One of the courses of action a community association can take to resolve the issue  of delinquent assessments is an outbound call.  Outbound calls have proven to be a very effective method to get people engaged, informed & paying.  Now, this is not to say that your manager or any member of the board of directors should pick up the phone and start calling, because outbound calls are more then what you may think they are.  Reaching out to delinquent unit owners is a task that requires skill, training, compassion, and in some cases a very thick skin.  The call should be more of a consultation and never a confrontation.  This is why specialists should be engaged for this job.  It should also be noted that outbound collection calls are seldom if ever done by community association attorneys.

The classic definition of a Zombie Debt simply put “the undead.”  That is to say a person is dead but still has some features of being alive so in essence they are not “totally dead.”   It sounds creepy, and it is creepy but in almost every community association in these United States there lurks “Zombie Debt.”  Zombie Debt is best described as money an association has written off because a bank has foreclosed and there were dues owing that the association never received.  The mistake is that this debt is not dead and much like a Zombie it still lives and can be collected.  So why have not boards of directors and management companies not attempted to collect this Zombie Debt?

Learn from SNAP Collections how your community association can engage the Latest, Newest, and most innovative collection program.

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Things have changed in the last two years, and for the most part the news is good for Condos and HOAs.  Nationally prices have begun to rise, banks are finally coming for their collateral, and community associations are welcoming new good paying owners into their developments and buildings.   On the other hand, associations are still not out of the woods yet because there is still a lot of money on the books that has yet to be collected.  Millions if not Billions of dollars are still owed for delinquent maintenance fees and the question remains; How can that money be recovered in a manner that the cost of the recovery does not exceed the recovery itself?