Aggressive Community Association Collections

As a collection agency for community associations, I meet with a lot of boards and am usually greeted with some good natured humor about debt collecting. Television and film have given us a vast amount of stereotypes to choose from that range from a gangster with a baseball bat to a foul mouthed outbound caller. I gently advise the boards that, contrary to their wishes, I will not break anybody’s legs nor will I harass anybody, because both actions are highly illegal and not at all effective. Yet, I do promise resolute action that one may consider aggressive. So what is aggressive community association collections?

Aggressive should be defined as “determined” to do flawless underwriting and gathering information so that a collector can do their job having the best data possible. It’s about working hard to engage the delinquent member of a community association to work out a solution to their problems, and the association’s problem of not getting paid. Notices are sent out, inbound call centers are responsive, outbound calls are made and if it becomes necessary delinquencies are reported to the credit bureaus. Everything must be done in accordance to State and Federal laws and collection companies must be careful not to violate the FDCPA (Fair Debt Collection Practices Act), TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) and the FCRA (Fair Credit Reporting Act).

Aggressive means that once a file is sent into collections it is moved along a predetermined path towards resolution. Collections are not “liening them and leaving them” as may be the case with community association law firms who are often given these matters to resolve. Although it is important to have a lien filed during the community association collections process, unless an association wants to foreclose or go for a deficiency judgment there is very little reason to use the services of a law firm. There is a legal process and then there is a collections process. Legal processes often wind up costing associations more money than what is recovered whereas collection companies are usually performance based.
Aggressive means staying on the file and making those outbound calls, it’s about being responsive to inbound calls, and producing consequences by reporting a delinquency to the credit bureaus should a unit owner remain intransigent. The term aggressive should not be a reflection of the treatment towards a debtor but rather a definition of how determined a firm will work on any given file in order to get the delinquent unit owner to start paying. The most successful collectors that I have seen speak with the softest voices and are very consultative in nature… That’s the way to get them to pay, that is as aggressive as you can or should get.