Russell Munz: 0:00

But there's a couple of items you can look at in the financial reports to pick out, and then have a discussion at the board meeting, and I think that's not just falling on the treasurer's role, but all board members should be looking at the financial reports in order to have a good discussion and ask some questions, especially if you see some things that are, you know, awry, and when I say awry, it might be a line item on your expenses is way over budget, and you might want to dig into that a little bit further in the meeting.

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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.

Robert Nordlund: 0:44

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I'm Robert Nordland, and I'm here today for episode number 165 with a repeat guest, Russell Munz of Community Financials. His company serves associations on a national level, providing financial management and other remote services. One of his recent newsletters was about preventing fraud. I thought it was good, and I wanted to share that message with our podcast audience. Now, if Russell Munns or Community Financials sounds familiar, it's also maybe because Community Financials is one of our podcast sponsors, because they believe in encouraging and equipping board members in the hard work they do, leading their associations successfully, and that has to do with today's episode, successfully into the future. Now, if you're a new listener, we are here weekly with episodes to help you with the hard work of being a board member. Last week, for example, was episode 164 with CAI Rocky Mountain chapter board member and homeowner Peter Isacovic on how to be a good steward of your association's cash by double checking that your regular service providers are working cost effectively and not taking advantage of you. In his experience, it's worth checking on a periodic basis, so no one takes advantage of your association. Now you can catch prior episodes on our website, on any major COPPA podcast platform, or on our YouTube channel. And if you like the show, by all means subscribe and join us in our mission to improve board member leadership all across the country, one episode and one association at a time. Well, those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA Insights mug that I have here on my desk. I got that from our merch store, which you can browse through from our HOA insights.org website or the link in the show notes. In addition to some board member merch for sale, we have some great free stuff there, like board member Zoom backgrounds that you can download for your next online meeting. Well, 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, or a question you'd like us to address, you can contact us at 805-203-3130 or course, email us at podcast at HOA insights.org And today's episode was inspired by one of those emails. It's a homeowner listener from Lake Tahoe who asked the board never talks about financial information, and they never publish the budget. I have no reason to be suspicious, but their lack of information makes me worry. Is that normal?

Russell Munz: 3:30

So, Russell, what can one do as a board member or a homeowner to minimize the chance of fraud at their association? I'll answer the question first from the listener, and it is normal that oftentimes homeowners don't get a lot of information from the board or the management company, and it is typical that they can see their ledger, but they can't see beyond that, except for maybe the budget meeting, and they can see what the budget is going to be, and what their next payment amount is going to be, but you know, a best practice, or better practice, is the board shares the, you know, the budget, I mean, the balance sheet, the budget, and the comparative income and expense report for a given period with the homeowners, maybe that's on a quarterly basis, on a semi-annual basis, or even just an annual basis. You can see how the association is spending the money

Robert Nordlund: 4:30

and see that you're on budget, and kind of see the money that's saved. And then you know, if you can see that there's not a lot of money in the balance sheet, then there's maybe going to be a special assessment if there's a big capital project that needs to get finished, so that's going to help, I think, the boards also with the communication around money, so that answers the question. So, what was next? Robert, yeah, let's. Follow up on that, though. My impression is that nature abhors a vacuum, right? So, that if the board isn't talking about it, then people like this homeowner from Tahoe - the homeowner is going to wonder, "Wow, our assessments just went up. What are they doing with all my money? And you've got to get ahead of that, and so the question is, How do you do that? Do you post it on the association's website? Do you say that every quarterly meeting we're going to show this information? What's the right amount of it being public yet being private?

Russell Munz: 5:40

All right, so a few things. One, we're talking in this case for about a homeowner, but there's plenty of boards that don't get financial reporting information on a consistent basis, or it's late, or you know, besides the fact that there's inaccuracies. So it happens also when the board is working with a vendor that just doesn't really have a good grasp of a county

Robert Nordlund: 6:01

got it when

Russell Munz: 6:02

we're talking about sharing information with homeowners, I specified two main reports to share and not over sharing things that could get the board in trouble, like you don't want to share the list of delinquent owners, which there you go, that could cause a lawsuit in a hurry, so what, when we're just taking a look at two main reports, and those can get saved to, like, a portal where it's just accessed by homeowners directly. In some cases, maybe that's available to the broader public. You know, Florida has some new laws around, you know, disclosure. So, but I would say, you know, the next thing you could do as a homeowner is to go to the board meetings, where they might be talking about this, and you know, yes, very much, go to the budget meeting, where they're talking about the numbers. You're probably going to see a presentation on what the actual numbers were and why they're going to be changing the dues in the coming year, and what the new budget would look like, and what that new dollar amount you're going to have to pay when you, when your dues are, you know, set for the coming fiscal year.

Robert Nordlund: 7:10

Can we even recommend that such a person might want to volunteer for the budget committee to help see balancing, maybe even fresh eyes, looking at what the expenses are, and being confronted with, we have $51,000 in reserves, and yeah, our roof has been leaking. We've heard that, but a new roof is going to cost a couple $100,000 Gee, we need to get ahead of this and start telling people that we're probably going to need a special assessment in the next year. Sometimes a pair of fresh eyes helps maybe light the board and make it more real to all the other homeowners. Is that part of the communication?

Russell Munz: 7:48

I think it's a good idea for a finance committee. Not many boards typically have this, especially smaller communities where there's not a larger pool of people that they can, you know, and you know, have volunteer into these new committees, but I think it is a good idea to get homeowner voices on that. If, if you don't have enough people that are interested in volunteering on a committee, again, maybe those voices can get heard at a board meeting. But I would also say that the reviewing the financial reports first and foremost needs to be a job by the entire elected board already oftentimes the financial reports go unread because the boards don't know what they're looking at, you know, some volunteers don't have an accounting, many volunteers don't have an accounting background, so and they get a stack of papers and they're busy in their lives and it's just, you know, it reminds them of tax season, I think, and they get all PTSD, and it's like, okay, what are we, what are we focusing on now? Maybe they'll skim through, but there's a couple of items you can look at in the financial reports to pick out, and then have a discussion at the board meeting, and I think that's not just falling on the treasurer's role, but all board members should be looking at the financial reports in order to have a good discussion and ask some questions, especially if you see some things that are, you know, awry, and when I say awry, it might be a line item on your expenses is way over budget, and you might want to dig into that a little bit further in the meeting.

Robert Nordlund: 9:16

I like that, Russell. We were talking before we started recording, and we have actually a number of, I think, our listeners know we have a number of different satellite offices across the country, and they have separate budgets. We want them responsible for what they're doing, and we have a fractional CFO that assembles that and then interprets it for us, saying this office, these three offices are high on this. These four offices are low on that, and he presents us with a color-coded summary. What, 15th of each month, so we don't have to look at volumes of numbers, we can see that, okay, these are the things that matter. Here and we can have a nice summary of all that information, and I think that's what you're talking about here. Just make sure that the board is looking at it and understands this key number is going up, and that's good reserve balance. This key number that's going down, and that's good delinquencies. We're talking about something like that, where the board members are all on the same page,

Russell Munz: 10:22

absolutely. So, I on our website, I've got a download - it's the top four financial reports for a busy board that doesn't have time to look at all this, but you're absolutely right, it's the same report that I just talked about, the that we would share with homeowners, the budget, the balance sheet, and then the comparative income and expense report. Then you know the board would look at the delinquencies also, right? And then they would probably look at bank statements as well, or a bank reconciliation report that helps to prove some of the financial helps as a safeguard, right? So that we can talk about that a little bit more as we go along,

Robert Nordlund: 11:02

and then you said something important. You've got a nice little document that talks about that on your website, and I can imagine people are wondering, and your website is Community financials.com right?

Russell Munz: 11:13

Correct.

Robert Nordlund: 11:14

Fantastic. Okay. All right. We advertise this episode as fraud, and I think we're talking about just good principles.

Russell Munz: 11:23

Before we get going further, we're just on the heels of the biggest HOA fraud in US history, where there was a- is three weeks old - former President and her husband pleaded guilty in Miami-Dade court to $11 million Gee,

Robert Nordlund: 11:42

take a taking$11 million from homeowners,

Russell Munz: 11:47

so prosecutors originally tracked about $2 million when they filed in 2022 and the final number came in at over $11 million During, you know, over the course of several years that they did this, it hit roughly 18,000 residents on and it's, and it was at the Hamex HOA, and so the president was sentenced to seven years in prison, plus seven years probation, and it's the largest prison sentence ever for an HOA board president, United States, and her husband, seven years probation, $50,000 restitution, and must forfeit a $1.2 million property purchased with the stolen funds, and the way that they bid it was sham vendors, inflated contracts, the husband posed as a vendor, and the president also used HOA credit cards for personal items, also hired community security guards to harass rival association members, so and then all of the documents that of this fraud were hidden and hid somewhere, you know, 50 miles away.

Robert Nordlund: 12:59

Now, How many years we're talking about here,

Russell Munz: 13:02

I'm not sure, but it was over a period, you know, a large period of time, and I've done 23 case studies of fraud, and this same community is in my 23 case studies. In 2016 I was site, I cited them as an AP and AR clerk theft that had occurred, and the board never fixed the underlying control problem, and then this happened again at a magnitude that's larger.

Robert Nordlund: 13:30

One thing that's on my mind is, is this an oversight problem or is this a personality problem? Are there bad operators? Is that the problem? Who will find a way to steal, or is it more commonly there are gaps, blind spots? So, is it the person, or is it the process that leads to fraud at an association?

Russell Munz: 13:56

It's a mix of both, but there's not a profile of someone to suspect. But from my case studies, there was a treasurer who stole 58,000 explained it as being too, too busy doing all the work on the board. Another treasurer who paid himself $51,000 and told the president he deserved to be compensated. An on-site manager who explained 308,000 and ATM withdrawals at casinos, and so have been used the card by mistake.

Robert Nordlund: 14:25

Wait, wait, 308,000 and that's a mistake.

Russell Munz: 14:28

Also, they were in charge of doing their own payroll, so they, you know, got extra checks and bonuses and stuff like that from using payroll software themselves. And then a condo president who said she did it because she had two kids and her husband lost his job, and then another treasurer said he needed it for his kids' private school, and then there was another board member who needed it because her business was failing and she had health issues, so some had prior convictions, but most didn't, and the lesson isn't to. Screen better, it's design the system so trust isn't required.

Robert Nordlund: 15:04

Got it. And I'm just thinking, I think was yesterday my wife came into my office, as he often does, and says, Okay, do you know, did you make an $8 purchase on Apple? I just got an invoice that I can't match, it's like geez Louise, $8 you know? I didn't think I bought anything from Apple for$8 and so she went away mumbling. That's what you're talking about, having control, so you know where your money's going.

Russell Munz: 15:37

Yeah, and sure, part of that control is transparency. We get into that, I think one of the next things that we talk about is, is this some sophisticated scheme, and I would say it's almost never - it's writing checks, people writing checks to themselves, and not showing the bank statements, adding their name to vendor lists, signing the president's name, sometimes maybe two two, you know, if it's two people have to sign the check, they forge the second one, and then one, you know, and then other people who do these things, they destroy the paper records, so there's a couple of ways that it gets more sophisticated that I've seen, and that is some perpetrators, the treasurer showed the board a fictitious, a fictional set of financials, and the only the real ones tied to the bank. Another case where the person doctored the bank statements, and then the next one is a controller at a management company who doctored the financial reports, but didn't provide visibility over they didn't provide bank statements with the financial reports, and they did not provide visibility over the bank transactions, and they did not include a bank reconciliation report, and that resulted in $2 million being over $2 million being stolen, so from numerous associations.

Robert Nordlund: 17:01

Yeah, Russell, what I hear you saying is it's not some brilliant evil mastermind that is going to find a way. It's usually something rather simple and rather stupid. And my wife follows true crime type things, and she was telling me recently about some guy, some idiot criminal who ordered his duct tape and shovel and a couple of buckets and some chlorine and things like that from Amazon, so there was a real trace, and she says a lot of the people doing this, criminals are unsophisticated, they're knuckleheads, and they just have something they want to do, and they find a weak link, and they just make it happen. So, yeah, it's just fascinating. Well, it's good to know that it's not necessarily our bad thing that we had a bad elected board member, just fundamentally character-wise, but it

Russell Munz: 18:03

can be a board member or it could be a manager, and you know, for self-managed communities or boards that trust the treasurer, or it could be a manager or management company accounting person, and the, you know, the scale oftentimes with management companies that they can then steal from multiple associations, which usually the amount stolen is larger. However, the case I just stated at the Hammocks, that was such a large.. it's the second largest HOA in Florida. It was so large that it was able to compete with those numbers.

Robert Nordlund: 18:39

I'm not sure that's a.. I'm gonna say that I'm not sure that's a competition we want to know about.

Russell Munz: 18:43

Yeah, no, I'd say that the general cause of this is one person who has access to the funds and control over the records with no oversight and limited backup or explanation, and that's the formula in every case. Break any one of those three, and yeah, there's fraud, usually doesn't happen, it gets caught earlier.

Robert Nordlund: 19:06

Got it? Okay, so we get that. I wrote that down. One person access to access

Russell Munz: 19:11

to funds, control over records, and no oversight or limited backup. And then there's some basic safeguards that could be put into place to stop that,

Robert Nordlund: 19:21

but okay. Well, let's do that. But at this point in time, I'm looking at the clock. We've been on a roll here, so we need to take a quick break to hear from one of our generous sponsors. After which, we'll be back to hear more about what can you do to prevent the one person access to funds, no oversight, and control over records, the solutions to make your association a more difficult target for fraud.

Russell Munz: 19:49

Is your HOA or condo self-managed, and you don't want to work as hard volunteering? Are you full managed and looking to save money, or are you looking to split the accounting from a manager's role for better service, like community financial? Handle the monthly accounting for you. We collect dues, pay bills, produce financial reports, include portals, and help with other support services, all while providing awesome service. We love the opportunity to help you make your community accounting stress-free with our industry-leading systems and expert team. Visit our website, communityfinancials.com to learn more.

Robert Nordlund: 20:20

And we're back. Well, Russell, right before the break, you talked about what are the basic, the fertile ground to allow fraud, but let's turn to what are the basic safeguards that a board can do to prevent or to minimize the chance of fraud at their association.

Russell Munz: 20:38

What we're really talking about here is a term called internal controls, and it's the same term that the association CPA or auditor uses. And internal controls are the policies, procedures, and systems that safeguard the association's money, keep the books honest, and make sure no single person can move funds without independent oversight. I think of internal controls in three layers mapped to the life cycle of money, so you've got layer one, which is money coming in, and so you don't want people paying in cash, no co-mingling, so separate bank accounts in the association's name and a separate reserve account, and then when possible, a lock box or online payment option, so funds flow directly to the association's bank account, never through a board member or manager's hands or personal bank account, and then two, the next layer is the money going out payments, so use a system, not a checkbook, a lone board member with a checkbook and no oversight and no audit trail is the highest risks set up in this entire space. It's exactly the setup behind half of my case studies, and any modern bill approval and payment system is dramatically safer. So I would say also lock up checks, better yet don't use paper checks at all. Segregate duties, the person who approves the bill isn't the person cutting the check, and online bill approval, or one two board members approve before it gets paid. It could be a manager and a board member, or two board members, but that way you have some checks and balances, and that alone, that single control probably would have eliminated 15 of the 23 case studies that I looked at, and then, if you do use a more sophisticated bank that specializes with HOAs, they have something that talks about positive pay, where the bank has a way of comparing the checks and a lot of electronic payments for clearing against a pre-approved list of authorized transactions for your association, so it prevents check fraud, and then bills over a certain threshold require, you know, make sure you acquire, you know, require additional like approval if you're not doing a two board member approval right now, and you only want to do it, you know, one person doesn't want to, you know, doesn't have the time to do it. Okay, anything over $500 you do have to approve it anyway. So that's a good one. And then I would say, watch for relatives as vendors. So one pattern that shows up repeatedly, including in the Hammocks case, where the president's husband proposed as a vendor, is payments to a relative for work at inflated prices. If a vendor relationship feels too cozy, the bill's almost always higher, and then independent bill review catches this, and make sure that there's a conflict of interest disclosures are made at the board level when discussing vendors, so that it's known to everybody that you know Bill is your brother-in-law, and you're advocating for Bill to, you know, do the roof repair, so some, that's the the next layer, and then the other layer is oversight, unless you have got questions on the first two that I mentioned,

Robert Nordlund: 23:48

that's a lot there, and I'm realizing that, because it's my job to summarize this for the show notes, and so I'm probably going to re-listen to this, and I think that was important stuff, but all under the idea of internal controls, How would you, how could you, how should you have locked the barn door before the horse got out? What are the simple, reasonable things? And you talked about earlier, you talked about having the board as a whole look at the financial reports on a monthly basis and understand where the money's going. Why are things different? So that's exactly right. That

Russell Munz: 24:22

leads to the last layer, which is the oversight layer. Monthly financials, those need to be looked at monthly, right? And so you want to look at the comparative income and expense report versus budget. It shows the variances, and you can see if you're over budget on a line item, it's a conversation starter at the board meeting. Why are we over budget by 25% or double? The next one is banks. Bank,

Robert Nordlund: 24:52

let me slow you down a little bit. I like that, if, but it maybe it depends on the line item, because if you're. Over budget on water, I bet you have a broken sprinkler pipe, and you're just.. it

Russell Munz: 25:05

happens more often than you would.. would I think that's one of the biggest things that happens in this business is water bills are inflated. People weren't looking at the water bills, they just looked at it monthly, when instead of like cumulatively, and the water bill was double, triple, because somebody, you know, tree trimmers truck backed up over a pipe, and nobody could see it, and, or, you know, something like that happened.

Robert Nordlund: 25:31

Yeah. No, I like that. So that's one thing. It's another thing, if all of a sudden the pool service is double what it was last month, and you wonder what's happening there, and then you realize, oh, we miscoded the pool heater to operating, and it should have been reserves, something like that, but that's the oversight that you're talking about. Why is this wrong? Why is this different?

Russell Munz: 25:54

Ask questions, why? So those are that's the way to flag, you know, why you're over budget, and it might just be because might not be anything sinister, right? Might just be that the payment came due in one month, instead of being, you know, spread out over entire years, so it just looks inflated for that one month period. But it's worth looking into. The next thing I would say is you want to have a look at the bank statements, so the bank statements should be at the end of the financial report packet, so if you're not getting bank statements, you should ask why, and if they should be there, or

Robert Nordlund: 26:29

actual bank statements, not actual bank statements, not PD notes.

Russell Munz: 26:32

Yeah, it could be a PDF, because a lot of times things are being, you know, sent, but as long as you want to have a copy of the bank statement that shows the balances, the beginning, the balance at the end, and the transactions, and you know, some, some list of the transactions. Alternatively, if you're working with a more sophisticated accounting company or management company, there's a bank feed that comes directly into the software that lists the bank balances, the transactions you can click on check images and then you can either bank statements are in the system that come in straight from the from the bank, so they can't be doctored in any way, so that's a way to also take a look at what's happening, and some boards prefer that too, because there's fewer logins to different places to get information and a financial picture of the association. One last thing related to that is the bank reconciliation report, and that is the accounting system verif. This report proves that the money that's shown on the financial statement matches up with what's shown on the bank statements.

Robert Nordlund: 27:42

Okay, my question had to do with the bank statements, and it was like you suggested it was, it was at least partially resolved by that bank reconciliation, because if you've got someone who is using a PDF editor to change some numbers, maybe the total down at the bottom. People think that it's all summed up correctly, and they're monkeying with some money that they've taken out, and just editing the PDF. That would be hard to cover. It makes it much more complicated, and you convinced me that we're really not talking about a whole lot of sophistication here, and if you can increase the degree of difficulty forcing someone to make multiple adjustments and multiple edits in multiple places, they're going to foul up, they're going to screw up, and they're going to get caught. With so much banking being done online now, what value is there to having a couple of board members pop over to the bank online to confirm that they have, you know, $223,000 in reserves, 18,500 in checking, you know, just to see literally what the bank says, is it, and that may not match the month month end, but it's not going to be much different.

Russell Munz: 29:01

Yeah, you can absolutely do that, and especially for self-managed communities, where there's one person handling the money, maybe by adding a second person, you know, and they don't have any sophisticated system that pulls in all the bank feeds, right? Then then they can offer another login to another board member,

Robert Nordlund: 29:19

yeah, just to double-check to make sure the numbers are in the right range,

Russell Munz: 29:23

and like we talked about before, the other part of oversight is the board members have to read the reports that they get, they have to look through them, and you know, we, we do periodic webinars on how to read financial reports, there's information on online about that too, but ask the person that you're working with now, if you're working with an accounting company, or the treasurer, or the management company, to explain things to you, so that you can understand how to look at it. If this is new to you, I'd also say a couple other things for oversight, look at the age delinquency of the report, and also see. That make sure you know if you catch a board member who stopped paying their own dues, right? That's one way that some of that crime happened. Periodic CPA audit is a, is a good recommendation, a best practice. If it's not legally required in your state, maybe doing one every one to three years, and make sure that the audit firm sends out bank confirmations directly to the bank instead of just looking at what was given to them, that's also another way to double check. And then the here's a big one that often gets missed is we have board members who transition on a recurring basis because they either got burned, personal situation, and they have to leave the board, or because of the amount of time and the bylaws that they can be a board member. Make sure you're updating access at every board transition. When elections change, the board immediately update the bank access, online banking logins, debit card, and credit card holders, physical checkbooks, and remove departing members, access and collect their cards and checkbooks, and this is the most skipped control and self-managed communities, and one of the easiest ways for a former officer to keep accounts after they're off the board,

Robert Nordlund: 31:17

and that's a good point, because taking 100 bucks a month, who's going to miss that, and they may have even moved to Timbuktu by then, and just still taken a little bit from the association to make up again. I heard that sentiment for the hard work the board members are doing. Gee, Russell, what you're talking about here doesn't take a lot of time, and it's just the fundamental building blocks of being a board member. Now, you come in to being a board member, you're a volunteer, you don't have specific training. I know you and I have done a webinar for Association Reserves on how to read your financial reports. You have that on your website now. Other training is out there. Being a board member has some responsibilities, and so you need to know some of these things. It's good to know, but all of these things you're talking about just make absolute common sense. So, Russell, it's time now. Sure,

Russell Munz: 32:13

one last thing I wanted to say is that this applies to both operating bank accounts and your reserve bank accounts, the same oversight applies to both, and especially if your reserve accounts are used for cutting checks directly, because there's going to be transactions that go out of there, and you want to double check that the transactions are are legitimate there too, and oftentimes they're larger numbers.

Robert Nordlund: 32:38

Very good point, if you're paying the painter every month for a multi year project, or you have a multi year roof project, and you have some draws on that project. Yeah, by all means, that's a very good point. Those are much bigger numbers. You could slip an extra 10,000 out of that, and it could get lost in a $500,000 roof project, and there goes your money real quick. Well, gee, Russell, I do want to finish on a positive note. And again, what you're talking about is not outlandish, it's not a lot of time, it's just the financial controls that you would want as a homeowner, knowing what's happening at your association, someone keeping an eye on things. So I do want to thank you for being back on the program, sharing some insights on how to minimize fraud, but any closing thoughts to wrap this up at this time. Don't wait for a problem. Every case study that I looked at, the, you know, somebody was trustworthy until they weren't. Put the systems in place to make sure that everybody's doing the right thing. If something feels off, act fast, because they can become bigger, late, bigger numbers later. And the technology exists today to make this doable, so there's no excuse for using some of these better

Russell Munz: 34:00

processes or industry best practices, and instead just staying with a single signer, you know, check, checkbook, and bank statements only go into the treasurer. One last thing here is that Florida introduced criminal penalties for board members who are involved in fraud and embezzlement, and it may not be in your state yet, if you don't live in Florida, but that is something that I think, as these cases continue to propagate around the country with this new, these new statutes in Florida, I think that's going to be more and more of an issue for boards to be on the lookout for.

Robert Nordlund: 34:38

Yeah, well, Russell, before that law, wasn't it still illegal to steal?

Russell Munz: 34:44

It was, but I think the penalties are more defined at this point.

Robert Nordlund: 34:48

Got it. Okay, I was thinking, I hope that wasn't new. I thought that was bad behavior ever since the beginning of time. Well, stealing money,

Russell Munz: 34:56

stealing money, and profitable by something law. Awesome. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund: 35:00

something. When you were talking, it reminded me, based on my age, of Ronald Reagan, dealing with, I think, it was Mikhail Gorbachev, and the phrase was 'trust but verify, and that's a lot what we're talking about here. You want to trust the system, verify, and just, you know, work with your board members, trust them, but we verify here. Well, for more information on Russell and the entire team at Community Financials, as we said before, go to Community financials.com And we certainly hope you learn some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. Look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 35:46

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