ECHO EVENT HIGHLIGHTS

Professional Service Provider

LEFT: Echo Professional Service Provider members work feverishly to bring solutions to HOA boards and communities. At the end of the year, Echo brings together HOA industry friends to celebrate the triumphs of the year and gather in friendship over a special holiday meal. Leonel Soto of Heritage Bank of Commerce dressed for the festive occasion!

BELOW: In 2022, Echo launched its new “Club” Program at Rossmoor in Walnut Creek. Charlotte Allen of Socher Insurance and Adam Haney of CID Consortium spoke at two of the wellattended joint East Bay Resource Panel and Echo Club at Rossmoor meetings.

North Bay

Brimming with success, the North Bay Resource Panel usually reaches its maximum room capacity at Edgewater Condominium, the host venue. In 2022, there was a leadership change and long-term chairs Stephany Charles and Diane Kay passed the baton to Sarah Kelley, Kevin Boland, and Megan Mutimer. Echo is looking to bring in members to continue the legacy. BELOW: New members Jose Hernandez and Oran Egger of LandCare show their support of Echo education at the meeting.

Which approach is best when running a California homeowners association: high tech or high touch? Banks and retailers are technology’s perennial early adopters, improving customer experience with systems like checkout scanners and ATMs even as they reduce costs. In 2023, as hiring remains a major challenge for businesses, even laggards are doing whatever they can to reduce the need for staff.

When it comes to technology adoption, HOA boards have remained stubbornly high touch, preferring a more personal, human approach. But this demands customer service acumen and, crucially, time –something almost no board can spare. Unsurprisingly, critical items get dropped. An example: a quick search of “condominium” on the Secretary of State’s “Business Search” web page (bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/ business) shows about 10% of California HOAs out of status: corporate suspension, nonfiling of taxes, etc. These issues are costly and irritating in their own right (inability to open a bank account, reinstatement charges), but worse, they cause boards to be treated as unincorporated associations, meaning full personal liability in the case of contracts. A high-tech approach could avoid this issue by automatically making sure fees