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Comment by breck | Hacker News Reader

We recently bought a condo after renting in the building for three years. The board, management and staff of our building are phenomenal—an inside bit of information we knew from having lived here.

We looked at a large number of buildings in the area, and was surprised that maybe 1% of the information you need to assess board/management competence is available online. Generally we'd have to do our own DD talking to people in the buildings.

IMO it makes a huge difference, >10% of the purchase price should be on the quality of the board and management.

Seems like a startup opportunity to be Yelp for Condo Boards/HOAs. (I'm sure there are a dozen+, of course. I haven't done the DD on that!)

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An acquaintance of mine is building https://www.upliftinc.co after experiencing similar issues.

All I want is for someone to build a HOA portal that isn't horrible. The two I've had experience with were old old school, slow, and super painful.

Is there a need for a portal? A website with the condo’s documents/minutes/spreadsheets/videos seems like it suffices.

A forum can also be setup if necessary.

Things I need from an HOA portal:

   * ticketing system with management company
   * way to set up ACH/dues payments
   * ways to look at docs and minutes
   * way to communicate with the board
   * calendar of the board meetings
   * way to communicate with the other owners

Sure, you could put that together mostly with Gsuite functionality, but an integrated modern product would be really great.

Have you looked at https://www.condocommunities.com, they offer most of the features you've listed and have different packages depending on the needs of the HOA. I'm not affiliated with them just sharing my experience; my HOA started using the service recently and it's very easy to keep up to date with events in my building.

"Why don't you build that, Dan?"

After a few startups, I've learned that you have to love the problem domain to survive the startup grind.

I don't love the problem domain of HOA and HOA management.

I'm also unsure what the sales cycle would be like, so the first step, if I (or anyone else) were to head down the path, would be to call up a bunch of boards and/or management companies and see how they buy.

I'm on an HOA board (neighborhood, not condo).

We have a management company, but working with them sucks. There's no good ticketing system or visibility from board to the management company to make sure follow through happens or is fair.

From what I could tell, most of the software in this space is marketed to management companies, not HOA boards. Of course the management company doesn't want to pay for it, so we're stuck. And this is the best of 3 management companies I've worked with.

That’s the portal, usually has login/auth for unit owners, and backend admin functions for the condo board or their management company.

I do not see a need for login. What could be confidential?

Setting up ACH to pay dues.

Board meeting minutes are not hidden from owners, but probably are not public info. (Stuff like bids and fines are recorded there.)

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