Firm identity, licensing, insurance, service area, portfolio, staffing, packages, and a structured fee schedule. It takes real work. That is deliberate — completeness is a published ranking factor.
Don’t pay for every lead unless you win it.
BoardMatch sends you qualified, scoped bid invitations from real Boards actively running a search. You pay nothing to join, nothing per lead, and nothing to be seen. You pay one placement fee when a Board selects you.
You already know what a lead costs you.
You have bought leads. You know the pattern. You pay for the introduction, you call four times, two never answer, one was a homeowner who is not on the Board, and one was a Board that shopped you against four other firms who bought the same lead. You paid for all five outcomes identically.
This is the other way. Every invitation you receive comes from a Board that has completed a seven-step intake describing its community, its budget, its service requirements, and its timeline. The scope is normalized before you see it. You are not qualifying a lead. You are pricing a job.
Published guidance from the largest directory in this category to the management companies who pay it. On BoardMatch that mechanism does not exist — there is nothing to bid up, and placement is not for sale.
From invitation to placement.
We confirm your entity, state licenses, insurance certificates, credentials, and references. Verification is free. Nothing on your badge row can be purchased.
Unit count, association type, budget, services required, current pain points, decision timeline, and the deadline. Matched on service area, size band, and capability.
Many Boards offer scheduled windows or share the address for a self-guided look. RSVP and the address unlocks for you. Firms that show up win more often, and every proposal discloses whether you visited or priced from documents.
In a form, not a PDF. Base fee, term, escalator with its cap, notice period, onboarding, the full ancillary schedule, the named manager and that manager’s portfolio load, SLAs, technology, references.
Boards ask. You answer. Everyone sees the same answers at the same time.
If the Board selects you, we introduce you directly and invoice the placement fee. If it selects someone else, you owe nothing and you get a win/loss debrief telling you where you ranked and on what.
No pay for placement. Named policy, published in full.
You cannot buy a higher ranking on BoardMatch. There is no sponsored placement, no advertising product, no premium tier, and no mechanism to pay a larger placement fee in exchange for more invitations. This is not a phase-one position we intend to relax.
If you are a 40-community regional firm with a PCAM on staff and 92% retention, a bidding war destroys you.
A directory where the top result paid to be there produces exactly the skepticism that makes Boards ignore the whole list.
That is what an auction is designed to do. Every dollar of margin you would have kept goes to the platform.
A fee structurally identical for every company gives us no financial reason to prefer anyone. The moment we could be paid more to favor you, the report stops being worth reading.
Objections, answered directly
What does a lead cost me here?
Nothing. There is no charge to receive an invitation, submit a proposal, or lose a bid. Your only cost is the time to build a complete profile and price a job — and the proposal builder saves your defaults.
What if the Board picks someone else?
You owe nothing, and you receive a win/loss debrief showing where you ranked on cost, scope coverage, staffing, and technology, with the winning ranges anonymized.
How do you verify the fee I owe?
The placement fee is one month of the base management fee in your own submitted proposal. You upload the executed agreement’s fee page within 10 days of execution. If the executed base fee differs from your quote by more than 10% in either direction, we reconcile.
What if we already know the Board?
Tell us at invitation and we will note the existing relationship. What is not permitted is contacting a Board off-platform during an active bid to route around the process.
Does the fee apply to onboarding or ancillary revenue?
No. The calculation uses base management fee only — deliberately, so nobody has an incentive to shift cost into the other lines.
How long do I have to hold my pricing?
Sixty days from submission, and it is not adjustable. A Board reads your proposal knowing the number will still be there when it votes. If your cost basis moves inside that window, absorb it or do not bid — re-pricing after selection becomes a fee dispute, and disputes are tracked against you.
Will a bad Google review keep us out?
No. You can link your Google, Yelp, Facebook, and BBB pages and we show Boards what is there, including the reviews you would rather they not read. None of it is scored. We take the view that a manager who enforces the governing documents consistently will collect angry homeowner reviews, and that punishing a firm for carrying out a Board’s decisions would be both unfair and a bad signal. What we do score is how the Boards who actually hired you rate you afterward.
What stops a company from going around you?
The fee attaches to the introduction, not to the platform. If BoardMatch introduces you to an association and you sign that association within 18 months, the fee is owed however the engagement was arranged. Boards record their selection because that is what unlocks their transition materials, and Boards pay nothing so they have no reason to help anyone avoid it. A prior relationship with the association does not change that — accepting the invitation is the commitment. The single exception is a Board retaining its existing company, which is a retention rather than a placement and is billed at nothing. The full agreement is presented in your onboarding and lives in your company portal.
Can I see the property before I price it?
Where the Board offers it, yes. You will see the available windows on the invitation; RSVP and the address unlocks for you. Some Boards instead share the address for a self-guided look. Either way it is common areas only, and contacting Board members, homeowners, or on-site staff outside the platform is a network agreement violation.