Much discussion has been sparked regarding the money. In an effort to provide full clarity, this post provides a full documentation of our monthly operating budget as it stands as well as our yearly projection for 2023. I’ve also added a discussion of some of the larger budget items that we’ve encountered over the last few years so everyone can see how the big-ticket items affect the budget for years after.

Here is a table of the monthly expenses projected for this year. Numbers up until August are actual numbers. Anything August and after are estimates. I do just want to add here that we discuss and present this at each HOA meeting, so there has never been an effort to keep this hidden from anyone. We hope this blog post allows you access to the information that you miss when you can’t make it to the meetings.

Our lawn mowing services are a majority of our monthly expenses. Reliant energy is for the pond pumps and Ambit energy is for the streetlights. COP water is City of Pearland water charge for basic water waste management. The insurance is for the community and the HOA and is a standard expense for HOAs. Pump maintenance covers our pumps being inspected on a regular basis. Pond treatment covers treating the water for pests to keep the mosquitos down and provide regular reports on water quality. They can also clean the pond, remove the pump, and install a new pump. However, these things have not been in the budget so far. Office supplies are paper, envelopes, and stamps to send out the annual meeting notifications. Web service covers our website fee. Capital improvement is flowers and mulching. This line item would be where other capital improvement projects like replacing benches and adding more landscaping would go. SW Recovery Services is the fee collected from overdue HOA fees that this company collects. We outsourced collections for overdue accounts to this company in an effort to collect the HOA dues. This doesn’t cost anything out of pocket, but they do take a portion of any dues they successfully collect.

So, for reference, this year we collected a little over $35,000 in HOA dues. This gives us about $3,000 surplus for additional capital improvements. That is, until you consider the big-ticket items that popup every now and then as the community ages. As many of you know with your own home, over time there will be larger expenses that come up as your home ages. Below are some of the big ticket items we’ve had to address in our community recently.

Big ticket items that we are still impacted by are the pipe and fence replacement, tree trimming, and the pump replacement. The pipe and fence replacement were $8,198. We got quotes from several companies. Many didn’t even give us a quote because the job was too small. Of the ones that did, the company we went with beat the others by far. This absolutely needed to be fixed so we moved forward with this expense. Any time we trim the trees around the pond, it costs at least $1,100. We try to get this done whenever it is brought up, but it really eats into our yearly expenses. And as we all know, the pumps needed replacing a few years ago. This expense was around $10,000.

We hope this helps you understand where your money goes each year. If you still have concerns or questions, please send us a comment on the Contact Us page on our website or send an email directly to the board at board.pfhoa@gmail.com.