5 Mistakes to Avoid When Collecting Past Dues

Your first encounter with a delinquent homeowner may catch you off guard. As a community association manager, you may be unsure how to best handle this situation. We specialize in homeowner association fee collections.

Snap Collections is a collections platform for community associations that will work with you in order to recover your money quickly and efficiently. We understand that this situation is new for you and needs to be handled delicately. Therefore, we have provided five mistakes to avoid when attempting to collect past dues.

What Not to Do

1. DO NOT Send Inconsistent Messages. As a homeowner association manager, ensure that your past due reminders are consistent on a daily basis. Past due reminders can be in the form of written notices or letters or phone calls.
2. DO NOT be disrespectful to a delinquent unit owner.  Talk to them with dignity and respect.

3. DO NOT Neglect the Homeowner’s Questions or Concerns. Your job as a community association manager is to listen to the delinquent homeowner’s questions or concerns. If they would like to discuss past due related subjects, you should act promptly and address their questions or concerns. The more the delinquent homeowner understands, the sooner you will recover the money.

4. DO NOT Forget to Have an Obligation for Repayment. An obligation to pay should definitely be established even if the delinquent homeowner cannot pay immediately. Call them to set a date of when they can pay you in full and if they can’t pay the full amount, consider accepting partial payments. Document this agreement and hold the client to their obligation on their past due account.

5. DO NOT Let Time Pass You By. Be aware that the older your past due account becomes, the less likely you are to recover funds. Be persistent in your recovery efforts. If your selection efforts are not effective, and you’re still pursuing the account, it’s time to hire a collections agency .   Collections delayed are collections denied.

SNAP Collections is a collections agency in Florida that has been successfully collecting past due assessments since 2006. Our experience and success speaks for itself, as we are now a national company serving condos and HOAs from the East Coast to Colorado. Our proprietary HOA collections platform is designed to be transparent so that boards of directors and management can keep track of the status of their collections files. Contact us today for more information.