Why Hire Professional Landscaping

Maintaining common areas is one of the board’s most basic responsibilities. To fulfill that responsibility, the board contracts with a professional landscaping company. The board seeks bids from several potential companies, carefully considering the competence and expertise of each company and comparing fees. These fees may seem like an added—or even unnecessary—expense; but, in the long run, the additional cost will be less than the losses you would face without professional help. Consider the advantages:

Professional Expertise: It takes more than a green thumb to maintain attractive and functional landscaping. Your contractor employs professional staff and trained labor crews. This expertise translates into a cost-effective and successful landscape maintenance program for your community.  

Bulk Purchase Savings: Your landscape contractor purchases plants and supplies in bulk quantities at reduced prices and passes the savings along to you.

Improved Plant Survival: Trees, turf, shrubs, and other plantings are costly. Without proper care, they don’t survive, especially immediately after installation. The landscaper guarantees newly planted shrubs and trees for a specific amount of time, usually one year, so you don’t have to pay for replacing dead plants.

Reduced Liability: The association’s landscape contractor is properly insured and knowledgeable about—and in compliance with—all local and federal environmental requirements and safety regulations. Your contract shifts responsibility to the contractor and reduces the association’s liability.

Landscaping is very important to the community’s quality of life and its image and value. Is it worth what the association pays for these services? Yes! In fact, failing to invest in professional landscape maintenance is a false economy because curb appeal makes your neighborhood desirable and contributes to the value of individual homes.

Property Values for Condos and HOA Communities

Although property values in Michigan have taken a beating, there are still a lot of things about which members of community associations can be optimistic. More than 80% of new housing is part of a community association, which means that they continue to provide good value for home buyers. In fact, associations that are in good physical and financial condition help keep their members’ property values higher. This requires a commitment to the following:

1. A consistent preventive maintenance plan.  Many communities have deferred maintenance items in an effort to save money, and the physical effects are apparent to buyers.  If you have resisted this temptation, your property values should reflect it.
2. Adequate reserve funds and a good community-wide payment history of fees.  With new regulations for federally-backed loans, lenders need to look more closely at these areas than ever before.

A healthy association will prove a more attractive option for buyers in the fiercely competitive housing market. Is your condominium association or HOA doing what is necessary to enhance property values and attract buyers?

Spring Inspections: Things to Look For

In addition to sod or curb damage that may have been caused during the winter, there are other items which can result from the winter months and which should be checked to ensure safety and property value.

Sidewalks: Freezing and thawing cycles can cause heaving and cracking of concrete. In some cases, the effect is enough to create a trip hazard which not only is unsafe for pedestrians, but also presents increased liability for the Association. These areas should be identified and repaired soon after the snow has melted.

Roadways: Dirt and debris can hinder expansion joints in concrete roadways from working as effectively they should. Spring is a good time to do street sweeping since there has been a lot of runoff from melting snow. This is especially important if sand was used in any of the salt mixtures. Asphalt roadways need to be inspected for cracks or buckling caused by shifting ground.

Irrigation Systems: Sprinkler heads, since they are exposed, are the vulnerable parts of an irrigation system. Because they are covered by snow in the winter, wayward automobiles and snow removal equipment can cause inadvertent damage. Prior to opening the system, damaged heads should be flagged for repair or replacement. Irrigation systems should be opened and ready for operation by mid-May, although the weather will determine when they start being used.

Maintenance Checklists & Vendor Scorecards

As the seasons change, so do maintenance requirements.  That is why an established protocol for reviewing maintenance items is so important.  Properly documenting those findings is equally important, especially when it comes to enforcing warranties and limiting risk, including potential lawsuits. 

LandArc's automated report system includes punch list items completed during the Routine Preventive Maintenance (RPM) visit. The report also includes the vendor scorecards that your RPM technician fills out grading the performance and quality of your lawn vendors.

These reports can be emailed to a member of your board on the Monday following the prior week’s routine. Although it is set up by default to be emailed to the President, it can be emailed to other board members as well.

What are you using to document your preventive maintenance program and track the performance of your vendors?  

Predict Your Savings

Predict Your Savings

The Board was taking a calculated risk: Forego roof inspections and gutter cleaning for a season in order to shore up the budget. Sadly, what they did not predict was what hurt them. Those inspections and maintenance steps were mitigating potential losses such as ice dams and roof leaks, so when the claims occurred – and they did – the carrier dropped them. A new carrier will charge substantially more, and they will require that the association perform and document roof inspections and gutter cleaning.  If only the Board could turn back time…

You may be looking for ways to reduce expenses while maintaining service levels that are acceptable to the members of your Association. What if you could find a way to reduce expenses while increasing service levels? That’s the premise behind Predictive Maintenance Inspections (PMI). Insurance companies have become very stringent regarding claim approvals. In an alarming number of cases, Association policies have even been cancelled. A denied claim can be financially devastating to an Association; a cancelled policy can be catastrophic. Developed with the input of multiple insurance carriers, PMI can be used to make sure your Association has stable, reliable coverage and a greater chance of approval in the case of a claim. This premise is often backed up by an agreement to pay the insurance deductible of a customer if there is a claim on any item which is a part of the inspections.

What is the difference between Predictive Maintenance and Preventive Maintenance?

There are two main differences: First, Predictive Maintenance gives you access to savings that Preventive Maintenance programs cannot: Discounts on maintenance and contracted services, credits on insurance deductibles, and in some cases, reduced insurance premiums. Second, it’s the difference between prediction and prevention. Insurance cost is based on prediction: how likely is it that an accident will occur? The PMI program helps to answer that question by focusing on the areas covered by your insurance policy and providing data to your insurance carrier to make their predictions more accurate. We’re saying, in effect, “not as likely.” For example, ice damming causes roof leaks, interior unit damage, icicle formation and slippery walkways — it’s a common reason for an insurance claim. If we determine that blocked gutters and incorrect roof pitch are likely to result in future ice damming, these items are included in the inspection along with recommendations for corrective action. Since your insurance carrier will have access to these reports, they can remain “in the know” about the predictability of a future claim.

How it works

We assign a Quality Assurance Supervisor (QAS) to walk the site with a rep­resentative of the Board, review the items that are sources of risk to the community, and establish inspection frequencies with appropriate maintenance actions. Once the plan has been approved, a technician visits the site to per­form the inspection and maintenance activities and enter the results electronically. These reports are then posted online and available both to the Board and to the insurance carrier. Items which require special action (e.g., repair, replacement, etc.) result in electronic proposals to the Board. These inspections and reporting functions can sometimes be performed with on-site staff or a handyman, provided they have the right experience to see potential risks and a real-time reporting system to document conditions in a format that is acceptable to the insurance carrier.   

Which insurance companies are offering discounts on premiums?

A number of carriers have made official recommendations to their underwriters to provide discounts to participating communities. Other carriers, while not explicitly providing discounts at this time, have expressed their confidence that the PMI program will have a positive impact on both claims mitigation and renewal pricing.

How much versus when?

Our observation has been that maintenance and repair costs are relatively consistent, whether they are spent in a proactive manner or in response to problems. The significant difference is the impact on customer satisfaction and property values. Some communities may be willing to gamble with these factors in the hope of shaving a few dollars in maintenance expense, but that is a dangerous proposition for non-profit to engage in. Astute managers and Boards will take steps to work with their insurance carrier and a maintenance professional that can help them predict their risks, limit their exposure, and control their maintenance expenses.

  

www.landarc.com