July 1, 2026 | Mark Luis Foster

We made it to July with 30 chapter meetings now under our belt for the year! Hard to believe, but we’ve hit the halfway point of what has been an interesting year in many respects, especially for HOAs. With new laws passed, moratoriums on building new homes in some communities, rising fees, and myriad other issues, we’ve all had our hands full as volunteers.

If you missed our chapter meetings in June, you missed several great presentations, once of which was on damage restorations from Lindstrom Restoration. In advance of their presentation, we did a Pop Up Survey (0ur seventh of the year) to get a gauge on damage caused by homeowners. We revealed the answers throughout the month of June at our chapters, and now that we’re done with that month’s series of content, we can reveal the answers on our blog.

We had 129 responses to this survey, and the charts are pretty self explanatory.

Above: Good news is that most reporting HOAs have not experienced damage related to homeowner self-inflicted wounds. Stand by for the bad news.

Above: Most HOAs report damage from water. It’s actually larger than than 47% responding, if you consider the 10.5% that also answered “frozen pipes” (presumably due to not properly ventilating or warming, say, a kitchen sink area next to an outside wall). Water damage galore.

Above: Not all damage was covered by a homeowner’s HO-6 policy. Some got rejected, and the rest remains unresolved.

Above: Some associations did report that they had to pay for the damage as evidenced in the prior question.

Above: For the most part, the repairs were scheduled by the association or property manager, with a smaller portion being scheduled by the homeowner themselves.

Stay tuned — another Pop Up Survey is coming your way soon!