impugn any of. My colleagues in the industry, or myself, from time to time, we want to get the contract, but we're not always forthcoming in terms of the fact that the only way you can get true full service management is to hire a full-time manager. First eight years and two months to the day of my career, I was an onsite manager. I still have information tattooed in my head, and I left that gig in 1996 In portfolio management, as you said, you have a manager who's managing anywhere from seven to 10 associations, sometimes less, sometimes more, and they have to be able to balance out the interests of everybody, and the challenge becomes there's not really.. there's a lot of wrong ways you can manage a community, but to me, what I've kind of settled on is the only real effective way to manage a community is the board and management have to get together, you have to define and then manage the expectations of what can be done for the slice of time that you're buying of the manager,

Julie Adamen: 5:59

that's exactly right, and you are buying a slice of time, as Ralph and I. He just told me before we got on air that saying our only widget is time in the community management industry, that's all we have is time. That came from a boss of his from the 90s, 2000s

Rolf Crocker: 6:15

early 2000s

Julie Adamen: 6:17

That's right. And I was looking at some of the stuff he'd put together for me, and I noticed that our speaking gigs have kind of melded together, because I use Widget of Time, and that time is the only widget all the time, so you know, Rolf, I think the biggest problem it seems to me is management companies, and I know I used to work for a guy who did this all the time, he would say, he would say, I get the contract, and then we'll worry about how to manage it well, that's kind of a business truism, right? But still, that's like, huh, deer in the headlights, because if the association, which maybe is only paying $1,000 a month for full service management,

Russell Munz: 6:54

really

Julie Adamen: 6:54

low, they don't realize that they only get how much of that widget a week,

Rolf Crocker: 6:59

however much they're willing to pay for, because you have to pay a manager in order to give them a wage that works. There's a certain minimum amount of associations they will need to manage to make the number work. In portfolio world, time is finite, it's not infinite. So that effort up front about defining and managing the expectations, and people will say, well, we're a smaller association, we can't afford X, but if you think about it, just in terms of pure business practice, the same basic work goes into managing any association, whether they're five units, 50 units, 500 units, or 5000 units. It's the number of board meetings CACM, California Association of Community Managers, 30 years ago did a time motion study of what it takes to prepare for travel to when we used to travel before COVID, attend, travel back, and disseminate from a board meeting. Time motion, soup to nuts, is eight to 10 hours, just for board meeting prep. To prep, get there, have the meeting, come back, do your action item list, site inspections. If you have to look at what's in the file, what was noticed previously, site inspector goes out, looks for violations, looks for maintenance issues, comes back, uploads it to the system, and gets the letters out, that can easily be three to four hours, and by the end, you have an accounting cost, so by the time you put all of that in, that's the same basic work, regardless of time, so, or regardless of size, rather, really understanding up front between the manager and, or, the management company and the association, it really requires a great deal of candor up front. What do we need from you as a manager? And then, what does the manager need from you in terms of, you know, what your list

Julie Adamen: 8:35

is? Rolf, would it be? Do you think it would be helpful for board members who, let's say, okay, they're going out to bid, let's just say, for sake of argument, they're currently self-managed, but they've got their financials farmed out, and they're not too big, maybe they might be 150 units, maybe. And they want, let's take a look at getting a management company. Would you suggest that they have a listing of things they believe they want from their management company? Would that be helpful to you as a management company owner?

Rolf Crocker: 9:03

I think that can be helpful, but one thing to realize, most of my colleagues in the industry who are doing what I'm doing, we've been doing it long enough to where we all do the basic stuff all relatively well. We know how to prepare for meetings, we know how to deal with vendors, we know how to do the accounting piece, so all that stuff is fairly locked in. There are times where we'll get an RFP, a request for proposal, from an association that they got online somewhere. It'll be 50 questions asking all kinds of arcane things that are kind of just stuff that we do anyways.

Julie Adamen: 9:35

Do you even answer all when they send you those? I've seen those, by the way. Do you answer all? Do you answer all of them, or think, "Oh yeah,

Rolf Crocker: 9:41

we did receive one a couple years ago where the cover letter said, well, we view the association as being like the Supreme Court, and management is basically being the clerk of the court. Needless to say, we respectfully declined that one, because if I wanted to clerk for a Supreme Court justice, I. Gone to law school after all, and so going from self-managed to professionally managed on any level, that's always a challenge, because you're coming into a completely new space in terms of responsibility. But for those that are portfolio managed currently, the thing, another analogy I would give is that you know, if you, if full service management is only having a full-time manager on some level, portfolio management is still partial self-management from volunteers, because if the association could pay for all the services that needed to get done, then they would have hired that person. So, there is sort of a push-me-pul me working with volunteer boards to understand there are things that management can and wants to do and is able to do, but there are other things that, if the board wants, is willing to engage to help with some of the work, then that could actually save the money from the billable and the reimbursable piece, because it really is still kind of this push me, pull me of trying to figure out what the balance is between board and association, and I've joked for years, if I could develop a 29 degrees of compatibility eHarmony site between board members and management companies. I'd be Dr. Neil Clark Warren, I'd have my tweed suit

Julie Adamen: 11:08

patches on the elbows, yeah,

Rolf Crocker: 11:10

instead of, you know, just slogging it out in the trenches. But

Julie Adamen: 11:14

the funny thing is, is that when you go to bid, I, as a lot of you out there know, I used to work for a management company, it's been years 30 wait wait, 3030, years, 30 years. So, there we are. So, 30 years since I worked for a management company, but all of my managing experience was with, as a management company executive, and then as an on-site manager. But I used to go and do a lot of the presentations, you know, to go and, because I was real good at the sales part, right? It seems to me that the hard part of all of this, from dealing it from the management company perspective, which, of course, throws the board for a loop, because this isn't their discipline, they're the volunteer, right? And so that we come in, we're like, okay, this board that I'm bidding to right now, they're really engaged, they're gonna, they're gonna talk to homeowners, they're not going to be hiding in their homes, they're going to be out, you know, kissing babies and shaking hands with the homeowners, which a good board member should be, I mean, pretty well versed politically to keep everything on an even keel in an association. And then that board leaves and a new board comes in, and they're like, well, what do you mean, what do you do for this money, you know? And I always thought that was the most difficult thing, because then you have to go in on the back end for people that have no idea what you do, and all of a sudden want you to do a whole lot more for the same amount of money. Just as an aside, way, way back in the day, in the late 80s, when I started in this industry, I worked for a company called Mercury Property Management, and it was based in Orange County is now defunct, but because we did everything for one low price, that was always the motto, but because we, and all management companies, do this, they do charge extra for, you know, insurance claims and hourly for over things over and above. They always thought that was one of the biggest challenges we had.

Rolf Crocker: 13:00

I think that's still a challenge, because if you're going for me, for bidding an association for a portfolio managed client, this candid conversation we have, like, a 20, we get RFPs, we actually send out like a 25 question questionnaire, where we're asking questions to try to get a feel for what the workload is, if they have amenities, if there are condominiums, there's more moving parts to do that, so it takes more customer service hours to do that. If they have a clubhouse that needs to be managed, if they expect somebody to be on site one day a week, all of those things play into it. To do it all for one low price, at that point you'd have to estimate what your copies are and what your other billables would be, so then you have to pad the contract by probably 20 30% like a contingency, basically, for what I do, what we do, and what a lot of the folks in the industry do. We have a candid conversation about routine services, things we know we do month in, month out, and that's the flat fee, but anything that has a beginning and an end, major project oversight, not just litigation, but any legal work, a governing document revision project could easily take dozens of hours of management time that is not accounted for in the monthly flat fee. So, in a fair exchange of value for the work being performed, those are things that have to be reimbursable outside of the contract, because you don't know if it's going to be one hour, 10 hours, or 30 hours. There has to be again a candid conversation about the understanding that the stuff we do month in and month out, the number of meetings, walkthroughs, vendor management, customer service, all that stuff, that's flat fee, because nobody really wants to nickel and dime. Well, guy I worked for was famous for nickel and diming, and boards hate that, and I respect that everything within the price,

Julie Adamen: 14:44

exactly, exactly, and I think that's, you know, that boards often have a heart, and I get it, I totally get it, they have a hard time understanding that, you know, especially if it's a 55 and better community like I live in, but there are people here who I mean. Mean, I, I'm in my late 60s, and so, but I have people that are my friends who've been retired since they were 52 because they were, they were government workers, typically that's because they're able to get out there and do that. My sister retired not far from that age, and I'm like, all right, I missed that. I think an entrepreneur, you missed that, but it's, you know, and if you have people who are in their 70s, or and then on the board that I'm actually running for the board this year, I don't know what I'm thinking, but I'm doing it.

Rolf Crocker: 15:26

We not had this conversation, do we need another intervention?

Julie Adamen: 15:29

No, we do it. No, they do need.. there's a big thing coming up, and I want to be a part of it, because I'm going to be living here for another 20 years. So, anyway, is that people who've been retired, and God love you, I wish I'd been retired for 20 years, but if they've been retired for 20 years, they retired in your 50s and you're now in your 60s and 70s, you're way far off of what the cost is to manage and to the cost of labor, the cost of paper, I mean, we could go and gas, though gas went down, and you know, right now, where we are right now, folks, is we're in May. What was this? We're in March of 2026 so right now the Iran kerfuffle is going on, so gas is kind of spiked. It depends on where you are now. Rolf is in California. You got to think, how much gas is a gallon in California right now, and we get this, the area of Phoenix, the greater Phoenix area, gets its gas from California, so their gas, regular, is five plus a gallon right now. Now I'm down in Tucson, and we have our own pipelines that come up from Texas, so ours, ours is up, but it's not that much, so that's things people don't think about, and especially if you've been out of the workforce for a while, these things could come as a shock.

Russell Munz: 16:44

Well,

Rolf Crocker: 16:44

labor costs, in particular, that's another one. Oh, for you guys, in 2019 there was a minimum exempt salary amount for managers,

Julie Adamen: 16:52

and managers are exempt employees, people.

Rolf Crocker: 16:54

They should be exempt employees for a lot of good reasons, that would be another whole topic of conversation. But in 2019 the minimum amount was like 45,500 Well, now in California, in 2026 the new minimum exempt salary amount is $70,320 So you're talking almost a 50% increase of cost, and everybody wants certified, caring, competent managers who stick around and don't rotate, and put them in a situation where they're having to manage multiple accounts to retain them to do that work. You've got to be able to pay them a wage that's competitive, so all of these things come into play in terms of having developed the pricing, and again, we could probably do a whole nother podcast on labor pricing and where AI and offshoring, and all of that stuff would come into play, but

Julie Adamen: 17:44

we, Robert and I, have touched on that a few times, because I see that I, we talk about that. So, yeah, go ahead. I'm sorry, go ahead.

Rolf Crocker: 17:50

Yeah, but really, the goal becomes ultimately everything's predicated upon trust in the relationship between the management company, the manager, and the board of directors. It's very difficult to build. It's very easy to break. I believe it was Gandhi who said once trust is breached, everything else is viewed with suspicion.

Unknown: 18:09

Yep,

Julie Adamen: 18:10

actually, and our entire, our entire country is operating on that now. You know, after the last six years,

Rolf Crocker: 18:15

sure, we all operate on that, right? Is so critical to making it work, and as you mentioned previously, there is a bit of a tra, there's a transitory nature of board service where you, a single annual meeting can turn the whole board upside down, and so it's never a one and done conversation, it's a continual conversation of not just doing the work but doing the educational piece to get boards plugged in, which is why I love this podcast, I love that you and Robert and Kevin are doing this because the educational side of the boards who want to be educated, who don't come into it thinking they know it all, but they're willing to have a humility about them and be teachable to say, "Hey, let me get some information that could help me do what I do better. What you do here is in service to that and super helpful, and Lord knows we need so much more of this.

Julie Adamen: 19:01

Well, and I appreciate that, and yeah, I believe it is as well. So, with that note, let's do.. we are going to take a commercial break here. So, we're going to take just a few minutes off, and so everyone, hang on. We're going to have a word from our sponsor, and we'll be right back.

Russell Munz: 19:15

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Julie Adamen: 19:46

Hi everybody, and we're back with Rolf Crocker, the CEO of Omni Community Management in Northern California, and this has been such an interesting conversation, because Ralph, having been in the industry a little bit less than I have. Have, but not by much, but a slightly different trajectory than I took while I was in management. So he is looking at it from a management company owner's perspective. And when we were on the break, we were talking about things that boards to this day, and from way back in the day when I was doing this, they're always like, can't we, can't we, you know, interview or talk to the person who's going to manage us, and so let's talk a little bit about that. That's so, as we said earlier, folks in the podcast, that most community associations that are managed by a management company, their community is part of a portfolio of communities that one manager manages. That's where you are, because if you could afford to have an onsite full-time manager, you do that because that would obviously be the best thing for everybody, because they're they're at your beck and call, but they also have all of your interests at heart and no one else's, because they're not being pulled in several directions, but financially just not feasible for the vast majority of community associations. So, Ralph, I'm a board member, and I would like to know why can't I interview, you know, the managers that might be our manager.

Rolf Crocker: 21:06

That's a great question, and I would get back to the eHarmony 29 dimensions of compatibility compatibility conversation. It's most portfolio management companies do not have a bench of people that they can just put out there for an individual association to select, most companies have managers that are already managing a portfolio, so I know at least how we look at this. We look at this from several different angles in terms of who we think would be a best fit. Manager is already managing a number of associations, do they have quarterly meetings by, you know, every other month or every every month, monthly meeting.

Julie Adamen: 21:44

Do you mean their, their current portfolio? Oh,

Rolf Crocker: 21:46

yes. How does

Julie Adamen: 21:47

it align? But, and the potential new client, and the new client,

Rolf Crocker: 21:50

right? So, I've had several tours of duty, as Julia alluded to. Been an on-site manager, I've been a portfolio manager, been a high-rise manager, I've been an executive for a couple of management companies. Also, spent time on the vendor side in HOA construction and HOA banking. My first tour of duty in a portfolio management situation, I was managing 10 associations. If you're familiar with Northern California, from Geyerville all the way down to Redwood City, with monthly meetings and no administrative help, and this, but it was shared by the company owner, so I probably got her maybe 5% of the time

Julie Adamen: 22:25

way before Zoom. Everybody, these were not

Rolf Crocker: 22:27

Zoom. I was driving to Geyserville and to Novato and three associations in San Francisco and all the way down the peninsula, and it just is not sustainable because again there's a bandwidth problem in terms of what a manager can reasonably do within a period of time, and it's well settled in business circles that span of control is recognized. What, how many operations can one person reasonably control without losing bandwidth? That number is seven to 10, which means a manager can manage seven to 10 associations, a supervisor can manage seven to 10 employees, direct reports. Beyond that, you can get help, but still the bandwidth thins out to where it would not be effective. So, long-winded answer, but to say that, so when we're talking with a client and they want to interview the person that is managing them, we, we oftentimes will allow them the opportunity to interview who we think would be the best fit, but it's not like, oh, we don't like this person, bring me another, because at that point we are, we don't have extra people that we have in rotation. So on our side, we're looking at the number of meetings they're doing, what is the geography, if they have to travel on site, you know, what is the personality of that particular manager

Julie Adamen: 23:41

and board and board, you have to mesh those, have to mesh.

Rolf Crocker: 23:46

We try to make a good faith estimate, but one of the things that we're able to do is we have a phenomenal executive team and a great senior management team that when they meet with the clients, they will get a feel for who they think would be best, and there are times with, and they're fully involved in that process for the first 90 days, 120 days, that doesn't seem like it's working. We're happy to look in and see if we can put somebody else in there, but to select it up front, in terms of being able to choose, that becomes a difficult proposition for most portfolio management companies, because it really depends on what the availability is in a particular manager's portfolio, and what we think the fit is going to be.

Julie Adamen: 24:24

Yeah, and you know the same thing is in onsite world. So, if you're an association that is large enough to be able to afford a full-time or even part-time onsite manager, and you are with a management company, it's kind of the same thing, because I get this a lot on my recruiting end of the industry, I do recruiting of typically large scale managers, that type of thing. I'll tell the boards, you know, that you know there's not going to be 12 candidates, you're great, but, but the pool is such that if I can bring you two that are qualified, I'm not meaning people off the street, but two that are qualified, I will be thrilled. World, and that's in the upper end, where people are getting paid well into six figures, well into six figures. It's just that the market is such that it's the worst I've ever seen, and I know for management companies, they.. it's.. I don't think most board members recognize that the average life of a portfolio manager is about.. I mean, I'm in the year and a half world right now, that's

Rolf Crocker: 25:23

2018

Russell Munz: 25:25

to 36

Julie Adamen: 25:25

months, because, and you board members out there, you know how difficult it is to be a board member. Think about it on the other end of the people who are taking what can be abusive, you know, behavior from high,

Rolf Crocker: 25:41

high emotional impact, high motion. Every board meeting is of job performance review.

Julie Adamen: 25:45

It is, and it's very tough. I mean, and I know you guys know it as board members, and I've been a board member several times over the years, like a crazy person, but it's true, though. It's there's your one removed, these people are your peers, that person's the employee over there, and so they have a tendency to be treated with somewhat more disdain from people who are the, the high maintenance folks. Y'all know who I'm talking about in your association. If you're sitting next to them, don't look at them, but it's a very difficult industry to be in, and there is, there is a lot of churn, no matter where you are, except in the very, very top echelon of golf, food and beverage, large scale associations, those people, because the job becomes much more like a city manager, and even those folks, their average life is only about five years. I mean, there are folks that have been the gala managers, our place has been here 18 years, I think, highly unusual, but that's she's been here since I think that went from developer to homeowner control. The thing is, the delicate dance that you do as board members, and Rolf does as the management company side of it. My best advice to the board members out there is that recognize that it is a dance and recognize that your community needs to mesh in with the person who is going to be your portfolio manager. You may not always have the choice of who it is, but typically the management companies try to get the best fit in there, because it behooves them as well. You know, if you're just shoved into the next person who's up, well, you know, unless that person is really good, that could not, that could be terrible, but the management companies don't want to lose your business, even though they know there's going to be churn, they don't want to. So, go ahead, Rolf. Sorry, I went off. You're all

Rolf Crocker: 27:29

good. I think all that gets into it. But about that delicate dance, I mean, it just, if we're to jump up to like a 35,000 foot level, I mean, this is a whole nother podcast we can do. But a brief history of HOAs at the end of the 1950s early 1960s housing developments in post World War Two were these sprawling concrete jungles. So, the Federal Housing Administration, on a $300,000 grant, took a three year study to look at these things called homes associations, and in October of 1964 they published a book called The Homes Association Handbook Technical Bulletin 50, published by the Urban Land Institute. This is a 408 page manual that was developed to give to developers to say go forth and build housing that actually has volunteer leadership, communal living, green space amenities to try to have a different vibe than these sprawling concrete jungles that were appearing in the, in the late 40s and not the 1950s

Julie Adamen: 28:28

Think of Los Angeles, yeah,

Rolf Crocker: 28:29

right. So, from October of 1964 to 1970 we went from 500 homes associations to 10,000 in little less than five, little less than six years today, in California alone, there are 57,000 homeowners associations in California. Nationally, there's like 370,000 homeowners associations. You're talking about millions of dollars in home value, billions of dollars in real estate, trillions of dollars in financials, all predicated upon a relationship of volunteer directors who are governing their peers and willing to serve as fiduciaries on behalf of the whole and management companies who are the professionals who are certified and educated and caring and want to help them do what they're help them manage their responsibilities, because at the end of the day, you can delegate authority, but you can't delegate responsibility. So, recognizing that unique dynamic and doing everything we can to support it to make it better is everything. Because talk about something to fail, you'll hear people defund the HOA. It's like, okay, great. Tell me, any municipality that if you defund the HOA, that they're going to want to come in the local city public works and take over the streets and the drives and the sewers and the lighting.

Julie Adamen: 29:45

They won't,

Rolf Crocker: 29:47

you can't even build in most municipalities without an HOA, because they don't want to maintain the structure. This whole thing, most, most of us couldn't spell HOA when we showed up, right? So this really is, I think, Evan. Kenzie, who wrote the book Privatopia, who was no fan of HOAs. He says HOAs are an experiment that became an institution, and I think that's accurate. I think we're still trying to find our way, but the next person says they want to defund it, it's like, great, go to your next city council meeting when they're approving a subdivision, and tell them you don't want HOAs anymore, and see if they stop approving them, they're not going anywhere, so it behooves all of us together to figure out, and there's again now there's a lot of wrong ways, there's a lot of right ways, but it behooves us to work together, because everything rises and falls on volunteer leadership, and I tell our our board members, you are truly doing the Lord's work, because none of this would work. It is the truth. Without you, everything's predicated on this relationship. It's not going to be perfect. We're human with human condition, right? So, a lot of this gets down to, yeah, Julia mentioned politics. You know, I hate politics. Well, welcome to HOA World, because,

Julie Adamen: 30:59

well, welcome to all the world. Yeah, really.

Rolf Crocker: 31:01

Decisions have two components: an economic component and a political component. The economic component is a math exercise, right? You try to figure out, you have to repair something, you have to get something done, you get the price. The political cost, being able to navigate the political waters of a local homeowners association to try to do the right thing and not have your neighbors despise you for taking swings that are necessary on behalf of the whole, that is everything.

Julie Adamen: 31:27

It is everything, and without the board, it's the truth. And right as we're going to land the plane, I'm going to give you some information. Board members, I want you to put this in your hat and think about this, because this was mind-boggling when I heard it. There are about 2 million community association board members in the United States, compared to about 500,000 elected officials at the federal, state, county, and city level. That's a four to one ratio. Board members have the greatest impact on the day-to-day lives of people than any elected official, you people in your association, so if that either doesn't make you think,"Wow, I'm doing a great job, or"What am I doing here? It's kind of.. it's or both. That's what this.. this is our world. And those of us who are on the.. on the.. I've always been on the management side, the consultant side, for a long, long time now. And I'm.. but having been in all three positions, I can tell you it's absolutely wonderful industry, but it could not work without the volunteers. So, with that, everyone, I think we've about gone to our time limit. We're going to take off now. So, if anyone wants any more information on this, you can go check our show notes at HOA insights.org or give us a call at the phone number that you'll also find on there, Ralph. Any more words of wisdom?

Rolf Crocker: 32:42

God bless you for your service. Don't lose hope, because were it not for you, standing post on the wall, a lot of bad, lot of things worse. People say it can't get worse. No, it can always be worse. So, having civic-minded board members serving is everything for your property values, for your neighbors, and for the industry at large, so you know, keep hope alive, just you know, you got to keep hope alive.

Julie Adamen: 33:06

Couldn't have said it any better. All right, everybody, have a great day. Thank you for watching.

Announcer: 33:09

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