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Community association managers today have to keep up with ever-changing technological, financial, legal, and management trends. But one thing largely stays the same: the language in many associations’ governing documents and other materials. Typically, this language hasn’t been updated in several decades, despite a drastic change in membership demographics. And that can create frustration among members whose cultural understanding of certain terms is at odds with the meaning the terms were originally supposed to convey.

Internet access is no longer an optional amenity for most Americans—it’s a necessity. Members of your community may use it to run home-based businesses, socialize online, shop,  pay bills, or watch TV shows and movies. With such high demand for Internet access, should your association provide this “amenity” for members or leave it to members to arrange for service individually?

In an economy where many associations are still struggling to overcome challenges like vacancies and foreclosures, it’s as important as ever for associations to avoid depleting their reserves and, as a result, making trade-offs about what bills to pay and what services to forgo. That’s where on-time payment of assessments becomes very important. Your community association can face a serious financial crisis if even a small percentage of members don’t pay their assessments on time.

Inevitably, for one reason or another, a community association board member will give up her position. When this happens, the association has the sometimes difficult task of replacing the outgoing member. There are certain qualities that some people have that make them more suitable for the role than others. Experience, of course, helps too. After all, the more a new board member knows, the more she’ll be able to contribute to the association in a meaningful way. You may be asked to help the board determine who the best replacement for an outgoing board member is.

You know that organization is one of the keys to association management success, especially if you’re in charge of a larger community or one with many members. If you did an annual spring cleaning this year, you might also have realized that you need to cut down on clutter in your office, which might include boxes of association records—which can get sizable if they include accounting records, membership lists, meeting minutes, and other important papers—that the association has accumulated over the years. So, what should an association do with old records?

Ideally, community association members would occupy their own units, rather than lease them to tenants. That’s because associations often feel that renters won’t take good care of the units they’re renting and that they won’t follow community rules. This may seem like a generalization, but you can’t be too careful when it comes to protecting your community from problems. So is it allowable to limit the number of units at your community that can be leased at any one time? If so, how can you do this fairly?

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) provides mortgage insurance on loans made by FHA-approved lenders throughout the United States. It insures mortgages on single-family and multifamily homes--including condominiums and homes in planned communities. Since late 2008, the FHA has issued regulatory guidance to set standards associations must meet in order for a prospective member to qualify for FHA financing. The FHA has said that it conducts thorough appraisals to protect both lenders and borrowers.

After a spate of pit bull terrier attacks in recent years, many community associations have questioned the wisdom of permitting members to keep pit bulls and other so-called “restricted breed” dogs, including German shepherds, rottweilers, and Doberman pinschers, as pets. Frequent reports of dog attacks have also reignited the debate between pit bull critics and supporters of the breed. Critics say that while pit bulls don’t bite as often as other dogs, their jaw strength and behavior when they do attack make them the most dangerous of all breeds.

Community associations often face difficulties when members lease their units to renters. Many renters who come to live at an association have lived only in rental buildings before, so they don’t really understand how associations operate. For example, they don’t understand that members in community associations own their own units, and therefore rely on each other to cooperate and follow the association’s rules. Or they don’t understand that they too are required to follow the association’s rules, bylaws, and restrictive covenants.

If you’re like most community association managers, you require contractors you’ve hired to prove that they’re licensed and insured and have any other necessary qualifications to work in the community. However, members sometimes want to hire their own contractors to perform work in their units. This can open up the association to liability. That’s because an association can be held liable if a member’s contractor or one of the contractor’s employees is injured or if another member is injured by the contractor’s subpar work.