Skip to Content
For unit owners

Why Did My HOA Assessment Go Up?

You Are Allowed
to See the Math.

Your assessment went up and nobody could tell you exactly why. That is not a billing problem. It is a trust problem.

See the Resident Portal See How It Works
The owner portal showing the assessment for a unit and what it is made up of
Your assessment, and where it comes from. The same figures your board is working from.

The Math

An Increase Is Not
a Number Somebody Picked.

An increase is not a number the board picks. It comes out of a budget, and the budget is bound by your CC&Rs and by state law, including a cap on how far it can rise without a vote of the members.

You are entitled to the reasoning, not just the amount. Where ResLife runs the budget, every line carries the clause that decided how that cost is shared, quoted from your own documents.

Not because the board is hiding something. Usually because the tools they were given never produced an explanation in the first place.

The regular assessment increase cap showing the California statute quoted with its code section and the association CC and R article quoted with its page number
Twenty percent, and here is who says so. The Civil Code and your own CC&Rs, side by side.
An adopted operating rule showing its position in the lifecycle, its version, its effective date and the date it was adopted
The rule, with the day it started applying. Which version, adopted when, effective from when.

Findable

You Should Not Have to Ask
What You Are Bound By.

You can be fined under a rule you have never read, adopted at a meeting you did not know had happened.

Rules, minutes, budgets and the decisions behind them, in one place you can actually reach.

What You Can Do

You Are Not the Customer.
You Are Why They Change.

You are not the customer here and we are not going to pretend otherwise. Boards and managers decide what software an association uses.

But you are the reason they would change it. The fastest route to a budget you can understand is putting this in front of whoever runs your association.

What You Are Owed

An Increase Is Not
a Number Somebody Picked.

It comes out of a budget, and that budget is bound by your CC&Rs and by state law, including a cap on how far it can rise without a vote of the members. You are entitled to the reasoning, not only the amount.

Why did my HOA assessment go up?

Because the association’s budget went up, and your share of it is set by your governing documents. Ask for the budget and the per-unit calculation behind it. Where ResLife runs the budget, every line carries the clause that decided how that cost is shared, quoted from your own documents.

How much can an HOA raise assessments in a year?

In California, a regular assessment cannot rise more than 20% over the prior fiscal year without approval of a majority of a quorum of members (Civ. Code §5605(b)). Other states set their own limits, and your CC&Rs may be stricter than the statute.

Can I be fined under a rule I have never seen?

A rule change generally requires notice to members before the board adopts it, and there is a comment period attached. If you were never told, that is worth asking about at the next meeting.

Show This to Whoever
Runs Your Community.

You cannot set this up yourself, and you are not meant to. The person who can is your manager or your board.

See the Resident Portal