May 2010

Dear Board Member:

Web Pages for Associations - Sleepy Hollow Condominium Association of Grand Blanc has now gone live with the first community website hosted by our office.  Two other sites are nearing construction; (1) Orchard View Estates Association of Fenton Township and (2) Mill Pointe of Hartland Association of Howell.  To take a look at these sites as well as to see a full demo of our website options for our clients, please go to www.CummingsManagement.com, select Owner Services and then Community Web Sites.  From there you can link to sites our clients have put together as well as view an online demo.  Since the live sites have several pages that require a password authentication, the demo site of Grande Villas will be the best overview of how the sites fully function.  Congratulations to Sleepy Hollow for paving the way! 

FHA Processing/Reserve Items - Since the March FHA meetings, 24 Associations have authorized the FHA Project Approval with Homewisedocs.  All approvals are at various stages of review.  One item that has come out of the review process is the budgeted amounts needed to increase Reserve balances for each community.  Additional paperwork has been requested by FHA for all communities who have submitted for approval that did not have 10% of their 2010 Budget to increase their Reserves.  The future is a little unclear, but we expect to recommend to all our groups a 10% minimum for future budgets.  More will come as FHA reviews the submissions.  We will continue to keep you posted.

Online Payment Processing -Through our website, www.CummingsManagement.com,

Co-owners have been able to pay their dues using either an e-check or credit card payment processing.  Since these options went live over 2 years ago, we have received various critiques from our Co-owners who have utilized the online services.  After review of the comments and looking at other solutions, we agree that there needs to be an easier process with more options, especially on credit card payments. 

Active today (5/11/10) credit card payments will include debit card processing as well as allowing Visa transactions, both of which were not options before.  We hope to have a better payment solution for e-check, but for now the current option is fully functional and is being used by many Co-owners every month.  Thank you for all of your comments as this helps us improve our service to you.    

Seldom do we have a moment to reacquaint ourselves with the service providers that help support all of our communities.  We had such an opportunity in late April when we hosted our first Open House.  The invited guests were all of the vendors throughout our portfolio and our staff members.  This was one way to continue to build the relationships with the service providers.  The event was well attended and we look to find further ways to keep good ties with the people who work directly to maintain and enhance your communities.  

Take care,

Kay