What HOA Boards Should Know About Common Area Landscaping
If you are on an HOA board in Highland Village, Flower Mound, Argyle or any other area here between Lake Grapevine and Lake Lewisville, you probably did not sign up because you were excited about landscaping. You signed up because somebody had to, and now you are looking at a grounds maintenance line in the budget that is one of the biggest numbers on the page, and you are not entirely sure what is behind it.
I work with community associations and commercial properties across this area, and the thing I notice is that common area grounds get managed differently than any other kind of property. Not worse. Differently. Nobody lives on a common area. That one fact causes most of what goes wrong.
Here is what I would want a board to understand.
Common areas fail quietly
A homeowner notices a broken sprinkler head in their own yard within about a day, because they look at that yard every morning. Nobody looks at the greenbelt behind the fence line every morning. Nobody looks at the median on the way in unless something is obviously dead.
That lag is the whole problem, and it shows up in three specific ways.
Irrigation leaks run for months
This is the big one, and it is almost always the biggest recoverable dollar amount in an association budget.
A common area irrigation system runs on a shared meter with no one standing next to it. A cracked lateral line or a stuck valve can run for weeks before anyone connects it to the water bill, and by the time a board member says the bill looks high, you have paid for it several times over.
I have found leaks that were costing an association more per month than the entire maintenance contract.
The fix is not complicated. Somebody has to physically run every zone and watch it, on a schedule, and report what they found in writing. That is a specific service and you should confirm it is written into your contract rather than assumed.
Ask how often zones get run and eyeballed, and ask what the report looks like. If the answer is vague, the answer is that it is not happening. We handle this as part of our irrigation work, and on association properties I would rather catch it in a monthly walkthrough than in a water bill.
Small problems become capital problems
Turf that thins out from bad coverage is a mowing issue this year and a resod bid in three years. A tree that never got structural pruning when it was young becomes a limb over a sidewalk and a liability conversation. Erosion at a swale that nobody flagged becomes a drainage project.
None of those are emergencies at the point where they are cheap to fix. They only become visible once they are expensive. A board that is only hearing from its contractor when something breaks is getting a reactive service, and reactive is always the more expensive version.
Institutional knowledge leaves with the board
Boards turn over. Somebody who has been volunteering for four years steps off, and with them goes the knowledge of where the irrigation controller is, which key opens the box, which zone covers the east entrance, what the landscape plan was supposed to look like, and what the last contractor was told to stop doing.
I have walked properties where nobody currently serving could tell me where the backflow device was. That is not a criticism of the board. It is a documentation problem, and it is fixable.
Any contractor working an association property should be keeping a site map, a controller inventory, and a zone list, and that should live with the association rather than with the vendor.
The parts of a property that get overlooked
Highland Village is not laid out like a strip retail center, and the common areas here have a few features that come up over and over.
Entry monuments carry more weight than their square footage
The entrance is maybe two percent of the property you are paying to maintain and it is close to a hundred percent of what people judge the neighborhood on. It is the photo in the listing when somebody sells. It is the first thing a prospective buyer sees.
I am not saying to overspend there. I am saying that if the budget is tight, the entry is the last place to cut and the first place to put seasonal color, because the return on that specific patch of ground is not proportional to its size.
Trail frontage creates boundary questions
For example, Highland Village has close to ten miles of multi-use trail running through it, connecting neighborhoods to parks, schools, and retail. That is a genuine amenity and it is one of the reasons people buy here.
It also means a lot of associations have common area that backs up to or abuts a public trail, and the line between what the city maintains and what the association maintains is not always obvious to the crew standing there with a mower.
Getting that boundary drawn on a map, once, prevents both the awkward version where nobody mows a strip for two years and the version where you are paying to maintain public ground.
Sightlines at intersections are a liability item, not an aesthetic one
Shrubs and ornamental grasses at a neighborhood entrance grow. What was a low bed three years ago is now tall enough that a driver pulling out cannot see down the street.
Boards tend to treat this as a looks question and move it down the priority list. I would treat it as a risk question. It should be on a trim schedule with a defined height, not handled whenever someone complains.
Detention ponds and greenbelts need a decision, not a default
A lot of associations have drainage areas and natural greenbelt that get maintained by habit rather than by plan. Sometimes they get mowed like turf, which is expensive and often not what the space needs. Sometimes they get ignored until they are overgrown.
Either one can be the right call.
Mowed and manicured, or managed as a naturalized area with a defined cut schedule, are both legitimate. What costs money is not deciding, because then you get inconsistent effort and an unpredictable line item.
What to ask before you sign anything
Fall is when most associations set next year's budget, and it is also when a lot of boards turn over at the annual meeting, so this is the season these conversations actually happen.
If you are reviewing bids, these are the questions that separate proposals that look the same on price.
How often is someone on site, and what happens on those visits?
Mowing frequency is easy to compare. What is harder and more important is what else is included. Bed maintenance, irrigation checks, pruning, and reporting either have a defined cadence or they happen when somebody asks.
Who do we call, and how fast?
Associations have a specific problem here, because the person who notices an issue is usually a resident, not the board. Know how a resident complaint is supposed to reach the contractor and how long a response takes.
What is in the base contract versus what gets billed separately?
Seasonal color, mulch refresh, tree work, and irrigation repairs are frequently extras. That is normal. What is not acceptable is finding out in April.
Are you licensed and insured for what you are actually doing?
Any irrigation repair work in Texas requires a licensed irrigator. Ask for the license number and ask for a certificate of insuBook Onlinerance naming the association.
Do you know this city?
Water restrictions, local requirements, and just knowing what actually survives a Denton County August are not universal. A crew that works this area every week is going to catch things a regional route crew will not.
Getting a real number
If your board is working through next year's budget and you want a bid that is specific to your property rather than a per acre guess, I am happy to walk the common areas with you and put together something itemized.
We work with associations and commercial properties throughout the area. You can read more about our commercial and association maintenance or about the work we do in Highland Village, Flower Mound, Lewisville, and other nearby areas.
Reach out here and we will get a walkthrough on the calendar.
Rob Dilts
Owner
RD Services
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