Community Associations: HOA, Condo and Co-op Management

Run a homeowners’ or condominium association in Seayora — owners and units, dues and special assessments, violations with notices and hearings, architectural requests, secret-ballot votes, meetings and minutes, documents, estoppel certificates and a reserve study.

Run a homeowners’ association, a condominium association or a co-op: the units and their owners, dues and special assessments, violations, architectural requests, votes, meetings, documents, resale certificates and a reserve study.

It is for a landlord or a property management company that keeps the books and the records for a homeowners’ association, a condominium association or a housing cooperative. On the website it is under Portfolio → Associations; on the iPhone and Android apps it is in the Tools hub under Associations, one screen for each part.

Dues are recorded here — charged and paid on the association’s ledger. Seayora does not collect them online: association money belongs to the association and would need a payment account in its own name.

Notice periods, fine hearings, election rules and certificate fee limits are set by the association’s governing documents and state law. Seayora keeps the record; the board and its counsel decide what applies.

Setting up an association

• Add the association: its name, the kind (homeowners’, condominium or co-op), its address and its time zone. Due dates, late fees and meeting times are read on that clock.
• Add the units or lots and their owners — one at a time, or paste a list of up to 1,000 at once, one per line: unit, owner name, owner email, share. A list with one bad line adds none, and the refusal names the line. An association can hold up to 5,000 units.
• Add the board: who serves, in what position and for what term.
• Set up the dues: a monthly, quarterly, twice-yearly or yearly amount, or a one-time special assessment, split equally per unit or by each unit’s share.
• Set the rules under Rules and settings — the late fee, the cure period, the fine schedule, the quorum and what owners can see.

Dues, charges and payments

Each owner’s charge is written as its due date comes within a month, and never twice for the same period. A charge can be added by hand, waived or voided — always with a reason, and never deleted, because an owner may hold a statement that shows it.

A late fee is added once per late charge, under the association’s own rule, after the days of grace. Payments are applied to the oldest charge first.

Switching late fees on starts them from that day. Charges that were already late are never fined, and the settings screen says the date late fees started.

A payment is recorded against the owner’s ledger — a check, a bank transfer, a card payment taken elsewhere, or cash. Voiding one, for a returned check, puts the charges it paid back as owed. Balances shows every owner’s balance aged 30, 60 and 90 days.

Violations, notices, hearings and fines

Sending a notice emails the owner what was seen, the rule, the cure date and how to ask for a hearing. No fine is added while a hearing is requested or scheduled.

• A fine is refused before a notice has gone out and its cure date has passed.
• A fine is refused while the owner has asked to be heard or a hearing is scheduled.
• Each further fine waits the days between fine steps, and follows your fine schedule — the last step repeats.
• Recording the hearing’s outcome — the violation stands, dismissed, or fixed — closes it or lets the fine go ahead.

Architectural requests

An owner asks before they build, paint or replace something — from My association on any device, or you record a request they made on paper. Each board member votes from their own My association screen; you record the board’s decision.

The board’s answer is due by the date shown. Seayora never approves a request on its own — check your governing documents for what happens when a deadline passes.

A denial must say why, and an approval with conditions must say what they are. The owner is emailed the decision with the reason or the conditions in it.

Votes and elections

Create a vote — an election, a budget, a resolution or an amendment — with up to 30 choices, how many each unit may pick, a quorum and a closing time. It is saved as a draft; opening it emails every owner. Owners vote from My association, and you can record a paper ballot for a unit.

Votes can count one per unit, or weighted by each unit’s share. One ballot per unit, and it cannot be changed once cast. Any vote can be held as a secret ballot.

A secret ballot records that a unit voted, never how. Nobody on your team or the board can see an individual choice.

Some states require certain elections to be held by paper or by an independent inspector. Check before using electronic voting for an election.

Meetings and minutes

Schedule a board, annual, special or committee meeting with its place, a video link and the agenda, and send the notice to every owner. The screen says how many days ahead the notice went; whether that is enough is for the governing documents and state law. Minutes are saved as a draft and owners see them once the board approves them — after which they can no longer be changed.

Documents

Upload the governing documents, rules, budgets, minutes, insurance and forms — a PDF, an image, a Word or an Excel file up to 10 MB. Each is shared with every owner, the board only, or your team only. A file’s type is read from the file itself; a page of web code dressed up as a PDF is refused.

Resale and estoppel certificates

A certificate states the owner’s balance, open violations and assessments as of the day it is issued. Some states cap what may be charged for one.

Record the request when a title company or lender asks, with their email and the closing date. The certificate shows a preview of what it would state today. Issuing it freezes what it states — the balance, what is past due, the assessments and any open violations — and files a PDF in the document library; the requester is emailed. A correction is a new request. Marking the fee paid is a record; no money moves.

Reserve study

This is a planning estimate from the components you entered, not a professional reserve study. Many states require one prepared by a qualified specialist.

List what wears out — roofing, paving, painting, mechanical systems, elevators, amenities — with its useful life, the years left and what it costs to replace today. Seayora works out 30 years of the reserve balance from today’s balance, the yearly contribution, cost inflation and interest, and says the percent funded, the first year the balance would run out, and the smallest yearly contribution that keeps it above zero.

What owners and board members see

Anybody whose email is on a unit, as owner or co-owner, or on an active board seat, finds My association on the website (at /my-association), in the iPhone and Android apps’ Tools hub, and in search — whatever kind of Seayora account they have.

• Their balance, every charge and payment, and what is past due — when the association shows balances.
• Violations on their home, and a button to ask to be heard — when the association shows violations.
• Their architectural requests, and a form to ask the board — when the association takes requests in Seayora.
• Open votes to cast, and results once voting closes.
• Upcoming meetings and approved minutes, and the documents shared with owners.
• A board member also sees the requests waiting for the board and votes on each, and the documents shared with the board.

A part the association has turned off is absent, with the reason in words — never an empty list. When the association does not share its records with owners at all, owners are told: “Your association has not opened its records to owners on Seayora.”

Rules and settings

Your team

On a management company’s team, associations are their own permission, Portfolio → Associations, separate from properties. An employee without it cannot open the association screens; an owner’s or a board member’s own My association is theirs whatever their employer sets.

Asking your assistant

Seayora’s connector for Claude and ChatGPT can list the associations you run and tell you where one stands — who owes, open violations and requests, votes in progress and the next meeting. It cannot charge, fine, decide a request or cast a ballot: those are decisions a board makes, recorded by a named person.

Related features and guides

• In-App Video Calls — Feature. Start a video call from any Seayora conversation, or upgrade a voice call to video mid-conversation. Run remote showings, walk a contractor through a repair, and schedule video meetings on the shared calendar — no personal number, no third-party meeting app.
• Compliance Alerts & Required Filings — Feature. Seayora watches your properties for new violations and works out which recurring filings each building owes, turns both into a dated checklist, and emails you when something new appears. Live violation data for New York City; rule-based filing obligations across the NYC metro.
• Compliance — Documentation. Violations, required filings, housing programs and carbon caps for each building — what is open, what is due and what to do next.
• Commercial Leases: Rent Changes, Percentage Rent, Insurance and Critical Dates — Documentation. Manage commercial leases in Seayora — gross and net structures, scheduled and CPI rent escalations, percentage rent from sales reports, certificates of insurance against what the lease requires, and renewal and termination option deadlines.
• Managing Properties & Units — Documentation. How to organize a portfolio of properties and units, assign them, and keep records clean across a management company.
• Notifications: In-App, Email, Push & SMS — Feature. In-app, email, push, and opt-in SMS notifications, with per-property and per-role settings so managing fifty units does not mean fifty times the noise.

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