The Truth About HOA Management: Avoiding Costly Repairs, Lawsuits & Community Disasters

Ben Sloman (00:00)
sometimes I was seeing, you know, when I was working with the larger companies, it was ⁓ kind of left to the wayside, or maybe a smaller account was given to a more junior manager ⁓ who wasn’t able to identify.

the critical issues. And then it snowballs very easily. It snowballs into like a million, million plus dollar job where now it’s a big rush. Now it’s more of a risk. And some of these things that happened in Florida, that happened in Berkeley, these collapses and things like that, you know, it’s it’s big structural issues. And this is health and safety. This is not, ⁓ deciding needs to be redone.

’cause this piece looks bad. This is, you know, balconies falling down, buildings falling down. that really needs quality attention.

Issa Hanna (02:24)
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Estate Pros Show. Today I have Ben Sloman, an HOA legend, somebody whose credentials ⁓ are unmatched. I’ve never seen somebody with these types of credentials in the HOA world. Ben, welcome to my show.

Ben Sloman (02:38)
Thanks, Issa. Thanks for having me.

Issa Hanna (02:40)
Man, I’m super excited to have you and honored to have you as a guest. ⁓ and for people at home that, you know, they’re not familiar with the HOA management world, can you kind of run down what you do in your day to days?

Ben Sloman (02:51)
Sure, yeah. so we do lots of things. Every day’s different and that’s kind of why I love it. ⁓ we got lots of things and maybe twenty different things going on at once. But we’ve got ⁓ insurance, we have financials, we have day-to-day operation of the properties. ⁓ so that might include, you know, cleaning a pool, doing some janitorial, ⁓ re-roofing a place.

⁓ anything like that. ⁓ then we also have compliance things that are going on all of the time. California loves changing their laws. So we need to make sure we’re up to date with all of that and provide the guidance to the boards to make the right decisions. ⁓ that’s like maybe a little bit of a day to day. ⁓ so that plus more, ⁓ I would say is is the regular.

Issa Hanna (03:36)
Wow, and and we talked earlier and I mentioned your credentials. You served as the head of some huge HOA companies. Can you ⁓ tell us ⁓ some of the you know, maybe not mention them, but tell us a little bit about ⁓ your time as the head of these companies?

Ben Sloman (03:52)
Yeah, so I was a regional manager, regional asset manager for ⁓ the Western US for a period of time, about four years or so. And then more recently in Northern California, president of a large management company here. ⁓ in those roles, we did multiple acquisitions of other companies as well, like rolled them in, trained them, onboard them, ⁓ as well as all of the clients. So lots of lots of

You know, people management, bringing them on board, lots of education, lots of alignment ⁓ across boards, staff, ⁓ and other vendors in the industry.

Issa Hanna (04:31)
Wow, and then ⁓ with your vast knowledge and your experience, you saw ⁓ a gaping hole in in your market and then you decided to fill it by going into business on your own. Can you tell our viewers some more about that?

Ben Sloman (04:44)
Yeah, I thought there was ⁓ you know, spending the time in the larger companies for quite a period of time. I I would say the majority of my HOA career is with the larger companies. I did work with some smaller ones at the start when I first started. And ⁓ I was finding here in Northern California there was a bit of a gap in regards to the smaller companies or more boutique or more hands-on.

Quality management companies being able to work with associations that needed it. They need the guidance, they need the education, they need the help to get things done. ⁓ and

sometimes I was seeing, you know, when I was working with the larger companies, it was ⁓ kind of left to the wayside, or maybe a smaller account was given to a more junior manager ⁓ who wasn’t able to identify.

the critical issues. And then it snowballs very easily. It snowballs into like a million, million plus dollar job where now it’s a big rush. Now it’s more of a risk. And some of these things that happened in Florida, that happened in Berkeley, these collapses and things like that, you know, it’s it’s big structural issues. And this is health and safety. This is not, ⁓ deciding needs to be redone.

’cause this piece looks bad. This is, you know, balconies falling down, buildings falling down. ⁓ that really needs quality attention.

Issa Hanna (06:13)
Definitely. And ⁓ that’s one thing in our conversation also that stuck out was a little bit of advice you said. You said all these big companies, they might have a junior guy on it, but when you talk to owners about or you know, HOA companies about maybe being their manager, ⁓ it’s about ability over likability. ⁓ can you shed a little bit more light on that?

Ben Sloman (07:26)
Yeah, I think that’s I think that’s tricky to decipher a little bit with boards and communities that are looking for HOA management ⁓ opportunities. If they’re switching management or if they’re looking like even in their same company, they’re looking for maybe for a a different manager who matches ⁓ what they want to do with their with their goals and with their property. ⁓ and I think that

really what matters and I think a really good way to kind of go through this is to build a scope of like the board to build a scope of work or wants and needs and questions that is standardized that you’re going to use when you interview different multiple different management companies so that you’re always asking the same questions and prior to that you guys as the board are all aligned with what your needs are and what you want.

⁓ a lot of the time you find that boards have one person who wants the landscaping to be priority and one person who wants the roof to be priority. Right. And so you’ve got these two different things and you can ask both of those questions, but ⁓ we need to make sure that everyone on the board is acting as one entity asking one set of questions so that you can get the apples to apples answers back and really

Get the right details that you need to make the right decision.

Issa Hanna (08:50)
Wow, great advice. So to you HOA communities out there, get together, come to a consensus on what you want. ⁓ come up with a list of questions almost like a test for the companies that that you’re going to be interviewing to take over your, you know, your company to manage it. ⁓ and that’s a great way to test ability over just like ability. Because ⁓ if some somebody could be the nicest guy in the world, but

I’d rather go with the more qualified guy that’s gonna save me time, save me money, and and and run and run my HOA the best way possible. So ⁓ wow, Ben, great advice, man. And and I wouldn’t doubt it coming from somebody so experienced like you. Like I said, it’s an honor to have you on the show. ⁓ not everybody started off with the knowledge that we have in our respective fields. So ⁓ we all started off somewhere. How did a young Ben get started?

Ben Sloman (09:40)
Yeah, that I think that’s something that kind of comes up in events and networking things all the time with HOA managers. They’re like, we just fell into this. ⁓ like no one goes to school, you know, no one goes to school or university and says, you know what, I want to be an HOA manager, particularly with the feelings that are out there these days, you know, the news and the feelings like, you know, what do I pay for with my HOA dues? ⁓

I don’t see the value and and all of that kind of stigma that’s that’s around it. ⁓ you know, I think there was a there was a John Oliver episode once where there was a company saying you need to get your lawn chair out of here because he was on common area and they just, you know, blew it up into this big, big issue where, yeah, I mean it is it is common area and they have the ability to say take it away.

⁓ but it’s maybe like the the lack of understanding of of those guidance or or the rules that are out there. ⁓ but I started prior to to working in HOA management, I was in hotels. ⁓ and so I worked as revenue manager, front office manager, and all of these different ⁓ and housekeeping, all these different departments in a hotel. And ⁓ I worked on-site, I also worked in the reservations off-site department.

As well. So learn like some customer service things there and selling. And then in the hotel is different because people are there in front of you. So you need to talk to them a bit differently there. But I I actually moved to Colorado and that’s where I started my HOA life. ⁓ and I was looking for something that was year-round. ⁓ I was up in the ski resorts and I was looking for something year-round because everything was very seasonal back then.

And my knowledge or skill set just with the hotels was close enough to HOA management. And property management is a little different, but the HOA management is kind of what I got into there. And I started managing my first my first association with a timeshare, ⁓ which you know you get four owners per ⁓ per unit.

And it was a ski in, ski out right at the bottom of the resort. So like a great location. We had a pool, spa, like all of these other amenities. And it was super fun. I had I think my office was like a maybe a four by four kind of size, like really tiny little office. And that’s kind of where I started. And it was in the lobby. The office was in the lobby, like a broom closet. And so I saw everyone coming in and out, spoke to them, ⁓ kind of just

built relationships there and then took on more communities and kind of built it from there. ⁓ and that that’s kind of where I started.

Issa Hanna (13:06)
Wow. What a great place to start with timeshares because I as you mentioned, four owners. So it’s like it’s almost like you got four times the clients, even though you don’t deal with as much volume in properties. ⁓ you had to deal with four times as much people. So what a what a great way to start in it. ⁓ definitely probably gave you a great ⁓ head start. And then also hospitality, you know, it it translates well. ⁓ I can see how the two fields correlate. So ⁓ definitely a great foundation, great

stumbled into a story and we all have that story. We all you know, we all wanted to be astronauts when we were younger. We didn’t want to be real estate people. So I I love that. Another story I love to hear seasoned guys, especially HOA managers, property managers, tell our young viewers is a time that they had some type of nightmare that happened and they had to overcome it. Cause we all experience the n the nightmare in our business.

Ben Sloman (13:58)
Yeah, ⁓ I would say it was probably more of the like a property like a property emergency. ⁓ and this one, you know, it wasn’t a fire, but it was a flood that I’m thinking about. ⁓ and it’s it’s one of those ones that ⁓ is kind of funny. It’s these guys we’ve got like a seven story building ⁓ next to the lake. These guys got the penthouse suite, they’re getting dressed, they’re getting ready for the wedding, right?

They go and put their coat hanger with their jacket up on the sprinkler on the fire sprinkler and it cracks it cracks the ⁓ the little mercury and then floods the building. And we had fourteen units ⁓ you know, flooded. And so we got, you know, emergency cruise mitigation in there. ⁓ fire department was over there to turn off all the water for the building. So we’re impacting, you know, like eighty units or so.

⁓ to turn off the water and kind of do the first mitigation. But it’s like all hands on deck, right? ⁓ turn it off, mitigate the damage, stop anything else kind of happening. but those scenarios, like they hit they happen. ⁓ and it always happens when it’s New Year’s Eve, Christmas Eve, ⁓ you know, when there’s no one in the in the unit either. ⁓ yeah, that’s when it

It just seems like it’s, you know, Murphy’s Lord so always happens then.

Issa Hanna (15:26)
Definitely happens when least expected on the holidays, all that stuff. And then ⁓ you have to deal with it. I feel bad for that groom though, because I would have faced every one of eighty of those people over facing my bride. ⁓ that happening. So man, what a what a what a fun story. hopefully, hopefully the groom came out unscathed from that one. Hopefully got married.

Ben Sloman (15:48)
It might have been a twenty minute delay or s I don’t know. I think he might have just ran out of there.

Issa Hanna (15:52)
nice. Yeah. I wouldn’t have told her till after the wedding.

Ben Sloman (15:56)
Yeah.

Issa Hanna (15:57)
So Ben, you’ve scaled your company yeah very impressively in such a short amount of time. Five years down the line, where am I gonna see it?

Ben Sloman (16:06)
Yeah, I think you know, I’ve thought about that a little bit. I haven’t spent a ton of time thinking about that because I’m thinking more about the here and now. ⁓ and I actually spoke to an investor ⁓ a couple of days ago. He was just asking me about the industry. ⁓ not to invest in my company. I wasn’t looking for that or asking for that. but I was like, you know, five years is quite some time away.

right now. I’m more focused on maybe like a two, like a two year kind of time frame. And what my goal is, is is just to really work on the organic growth of the company. And as that grows, bring on some more people, ⁓ and kind of just really provide the quality education and guidance ⁓ to these communities. And that’s really where I want to focus.

I don’t want to get distracted with, ⁓ there’s an investor over here who wants to put some money in or, you know, an acquisition over here that ⁓ might be I mean, I’ll always look at an acquisition and see if that’s a really good opportunity, but I don’t want to take my focus away and get distracted at this point. I want to really focus on what we’re doing on the day to day and how we’re gonna provide the great service to all of the clients. ⁓ and that’s where I’m really focusing my stuff right now.

when it comes to like two years or three years down the line and I say, Hey, what am I gonna do when I get to five years? That’s a different that’s a different time and a different thought to kind of reflect and then look to the future too. So I think I’ll do that a little bit in the future, not right now.

Issa Hanna (18:29)
So for right now, you’re just shows that you care. You’re focused on giving the best experience possible, growing it slowly, putting together a good team, ⁓ and then speaking on advice and and new people for people just starting out. maybe they just got their real estate license, maybe they’re opening some type of service provider company in our in our industry, ⁓ and and they’re just starting out and they don’t really know how to.

spark those business relationships or grow their network. can you give them some advice on how to do that?

Ben Sloman (18:59)
Yeah, sure. There’s I mean, there’s a lot of events, a lot of networking opportunities ⁓ that exist here, ⁓ particularly in Northern California. So I would say ⁓ CAI and CACM, they’re the two larger institutions that do the the education and networking. there’s a couple of events a month. ⁓ there’s other other networking opportunities like BNI or BIA, which is the business or construction.

side of things. lots of different groups out there. Even if you wanted to get involved with your local count like rotary or council chapters, things like that, and do some local events, that’s I think that’s always a great a great thing, just to be there locally on the ground.

Issa Hanna (19:46)
Definitely. go to the events, network with people, put yourself out there. ⁓ the Facebook posts every day are not gonna work. You know, there’s got to be some face to face going on. So Ben, great advice, great advice. ⁓ and now if if people ⁓ are at home watching this and they’re on the board of the HOA and they say, We want that guy, we don’t want this big company anymore, where could they get that I’m sorry, where could they get a hold of you?

Ben Sloman (20:10)
Yeah, you can just call me on the telephone. People don’t do that anymore. you can call me on the phone or go to our website, which is californiacommunities.biz and I’ve got a lot of information on there. I’m actually just putting a couple of headshots and stuff for the for the rest of the team and ⁓ lots of information there. I try to kind of keep that updated with legislative ⁓ updates as well and some guidance and some blogs and things like that.

so hopefully it’s interesting reading on there too. But I’ve got some information about myself, some of the stuff that we’ve talked about here today as well. ⁓ but I would say, yep, ⁓ the the website californiacommunities.biz or ⁓ give me a call. I’ve I’ve got my phone number is (415) 489-0632 And that brings my phone right here and I’ll answer it and say hi.

Issa Hanna (21:06)
Good old fashioned way, and that’s what you’re getting with Ben’s company. You’re not getting ⁓ the big box. So we we have them in our industry, the big box lenders, the big box real estate corporations, big box HOA management companies, that sometimes you know you feel like a number and not a person. with Ben, you’re a person and he cares. So make sure to check out californiacommunities.biz ⁓ because he holds himself to the utmost integrity.

and brings a wealth of knowledge and has the credentials to back it up. Ben, thank you so much for coming on and sh sharing your knowledge with us. It was a true honor to have you on the show. ⁓ and I hope you continue to do big things in the future.

Ben Sloman (21:48)
Yeah, great. Thanks for having me over here. Great to chat and appreciate the time.

Issa Hanna (21:52)
I enjoyed the conversation and to our viewers at home, if you guys enjoyed this conversation with Ben and want to see more just like it, make sure to hit like and subscribe. I talk to people every day that can bring us different knowledge on every aspect of the real estate industry. Until next time, the real estate pros are out.