If you are an HOA Board of Directors considering hiring Associa as your Property Management Company in Arizona, then let me do you a favor and save you a lot of time, money, and heartbreak: DO NOT DO IT.
Some background: I bought my condo in the Phoenix area 10+ years ago now, have lived in the unit that entire time, and have never had a single issue with the previous property management company who was overseeing our community. I have sat on my HOA board for the last few years.
This past year, we entered into talks with Associa about taking over management of our property. Associa told us everything we wanted to hear and promised us the world... Believing that Associa would help "transform" our community for the better, we agreed to switch to them as management.
Following the switch, Holly Digles from Associa was appointed as our complex's manager. She quickly proved herself to be both the very heart of the problems our community is now facing. From day one, Holly has been unpleasant (on rare good days) and downright hostile (on all other days) toward our residents... to the point where we are now seeing an exodus of those residents from the community because they no longer wish to deal with her.
What is the problem, you ask? Well, Holly seems to take all questions, commentary, or suggestions from our community as a personal attack on herself... and has since responded to these attempts at communication with outright retaliatory actions...
It all started with Holly shutting down discourse in our monthly board open sessions (which our residents are ENCOURAGED to attend) and speaking dismissively and aggressively to individuals who attempted to share ideas on dealing with recent property challenges during the meetings. We thought at first that maybe she was new to this career and was just finding her footing. It turns out that she has actually been in the Community Association Manager role across various companies/states for more than 5 years.
A few months after she began running our board meetings, residents began reaching out to the board informing us that they had suddenly start receiving violation notices, being charged fines, etc. from Holly/Associa for "issues" we had either never cited people over... some of which even goes against our own bylaws. The commonality? The residents receiving these notices/fines had ALL attended a board meeting at some point since Holly took over and had raised their voices about issues happening in the complex.
Additionally, our residents have brought it to the board's attention that Holly and Associa does not respond to calls, emails, or formal requests submitted through the Square app in a timely way. No meaningful change has happened since hiring Associa, and we're finding that the challenges we're trying to solve are dragging out for months on end as Holly drums up excuses for why issues are not being addressed. We have received an absurd number of screenshots from residents documenting all this. What makes it egregious is that some of these unanswered communications and unsolved issues involve truly serious matters ranging from community-wide overbilling for utilities with new meters to maintenance emergencies to failure to follow-through with security measures which have exposed the community to crime.
It is now SO bad that our residents are currently circulating a petition to have Holly removed as manager AND/OR to outright terminate service with Associa if they are unwilling to provide a different manager/start remediating these problems. I have not in 10 years of condo ownership seen anything like it... and yet I can't blame them for feeling this way.
The truth is that Associa (through the proxy of Holly) has made our lives unnecessarily hellish, has tarnished the previously pristine reputation of our Board with our community members who now question our judgment in bringing Associa aboard, and has played a direct role in the downturn of our property values. I wish we had never hired them...