Water, Water Everywhere

HOA boards/property managers can serve their association members well by continuing to look into the future to spot issues before they become problems. A pro-active action can save your association thousands of dollars, possibly prevent legal actions, drain on reserve accounts and the need for special assessments.

One item that is currently on my radar is sewer/drain back-up coverage. By this I mean the potential of a water back-up due to local government not keeping storm drains properly cleared. Let's face it, all local municipalities are dealing with stretched budgets and maintenance such as storm drain clearing may be delayed or ceased all together. If you association complex just happens to be located where a local municipality had to postpone storm drain maintenance think about the potential for a water back-up during a very heavy rainstorm.

In your association master insurance policy there is a coverage for sewer/drain back-up which would coverage damage/clean-up related to such an event. For most the default coverage limit is very low, something like $5,000; an amount that would be hardly enough to make a dent in the sizable bill you will get when a restoration company works for a week to clean up the mess. Consider raising this coverage to at least $100,000; more if you have a larger complex with significant first floor exposure to flooding. This coverage is quite inexpensive so there's really no financial reason not to have the higher coverage amount. Make the review of this coverage one of your pro-active loss control strategies.