How HOA Apps Keep You Connected (without attending every meeting)

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Millennials, born 1981-2000, have replaced Baby Boomers as the dominant generation of home buyers.
• The oldest members of Generation Z, born 2001-2020, have also begun to buy homes.
• Both Millennials and Gen Z-ers are less likely than older homeowners to serve on an HOA board or to attend HOA meetings.
• As technophiles, Millennials and Gen Z-ers who serve on HOAs are quick to embrace software for homeowners associations and related phone/tablet apps that enable homeowners to pay HOA dues, review HOA finances and rules, and keep up with community events.

If you’re a Millennial (Generation Y, born 1981-2000), there’s a good and growing chance you’re a homeowner. Millennials are buying houses in record numbers, replacing Baby Boomers as the dominant generation of home purchasers. Even some of the older members of Generation Z (born 2001-2020) are stepping into the market.

Along with this demographic change, homeowner associations are becoming ever more common for their ability to protect quality of life and, as a result, property values in a given neighborhood. 

Millennials and Gen Z-ers are statistically less likely to attend HOA meetings than their older counterparts, but they’re more likely to realize the value in any HOA app that helps keep them connected to community matters that affect them, even if it is sometimes an arm’s-length connection.

Millennials and Gen-Zers are immersed in technology

It is little wonder that Millennials and Gen Z-ers love mobile-based HOA solutions that complement the management software for homeowners associations, many HOA boards and property managers use. Both generations have been immersed in communicative technology at concentrations and in varieties unimagined by Baby Boomers (born 1945-64) and their predecessors, or even by Gen X-ers (born 1965-80).

The most senior Millennials remember when home internet access became common via the boops, squeals, and boings of dial-up connections. Their generation had the first pocket-sized cell phones and later the then-amazing flip phones that added texting capabilities. 

That generation’s quick embrace of smartphones in the early 2000s helped create an explosion of social media, online marketing, and apps for countless purposes from business management and street navigation to games, weather, and digital books. But for all the push toward community online, in-person meetings are falling. 

It’s hard to say exactly how many people are attending HOA meetings across the board, but researchers and public organizers continue to find civic engagement to be on the decline, whether locally or nationally. 

Technology is Gen Z’s native territory, as they remember no time without smartphones and nearly ubiquitous internet access. Both for good and ill, Gen Z-ers also had to learn how to learn online during COVID-19 shutdowns. 

That means Gen Z-ers, whether they are interested in in-person meetings or not, they readily embrace online software for homeowners associations. Pioneering a “cashless society,” Gen Z-ers as a group tend to expect to make retail and personal transactions not only with physical cards but with Apple Pay, Venmo, and a host of other financial applications.So an app that allows them to pay HOA dues and stay informed about community issues and events digitally, seems entirely natural.

Reluctant joiners?

It’s safe to say HOA board meetings are on almost nobody’s list of favorite ways to spend spare time, regardless of age. Online forums echo that lack of enthusiasm, often noting percentages of non-board attendees from zero to the high single digits. One forum respondent noted of attendance at their HOA meetings, “500+ [single-family homes] … zero homeowners. Seven-member board, seven attendees. Been President for eight years, no chance to hand it off as no one wants to participate.” Another said, “We have 1,197 single-family homes in my HOA. In the last 10 years, I think the most I’ve seen [at a board meeting] is 30 people.”

Reluctance to attend HOA meetings is evident across all age groups but may be even more pronounced among younger homeowners, both due to the previously noted social anxiety and particularly hectic stages of life: Millennials and older Gen Z-ers are likely to be raising young children, building careers that require frequent overtime or travel, or working in the “gig economy” with its less-predictable schedules. 

Millennials and Gen Z-ers may be particularly valuable to HOA operations, though, with their instinct to digitize every task possible. Young technophiles who serve on a board may be just the spark plugs needed to convert their board’s system from conventional paper-ledger accounting and mail-based billing to community management software for homeowners associations.

Streamlining Communications and Finances for HOAs

Such HOA-specific platforms automate many tasks, cutting the workload on volunteer board members and committee members. The accounting capabilities of software such as PayHOA cut the time involved in bookkeeping, billing, and double-checking bank statements. By requiring only one entry of contact information, account numbers, and countless other details, for instance, the software promotes accuracy by minimizing chances for keying errors, and a single correction can be made effective across the platform. 

HOA accounting and communication software’s capacity to generate reports and budgets to share with homeowners promotes transparency that builds trust between the HOA board and community members. With its electronic billing and online payment capabilities, the best HOA software also eliminates postal and stationery expenses and the chance of delay or loss inherent in mail-based billing and payment. And several means of online communications within an HOA community help homeowners stay connected and informed about issues and events from board elections and annual meetings to neighborhood barbecues and hours and rules for use of recreational facilities.

Apt to Use an App

For Millennials and Gen Z-ers especially, an app that complements such software for homeowners associations can be a lifeline to the HOA, either as property owners or as volunteers. These growing groups of home buyers are quick to see the advantages such a system as PayHOA brings to both the board members and the HOA community at large:

• Push notifications can keep members informed of meetings, providing digital agendas, minutes, and how board members vote on particular measures.
• A well-designed app can facilitate elections by helping current board members recruit candidates, providing homeowners with the slate of qualified candidates for board positions and, depending on state and local laws and each HOA’s rules, by allowing members to vote online.
• Property owners can link autopay to a credit/debit card or bank account with a built-in maximum to make sure you never forget a dues payment. (You can also opt out of autopay if you prefer.)
• Members can use the secure app to update their contact information or to make a general, architectural review, or maintenance request.
• HOA members can make or respond to rules violation allegations on the app.
• The HOA community’s founding documents, rules, annual budgets, account statements, and other vital records are viewable online.

But if you’re interested in serving your HOA without giving up your weeknights, recommending PayHOA software for your HOA may be an ideal entryway. Start your HOA’s 30-day free trial today.