At two BOD meetings I have heard Q&A between the BOD and residents. One question was about the foreclosed homes and why they are left to look so bad. A fair question. The HOA says they can't be expected to take on the work and expense of the maintenance. Another resident asked why the HOA can't keep non-owner occupied homes (rentals) up to Daybreak community standards. The answer was that they try.

While on a trip to Denver in early Oct, we had some time on our hands and decided to tour two communities every much like Daybreak. We drove all around Stapleton and Lowery. Both beautiful with homes ranging from 100K to over 1M. Strong community base with lovely parks, trails, pools, etc.

Denver has been hit hard by the recession and there were numerous homes in short sale, foreclosure, and some turned into rentals.

Unlike Daybreak, the homes no matter the current status had green managed and complete landscape. There were no trailers/RV's/boats parked on the roads, driveways, or behind the homes. Dead or unlicensed vehicles were not stored on the streets/driveways or anywhere in the community. No once did we see a trash can overflowing behind a vacant home.

So why is it our HOA can't manage to keep our community up to the standards they set?

In my opinion, the biggest problem is that the homeowners aren't in charge of the HOA - Kennecott is. The management company doesn't have to listen to us, they only have to listen to Kennecott. If the homeowners were in charge, the management company would realize really quickly that they will be fired if things aren't done the right way.

They are out of touch with the people and community that they serve.
After spending everyday this past year out in the community I could count on one hand how many times I saw CCMC upper management out in the community.And those days were just before their superiors were due here for a audit.

Hmm. Wonder what the HOA fees are in that Denver community? Probably higher.

In my real estate experience, outside of Utah HOA fees are generally lots higher than we have it here.

I agree that HOA fees (even just in other communities in Utah) are much higher, however our HOA has made many promises to give us the biggest bang for our buck. I have lived in communities where the HOA fee is equal to what I'll be paying this new year and all we had were unmantained parks (including one that was intended to be a detention basin but acted as a retention basin, atracting numerous bugs year round). The difference, however, is that most communities are at least partially resident controlled so the fault lays in them. Our residents are able and more than willing to take some control, but those who have tried keep getting shot down. Its much harder to accept raises in HOA fees when questions aren't always answered and acceptable solutions aren't considered. For our HOA, it's their way, period. After all, it's taken this long for them to finally agree that paying for our own janitor for the DCC is cheaper than paying the school district. I can't even remember when residents first started pointing that out but it was years ago! The reason they now agree? Something else needed to be pushed on their agenda.

Lemon, we do have reasonable fee's at this time. My issue comes in how our money is managed, how that impacts future fee increases, and the homeowners return on investment.

In the initial stages of the community our HOA spent money with little thought. Only in the last few years have residents realized the HOA isn't prudent in how they spend our money and begun to demand accountability. We have seen some changes, but they came with a great deal of pain. Frankly most of the changes were to budget items that would have been a "no-brainer" in any other good business application.

It is crucial that homeowners take great interest in the HOA process as we will not have representation on the board until we reach 75% build out. Daybreak is projected to have 20,000 homes. Currently we have 2200 homes, just over 10%. It's taken 5 years to reach that level. So if we have good sales years it will be 2042 before homeowners have board representation. I have to give some credit to KL as they have formed resident groups to review certain projects as they are proposed and established non-voting resident seats on the board. Nice gestures, but still no real control over our destiny.

A big financial pressure comes from our HOA absorbing amenities, park, and open spaces in the new construction areas before the homes are built out to a saturation that will generate the funds to support them. It's a catch 22 as KL wants all that great stuff ready as a sales point but they don't want to keep it on their books so it's turned over to the HOA. Then the HOA has to dedicate funds and manpower to keep all of that up. The residents will always be financially behind the curve trying to support all of Kennecotts bigger, greater, more wonderful stuff.

So back to the basis of this rant, we have to be diligent as residents of Daybreak to insure our fees don't grow to a level that impacts the value of our homes.