HOA Board Satisfaction: 2026 Report & Best Practices Meta
Affordable
HOA Board Satisfaction Report 2026: What the Data Says About Affordable Benefits, Real Challenges, and Smarter Community Management
By Unknown16 min read
Last reviewed: July 2026
This report draws on the Foundation for Community Association Research's 2024 Homeowner Satisfaction Survey, Rocket Mortgage's national HOA survey, Realtor.com's HOA fee analysis, and current community association trend data. The core resident survey was fielded in 2024, and we've layered in 2025 to 2026 pricing and growth figures where available so this report reflects what boards are dealing with today, not just what residents said two years ago. It covers what HOA board satisfaction really looks like in 2026, where affordability is cracking the foundation of resident trust, and what boards can do about it now.
The Headline Numbers Look Great. So Why Are Boards Still Struggling?
Those numbers sound like a victory lap. And they are, to a point.
Because when you look past the aggregate data, the cracks start to show. Boards are raising fees. Residents feel shut out of financial decisions. Volunteer burnout is real. And the communities that can least afford operational dysfunction- smaller, budget-constrained HOAs- are carrying the heaviest load with the fewest tools.
This isn't a report about whether HOAs work. They do. It's a report about where board satisfaction breaks down, what's driving it, and what boards managing affordable communities need to do differently in 2026.
Section 1: The Affordability Problem Is Now the Board Satisfaction Problem
Here's a stat that should stop every HOA board in its tracks:
Nearly 7 in 10 homeowners are writing checks to an association they feel financially excluded from. That's not a governance footnote. That's the root cause of dissatisfaction in community after community.
And the fee pressure is getting worse. The median monthly HOA fee has already risen to $125 per month, up from $110 the year before, according to Realtor.com's 2024 analysis. That trend has continued: Realtor.com's most recent 2025 report puts the median fee at $135 per month, with nearly 44% of listings now carrying a monthly HOA fee, up from about a third in 2019.
For residents in affordable communities, that's not a minor line item. That's a real financial stress point.
And yet, this is critical: nearly 70% of homeowners still consider their HOA dues reasonable given the benefits they receive, per Rocket Mortgage's survey. So the issue isn't the cost alone. It's the perceived value and the transparency behind it.
When boards communicate clearly what fees cover, why costs are rising, and how reserves are being managed, satisfaction stays high, even when dues go up. When they don't, even modest increases erode trust fast.
The affordability challenge isn't just a financial one. It's a communication and transparency challenge wearing a financial mask.
Section 2: What HOA Residents Actually Value (The Affordable Benefits That Move the Needle)
Not every HOA can offer a resort-style pool or a 24/7 gated security team. And that's fine, because the amenities residents consistently rate as most valuable aren't the expensive ones.
Consistently ranked the #1 perk of HOA living across multiple surveys. A well-kept community isn't about luxury; it's about pride of place. And it directly protects resale value, which is part of why homeowners broadly believe belonging to an HOA has added value to their property.
2. Landscaping and Common Area Maintenance
Landscaping is the most common amenity provided by HOAs nationwide and the only one offered in more than half of the HOAs that Rocket Mortgage surveyed. It's affordable to coordinate, high-visibility, and signals to residents that their fees are working.
3. Safety and Community Standards
Safety has become a more significant priority in recent years. Community standards, even the ones residents occasionally grumble about, create the consistent living environment that residents ultimately value. 87% agree that HOA rules protect property values or have no negative effect.
4. Sidewalks, Play Areas, and Outdoor Recreation
Sidewalk maintenance, children's play areas, and outdoor recreation spaces round out the top five most common amenities, according to Rocket Mortgage. These are fundamentally accessible benefits, not luxury add-ons.
5. Volunteer-Led Community Building
This one often goes unnoticed in satisfaction surveys, but it's enormous: HOA board and committee members contribute nearly 97.6 million volunteer hours annually, valued at approximately $2.9 billion, according to industry data compiled by HOAManagement.com. That unpaid investment in community life is itself an affordable benefit. It's what makes HOAs function at all.
The research makes something clear: residents in affordable communities don't need five-star amenities. They need to feel that their neighborhood is well-kept, their safety is considered, and their money is being used responsibly. Boards that deliver on those three things, clearly and consistently, maintain high satisfaction scores even on tight budgets.
Section 3: The 5 Real Challenges Dragging HOA Board Satisfaction Down
The headline numbers are positive. But the localized data, and the qualitative feedback from community forums, exit surveys, and industry reporting, tells a more complicated story. Here are the five challenges that consistently erode HOA board satisfaction in 2026:
Challenge 1: Financial Opacity and the Trust Deficit
This is the big one. As noted above, fewer than a third of homeowners feel involved in financial decision-making. When boards raise fees without clearly explaining reserve fund gaps, increases in insurance costs, or deferred maintenance timelines, residents don't see a budget. They see a bill.
Unpaid assessments, budget shortfalls, and poorly managed reserve funds can disrupt day-to-day operations and, in severe cases, lead to large special assessments and declining property values. Without adequate reserves, homeowners may need to seek loans or face unexpected special assessments, a significant burden that almost always triggers dissatisfaction, as Rocket Mortgage explains.
Roughly half of association members still believe their assessments are fair and justified, but that number has been slipping. Between 2018 and 2024, more residents reported that assessments were too high, even without major increases in actual fee levels, according to FCAR's assessment trend data. Perception is driving the gap as much as price.
Challenge 2: Poor Communication Creates a Feedback Vacuum
When HOA boards and property managers fail to communicate effectively with residents, issues multiply fast. Homeowners feel left in the dark about important updates, community rules, or upcoming board meetings, which leads directly to frustration and disengagement.
Low homeowner engagement becomes a self-reinforcing problem: without residents' input, boards make decisions that may not reflect community priorities. Meeting attendance drops. The same small group of volunteers handles everything. Burnout follows.
Meeting participation already varies sharply by generation, with older residents more likely to attend HOA meetings regularly than younger ones. As younger buyers move into HOA communities in growing numbers, boards that rely solely on traditional communication methods will increasingly struggle to reach their communities.
Challenge 3: Volunteer Burnout and Governance Gaps
Between 30% and 40% of HOAs are self-managed, operating entirely on the effort of elected volunteer board members rather than professional managers, according to industry statistics. That's a lot of governance weight on people who also have jobs, families, and lives outside the community.
Self-managed HOAs often rely on volunteers who may lack expertise in financial management, strategic planning, or legal compliance. This creates real operational risk, not because volunteers aren't dedicated, but because managing an HOA correctly requires skills that most people simply haven't had reason to develop.
Volunteer leadership paired with inadequate financial planning, deferred maintenance, and insufficient reserve funding can expose homeowners to substantial financial risk. In the worst cases, years of well-intentioned but underqualified management lead to special assessments that blindside residents and tank board satisfaction overnight.
Challenge 4: Fee Increases Without Visible Value
Rising insurance premiums, inflation in labor and materials, and the ongoing cost of deferred maintenance are all real and legitimate drivers of HOA fee increases. But residents don't automatically connect the fee increase notice in their mailbox with those underlying cost drivers.
When boards raise dues without proactively explaining the reasoning, residents experience the increase as either arbitrary or suspicious. That's where the most vocal criticism of HOA boards originates, not from the fee itself, but from the story, or lack of story, around it.
Boards that publish clear budget breakdowns, communicate reserve fund status, and explain cost drivers before fee votes tend to maintain higher satisfaction scores, even in periods of significant fee increases.
Challenge 5: Rule Enforcement That Feels Personal, Not Principled
Consistently and fairly enforcing community standards while maintaining positive relationships with homeowners is one of the hardest things HOA boards do. The tension is real: rules that protect property values for everyone can feel restrictive or selectively enforced to individual residents.
More than 3 in 10 surveyed homeowners feel their HOA has too much power, and roughly 10% have considered selling their home specifically because of HOA-related frustration, per Rocket Mortgage's survey. Enforcement disputes over fence heights, parking, and exterior aesthetics are among the most cited sources of dissatisfaction in community feedback.
The solution isn't less enforcement. It's transparent, consistent, and educationally framed enforcement. Boards that lead with education before penalties, publish clear standards, and apply rules uniformly tend to avoid the perception of favoritism that turns residents from satisfied to antagonistic.
Section 4: The Satisfaction Gap Between Board Members and Residents
One of the most revealing, and underreported, dynamics in HOA board satisfaction research is the difference in perception between board members and the residents they serve.
Survey data shows that people who currently or previously served on an HOA board are meaningfully more likely to say their fees are worth paying than residents who have never served on a board. Board members have context. They've sat through the budget meetings. They know why insurance costs went up. They've seen the maintenance quotes. Regular residents haven't, and without that context, fees can feel disconnected from value.
The implication for boards is direct: the more residents understand what the board knows, the higher satisfaction scores will be. Transparency isn't just an ethical best practice, it's a board satisfaction strategy.
Section 5: The Scale Problem — HOAs Are Growing Faster Than Management Capacity
Here's context that almost every HOA board satisfaction conversation misses: the sheer scale of what's happening to the HOA sector.
As of 2025, there are approximately 373,000 community associations across the United States, up roughly 4,000 from the previous year, according to FCAR's industry data. HOA housing now represents approximately 33% of all U.S. housing stock, accommodating more than 77 million Americans.
At the same time, there are only an estimated 60,000 to 65,000 community association managers and 9,000 to 10,000 management companies serving those associations, per industry estimates. The math doesn't work cleanly. Boards, especially in smaller, affordable communities, are increasingly on their own.
And the communities forming now are diverse: new construction is heavily concentrated in HOA communities, and in master-planned communities in Florida and Texas, which dominate new development, HOA oversight is simply the default. The residents moving into these communities have expectations shaped by digital-first service experiences, and they're bringing those expectations to their HOA boards.
Managing satisfaction at scale, across communities with wildly different budgets, demographics, and infrastructure needs, requires tools that weren't built for the paper-binder era of HOA management.
Section 6: How ExactEstate Addresses the Core Drivers of HOA Board Dissatisfaction
We've spent this report walking through what the research actually says about HOA board satisfaction, where it's strong, where it's fragile, and what consistently drives it down. In practice, these problems get solved operationally, not just philosophically. Here's specifically how.
The challenges we've identified: financial opacity, poor communication, volunteer burnout, fee perception gaps, and governance complexity, aren't abstract. They're operational. And operational problems have operational solutions.
ExactEstate was built by property managers, not tech outsiders. That means every feature in the platform was designed around the real workflows of real community managers, not theoretical use cases. Here's where that makes a direct difference for HOA board satisfaction:
Financial Transparency, Without the Accounting Degree
The number one driver of HOA board dissatisfaction is financial opacity. ExactEstate gives boards and managers real-time access to financial reporting: budget tracking, reserve fund visibility, assessment status, and payment history, all in a centralized dashboard that doesn't require a CPA to read.
When homeowners can see where their money goes, trust goes up. When boards can pull clean financial reports for meetings in three clicks or less, they actually do it, instead of presenting outdated spreadsheets that raise more questions than they answer.
No module gouging. One price, all features. No surprise add-ons for the financial tools boards actually need.
Communication That Reaches Residents Where They Are
Solving the communication gap, especially across generational lines, requires more than an email newsletter. ExactEstate's resident-facing tools support multi-channel communication: portal messaging, automated notices, maintenance request updates, and community announcements that meet residents in the digital spaces they actually use.
When residents feel informed, they feel included. When they feel included, board satisfaction scores go up, even when dues go up. Because your residents deserve better than finding out about a fee increase in a letter postmarked three days after the board vote.
Maintenance Management That Makes Visible Value
One of the easiest ways for boards to demonstrate value is fast, visible maintenance response. ExactEstate's maintenance tracking tools let boards and managers log, assign, track, and close maintenance requests with full transparency, so residents can see that their sidewalk complaint didn't disappear into a void.
Faster resolution. Visible follow-through.
Resident Portal Adoption That Closes the Financial Inclusion Gap
Fewer than a third of homeowners feel involved in HOA financial decisions. ExactEstate's resident portal gives homeowners direct access to financial summaries, meeting minutes, governing documents, and their own payment and violation history, on their schedule, not just at the annual meeting.
When residents have access to information, they stop guessing. And when they stop guessing, boards stop fielding calls from frustrated homeowners who feel like something is being hidden from them. No more calls asking what their balance is. No more "where did my money go?"
Tools That Scale With You, Not Against You
Whether you're managing a 50-unit self-managed HOA or a 500-unit community with a professional management team, ExactEstate's single-price, all-features model means boards don't have to choose which problems they can afford to solve. No modules to unlock. No per-feature pricing that punishes growth. One price. All features. Property management, simplified.
For boards in affordable communities especially, this matters. Technology shouldn't be a luxury reserved for large, well-funded associations. The operational challenges are the same at every scale, and so should be access to the tools that address them.
Section 7: A Framework for HOA Boards to Improve Satisfaction Scores in 2026
Based on the research data and operational patterns we've examined, here's a practical framework any HOA board can apply, regardless of size or budget:
1. Run a Localized Satisfaction Survey (Not Just the National Benchmark)
National data tells you where HOAs stand broadly. It won't tell you whether your residents trust your financial management, feel heard at board meetings, or believe their dues reflect the community they're actually living in. Survey your residents. Focus on communication, maintenance satisfaction, financial transparency, and perceived value. Do it annually.
2. Publish a Plain-Language Budget Summary Before Every Fee Vote
Don't wait for residents to ask why fees are going up. Tell them first. Publish a one-page budget summary, in plain language, not accounting jargon, that explains what costs are driving the change, how reserves are funded, and what the increase means for the average homeowner. Residents who understand the "why" are far more likely to accept the "what."
3. Acknowledge Maintenance Requests Within 24 Hours
You may not be able to fix every issue immediately. But acknowledging it fast signals that the board is responsive and residents are heard. Track response and resolution times. Set targets. Share the results with homeowners. This single practice, consistently applied, prevents more dissatisfaction than almost any policy change.
4. Build Communication Channels Younger Homeowners Will Actually Use
A growing share of HOA residents are Millennial and Gen Z buyers who will not read a bulletin board notice. Build digital-first communication: resident portals, email summaries, in-app notifications. Meet your community where it is in 2026, not where it was in 2006.
5. Close the Information Gap Between Board and Residents
The satisfaction gap between board members and residents is almost entirely explained by information asymmetry. Share more. Publish meeting minutes promptly. Make financial documents accessible in a central location. Let residents see what the board sees, and watch trust scores climb.
Bottom Line: HOA Board Satisfaction Is a Transparency and Operations Problem
The research tells a clear story. National HOA board satisfaction is strong, and it's sustained by the real value HOAs deliver: maintained neighborhoods, protected property values, shared amenities, and community connection. These benefits don't require big budgets. They require consistent execution.
Where satisfaction cracks, it almost always traces back to the same root causes: financial opacity, communication failures, and governance gaps that make residents feel excluded from the community they're paying to maintain.
The good news? These are solvable problems. Not with bigger budgets, but with better systems, clearer communication, and tools that give both boards and residents visibility into what's actually happening in their community.
That's exactly what ExactEstate was built to do. Stop fighting your software. Start managing communities.
1. What is HOA board satisfaction? HOA board satisfaction reflects how homeowners and board members view the board's leadership, communication, and community management.
2. What affects HOA board satisfaction? The biggest factors are financial transparency, communication, maintenance, and consistent rule enforcement.
3. How can HOA boards improve resident satisfaction? Improve communication, share financial updates, respond quickly to maintenance requests, and involve homeowners in the community.
4. How does ExactEstate help HOA boards? ExactEstate streamlines accounting, maintenance, communication, reporting, and homeowner portals in one platform, helping boards improve transparency, efficiency, and resident satisfaction.
.png)
