Who pays collections costs — the association or the delinquent owner?

It depends on your state, your governing documents, and the specific step, and Boards routinely assume the answer is "the owner" for all of it. Frequently it is not.

Most states and most declarations allow the association to charge reasonable collection costs and attorney fees back to a delinquent account. The practical problem is recovery. If the owner never pays, or the balance is wiped in a foreclosure or a bankruptcy, the association absorbed every step of the ladder — the letters, the lien preparation, the recording fees, the legal work.

So the question to ask a Management Company is not who is charged. It is: what does the association pay up front, at what point, and what happens to that money if the account is never collected. Some firms front collections costs and recover only on collection; most bill the association as they go.

Ask for the complete step-by-step ladder with a price on each rung, and ask what proportion of accounts entering it actually resolve. A firm that tracks that number is running a real collections operation. A firm that does not is running a letter mill.