What Boards actually compare.
Not what a management company would like you to compare. This is the list Boards write down themselves, and the arithmetic behind each line.
Every one of these is on the BoardMatch bid matrix. You do not need us to use the framework — a Board that reads this page and runs its own search has been served, and that is the point of publishing it.
The headline fee is the smallest part of the number
A Board comparing three proposals on their monthly management fee is comparing perhaps seventy percent of what it will actually pay, and the missing thirty percent is distributed unevenly between the three. That is why the cheapest proposal so often is not, and why the discovery usually happens in month five.
Below are the eight things that move the real number, each with what a straight answer looks like. Ask for them in writing, in the proposal, in the same format from every bidder. A firm that answers all eight plainly has told you something about itself before you have read a single figure.
Doors and associations managed
Two numbers, not one. Doors tells you scale; associations tells you how many separate Boards, budgets, and annual meetings the firm is actually carrying. A company with 12,000 doors across 40 large communities is a different operation from one with 12,000 across 300 small ones.
Both numbers, current, plus how many were gained and lost in the last twelve months. Growth with heavy churn is a different story from steady growth, and the churn number is the one nobody volunteers.
Manager-to-community ratio
The single strongest predictor of the complaint every Board eventually makes, which is that nobody returns calls. But the raw ratio is misleading on its own — a manager carrying twelve communities with a dedicated accountant and an assistant can out-serve one carrying six with neither.
How many communities your assigned manager will carry, what administrative and accounting support sits behind them, and the firm’s manager turnover for the last twelve months. High load plus high turnover is the combination that fails.
Violation and compliance charges
Frequently billed per letter past a first courtesy notice. On a 300-unit community running real enforcement, several hundred letters a year at eight to twenty-five dollars each is a line nobody budgeted. It also creates an incentive worth noticing: a firm billing per letter has no financial reason to prefer the phone call that resolves it.
What is included, the price of every escalation step, and the total violation-related billing last year for a comparable community. The third question is the one that produces a real number.
Mailing, postage and notices
Looks trivial per piece and is not in aggregate. Annual meeting notices, budget mailings, assessment changes, election materials and every rung of the collections ladder are all mailed, and several states require certified delivery for some of them.
The per-piece rate for standard and certified, whether a handling charge sits on top, and — the question that saves the most money — which notices the firm delivers electronically where your state permits it and owners have consented.
Meeting attendance
Base fees typically cover regular Board meetings and the annual. Budget workshops, committee meetings and anything after hours are commonly extra. Boards consistently undercount their own cadence: monthly Board meetings plus an annual plus two budget sessions is fifteen, not twelve.
Meetings included per year, the charge for each additional one, the after-hours rate, and whether committee meetings count. Then count your real cadence before you read the answer.
Included versus a-la-carte
The reason two proposals cannot be compared on their headline fee. “Full service” is a marketing phrase with no standard definition, and two firms using it can differ by twenty percent in real annual cost.
Every service marked one of three ways: included, extra with a stated price, or not offered. No blanks. This is the single highest-value thing a Board can require, and it takes an afternoon to build the list.
What happens to the money you cannot see
Vendor markups, bank earnings credits on your deposits, resale and estoppel revenue, and rebates from national vendor programs. None of it appears on your invoice, and at scale it can exceed the management fee.
Direct answers to four questions: do you mark up vendor invoices and at what rate; do you receive rebates, commissions or volume incentives from vendors we would use; who receives interest and earnings credits on our accounts; and who keeps resale and estoppel fees.
The terms, not just the price
Half the decision, and the half read last. An auto-renewal, a freely assignable agreement, a fee schedule that is referenced rather than attached, and a one-way indemnity are each individually survivable and collectively a Board with no exit.
The proposed agreement itself, supplied with the proposal rather than after selection. Asking for it afterwards means negotiating with no alternatives left.
Then build the three-year total
Once every bidder has answered the same eight questions in the same format, the comparison is arithmetic rather than judgment. Take the base fee, apply the escalator across the full term, add the ancillary charges you will actually incur at your real volumes, add onboarding, and subtract nothing.
Do it for every proposal on identical assumptions. It is normal for the ranking to change completely between the monthly figure and the three-year total, and it is the reason this is worth an evening.
General information for Board members, not legal advice. State law and your governing documents control, and both vary.
Start with what you already know.
You know your unit count. You know what your current management does well and what it does not. That is enough to begin.
Free for Boards. No calls until you ask.