Oregon HOA and condo laws: management company interview questions

An Oregon HOA or condominium board should not select a management company from a proposal alone. The board needs evidence that the company can turn Oregon's reserve, financial, records, meeting, insurance, and owner-service requirements into repeatable work that directors can see and supervise.

Oregon uses different statutory chapters for planned communities and condominiums. Planned communities are addressed principally in ORS 94.550 to 94.783. Condominiums are addressed in ORS Chapter 100. The community's creation date, classification, declaration, bylaws, nonprofit status, and later elections or amendments can affect which provisions apply.

Oregon also licenses real estate property managers for the management of rental real estate under ORS Chapter 696. Association management is not automatically the same activity as managing rental real estate. If a finalist will lease units, collect rent for individual owners, hold rental funds, or perform another regulated real estate activity, ask Oregon counsel and the Oregon Real Estate Agency which license, trust-account, agreement, and supervision rules apply.

This guide is general board education, not legal, accounting, reserve, tax, insurance, real estate, licensing, cybersecurity, collection, or management advice. Oregon association counsel and qualified professionals should confirm the rules and facts that apply to a particular community.

1. Make the candidate identify the law that governs the community

The first test is not whether the manager can quote a statute from memory. It is whether the company has a disciplined process for determining what applies and translating that answer into a compliance calendar.

Ask each finalist:

1. Is our community a condominium, planned community, or another ownership form? Require the manager to identify the declaration, plat, articles, bylaws, amendments, and public records used.
2. Which Oregon statutes govern our reserves, financial statements, owner records, meetings, insurance, assessments, and sales disclosures? Ask for exact sections and a written applicability note reviewed by counsel.
3. How do creation date and community classification change the answer? Older planned communities can be subject to special application and consistency rules. A generic checklist should not be treated as a legal opinion.
4. Who monitors statutory and regulatory changes? Ask how a change becomes an updated policy, calendar, template, software rule, staff instruction, board briefing, and audit check.
5. What does the manager decide, and what goes to association counsel or another professional? Look for a documented escalation matrix.

A good answer distinguishes legal interpretation from operational coordination. The management company should not sell legal advice it is not qualified to provide, but it should know when a routine task depends on a legal answer.

2. Test reserve-study and maintenance-plan operations

ORS 94.595 addresses reserve accounts, reserve studies, and maintenance plans for covered planned communities. ORS 100.175 provides a parallel framework for covered condominiums. Both chapters connect the reserve account to association-maintained property, annual board review, estimated useful lives, estimated costs, inflation, investment returns, and a maintenance plan.

Ask:

1. What is our annual reserve calendar? Identify site inspection, component review, cost updates, board workshop, draft budget, owner communication, and final adoption dates.
2. Who updates useful lives and project costs? The manager should coordinate the reserve professional, engineer, vendors, maintenance records, completed projects, and board decisions rather than invent technical assumptions.
3. How is the maintenance plan kept connected to the reserve study? Ask for one schedule showing routine work, major maintenance, replacement, responsible party, planned year, estimated cost, funding source, and completion evidence.
4. How are reserve assessments and transfers recorded? The board should see contributions, interest, project spending, transfers, borrowing, repayment, commitments, and ending cash without confusing a transfer with income or expense.
5. What happens when the board wants to reduce or eliminate reserve funding? Require the manager to identify the applicable statutory conditions, owner approval if required, governing-document limits, professional advice, and written record.
6. How is borrowing from reserves controlled? Oregon's planned-community and condominium statutes include conditions involving a board resolution and a written repayment plan for qualifying temporary borrowing. Ask for the authorization, accounting, owner communication, budget treatment, and monthly repayment report.
7. How are reserve projects closed? Require final contract amount, approved changes, inspection, warranties, manuals, permits, lien releases where appropriate, photographs, component update, and next-maintenance date.

Ask the finalist to show a redacted reserve roll-forward and project file. The board should be able to connect the adopted budget to the bank account, general ledger, contract, invoice, payment, completed asset, and next reserve-study update.

3. Require association-owned bank and accounting controls

ORS 94.670 requires covered planned-community association funds to be deposited and maintained in the association's name in separate federally insured accounts, subject to the statute's terms. ORS 100.480 contains comparable requirements for condominium association funds. Association expenses are paid from association accounts, and financial records must be sufficiently detailed for proper accounting purposes.

Ask:

1. In whose legal name are all operating, reserve, savings, and investment accounts held? The answer should be the association, not the management company.
2. Who are the authorized signers, online administrators, payment initiators, approvers, statement recipients, and reconciliation reviewers? Require a role matrix.
3. Can a board reviewer receive statements directly from the financial institution? Independent access should survive a portal outage or manager dispute.
4. Who can create a vendor, change bank instructions, enter a bill, approve a bill, release payment, post a journal entry, transfer money, and reconcile the account? Separate incompatible duties or add documented compensating controls.
5. How are vendor bank changes verified? Require a callback through a trusted contact, second-person review, system log, and retained evidence.
6. How are bank accounts reconciled? Ask for monthly timing, preparer, reviewer, old-item investigation, exception report, and board evidence.
7. How are operating and reserve funds separated in both the bank and books? Request a redacted balance sheet, cash schedule, reserve roll-forward, and reconciliation package.
8. What happens when the management relationship ends? The association should retain ownership and access while signers, tokens, mailing addresses, permissions, and integrations are changed under a controlled checklist.

If the candidate proposes a pooled account, custodial arrangement, or proprietary banking product, have Oregon counsel and the association's accountant evaluate whether the structure satisfies the applicable association-account requirements and preserves direct association control.

4. Demand a statutory financial-statement calendar

For covered planned communities, ORS 94.670 requires the board within 90 days after fiscal year-end to prepare or cause preparation of an annual balance sheet and income-and-expense statement and distribute it to owners. For covered condominiums, ORS 100.480 contains a similar 90-day process.

Both sections address an independent CPA review when annual assessments exceed $75,000, generally within 300 days after fiscal year-end, with statutory exceptions and owner-vote provisions. The manager should not treat the threshold, timing, opt-out rule, or scope as a casual budget choice.

Ask:

1. What is the year-end close schedule that gets us to the 90-day owner statement? Identify cutoff, reconciliations, accruals, adjustments, draft review, board approval, distribution, and retention.
2. How do you determine whether the CPA review requirement applies? Ask for the assessment total, community type, governing section, first applicable year, owner-vote history, and counsel or CPA confirmation.
3. How do you support the CPA? Define the trial balance, ledgers, bank confirmations, reconciliations, invoices, contracts, minutes, assessments, owner balances, reserves, debt, insurance, taxes, and adjustment log.
4. How are financial statements distributed and preserved? Ask for the delivery method, owner roster, returned mail, electronic consent where needed, archive, and records-request process.
5. What does the board receive monthly? A monthly package should include a balance sheet, income and expense statement, budget comparison, cash, bank reconciliations, receivables, payables, reserves, projects, and written variance notes.
6. Can you trace a number? Ask the finalist to trace one expense from the financial statement to the ledger, invoice, approval, payment, and bank statement.

The annual statutory statement should be the result of a controlled monthly close, not a separate year-end reconstruction.

5. Evaluate owner records and response capability

ORS 94.670 and ORS 100.480 address association records and owner access for their respective community types. The statutes identify records that must be maintained, documents that must be available, and response obligations. The planned-community statute, for example, requires specified current documents to be furnished within 10 business days after a written owner request.

Ask:

1. Where is the association's official records repository? The association should have appropriate administrative access and a usable export path.
2. How are records named, classified, retained, searched, reviewed, redacted, and delivered? Request the taxonomy, retention schedule, request log, redaction protocol, and delivery evidence.
3. How does the company distinguish a routine document request from a request needing counsel review? Privilege, owner privacy, personnel information, security, collections, litigation, and protected health or accommodation information require controls.
4. How are proxies, ballots, amendments, permanent records, financial statements, budgets, reserve studies, and architectural standards retained? Ask the manager to map each category to the governing statute and policy.
5. How does the board see request volume, response time, open exceptions, and disputes? Use aggregate reporting without publishing sensitive owner information.
6. Can the company produce a complete association export today? Test documents, accounting records, owner ledgers, communications, approvals, logs, and index files.

A portal is not a records policy. The board needs custody, searchability, lawful access, privacy controls, and portability even if the management company changes software.

6. Verify credentials only for the services that require them

Oregon's real estate property manager license addresses managing rental real estate. An association-management contract may include other administrative, accounting, maintenance, and governance support. The board should ask the finalist to classify every service and identify any license, registration, professional engagement, or statutory exemption relied upon.

Ask:

1. Will your company lease units, collect rent for individual owners, hold rental deposits, or manage individually owned rental real estate? If yes, request the names and license numbers of the responsible Oregon licensees.
2. Will you hold any funds in a real estate clients' trust account rather than an association-owned account? Ask why, under which agreement and statute, and how that structure interacts with ORS 94.670 or 100.480.
3. Who is allowed to enter each agreement? The Oregon Real Estate Agency says a licensee needs a signed, unexpired property management agreement with the property owner before managing a property; association counsel should determine whether that rule applies to any proposed service.
4. Which services are performed by lawyers, CPAs, reserve specialists, engineers, insurance professionals, collection providers, or contractors? Verify the independent professional rather than treating a management-company employee as a substitute.
5. What happens if the assigned manager or required license becomes unavailable? Require backup coverage and immediate notice.

Use the Oregon Real Estate Agency license lookup for regulated real estate license claims. Use the relevant professional board or agency for other credentials.

7. Turn the proposal into an enforceable operating agreement

Ask:

1. Where does every promised service appear in the contract? Map proposal language to the contract section, responsible role, frequency, deliverable, and fee.
2. What is included in the base fee? Test meetings, minutes, owner communications, records requests, resale work, collections, inspections, violations, projects, insurance, tax and CPA support, portals, mailings, after-hours response, and transition.
3. What triggers an additional fee? Require a complete schedule showing amount or calculation, approval, markup, inflation, pass-throughs, and owner-paid charges.
4. What authority is delegated? Define spending, contracts, vendors, notices, records, emergency action, owner data, bank access, and legal referrals.
5. What are the term, renewal, termination, and exit costs? Identify auto-renewal, cure, cause, notice, final accounting, records delivery, credentials, data export, and cooperation with the successor.
6. Which affiliates and subcontractors may be used? Require disclosure of ownership, commissions, referral fees, rebates, markups, incentives, data access, and alternatives.
7. What service levels can the board measure? Use deadlines, deliverables, exceptions, escalation, and reporting rather than broad promises to be responsive.

Ask counsel to compare the final agreement with the proposal, board resolution, governing documents, insurance, bank controls, privacy expectations, and Oregon law before signature.

8. Examine meetings, decisions, and owner communication

Oregon's planned-community and condominium chapters contain meeting, notice, voting, budget, and board-authority provisions. The manager's job is to maintain the calendar, prepare accurate materials, preserve the record, and recognize when legal guidance is needed.

Ask:

1. Show the annual governance calendar. It should include board and owner meetings, budget, reserves, insurance, financial statements, tax and CPA work, elections, annual reports, contracts, and statutory notices.
2. What is in a board packet? Require agenda, prior minutes, decision memos, contracts, financials, owner matters, projects, legal flags, and proposed motions early enough for review.
3. How are executive-session and confidential materials controlled? Ask about access, distribution, minutes, recordings, legal advice, and later retention.
4. How are board decisions converted into assigned work? Every action should have an owner, deadline, budget, evidence, status, and closure record.
5. How are owners informed about budgets, reserves, projects, rules, emergencies, and service interruptions? Request sample communications in plain language.
6. How are accessibility, translation, disability, fair-housing, and privacy issues escalated? Sensitive matters need trained handling, not a general inbox.

9. Test technology, cybersecurity, and data portability

Ask:

1. Which system is authoritative for accounting, owner records, documents, work orders, violations, communications, and approvals? Identify integrations and manual handoffs.
2. Does the association control its domain, website, payment accounts, bank access, vendor portals, document repository, and administrator credentials? Shared control reduces transition risk.
3. How is access granted, reviewed, changed, and removed? Require individual accounts, multifactor authentication, role-based permissions, logs, periodic review, and prompt offboarding.
4. What is the incident-response plan? Ask about detection, containment, board notice, insurer and counsel coordination, owner communication, recovery, and evidence preservation.
5. How are backups and exports tested? "Stored in the cloud" is not a recovery or portability plan.
6. May association data be used to train artificial-intelligence systems or for unrelated commercial purposes? Require a clear contract answer and vendor disclosure.
7. What happens during a manager or software transition? Require export formats, field definitions, attachment handling, audit logs, credentials, open-work lists, and acceptance tests.

Ask for a live demonstration: find a board resolution, trace a payment, retrieve a reserve project, produce a records request, and export the association's data.

10. Control vendors, insurance, projects, and emergencies

Ask:

1. How are vendors qualified? Review licensing where applicable, insurance, tax information, safety, references, conflicts, ownership, and sanctions or complaint history.
2. How are proposals normalized? Compare the same scope, exclusions, allowances, warranty, schedule, bonds, payment terms, unit prices, and changes.
3. Who approves contracts, changes, and invoices? Match authority to the board resolution, contract, budget, governing documents, and bank controls.
4. How are insurance renewals coordinated? Track applications, property data, valuations, claims, deductibles, lender needs, owner coverage communication, and binding evidence.
5. How are emergencies handled? Define life-safety authority, vendors, insurer notice, board notice, spending limits, records, owner communications, and later ratification or review.
6. What does project closeout include? Require inspection, punch list, final payment review, warranties, manuals, permits, photographs, reserve update, and future maintenance.

The management company can coordinate qualified vendors and professionals. It should not blur the line between coordination and professional certification.

11. Make transition performance part of the selection

Ask each finalist for a 30-, 60-, and 90-day plan covering:

• governing documents, policies, minutes, resolutions, and statutory applicability;
• banks, investments, signers, statements, payment credentials, and reconciliations;
• accounting data, opening balances, owner ledgers, payables, deposits, taxes, and CPA files;
• reserve study, maintenance plan, projects, warranties, insurance, and claims;
• owner data, portal access, payments, mail, email, phone, website, and emergency contacts;
• contracts, vendors, collections, violations, hearings, accommodations, disputes, and deadlines;
• records repository, integrations, exports, backups, privacy, and cybersecurity;
• board training, owner communication, risk register, and acceptance testing.

Then ask:

1. Who owns every transition task? Require a name, deadline, dependency, evidence, and escalation.
2. How will opening cash and owner balances be validated? The new manager should not silently inherit unreconciled accounts.
3. What could interrupt owner payments or service? Identify portal invitations, payment instructions, autopay, lockbox, returned mail, call handling, and staffing.
4. What does board acceptance mean? Approve a checklist of records received, balances reconciled, credentials tested, exceptions disclosed, and remaining work assigned.

A practical Oregon finalist scorecard

Score each company on the same evidence:

• Oregon statutory fluency and escalation - 10%. Require a community-specific applicability memo, calendar, and counsel handoff process.
• Financial controls and reporting - 20%. Require an access matrix, association-owned account structure, redacted reporting package, and reconciliation evidence.
• Reserves, maintenance, and projects - 15%. Require a reserve calendar, maintenance plan, project file, roll-forward, and borrowing controls.
• Contract clarity and total cost - 15%. Require a proposal-to-contract crosswalk, complete fee schedule, authority matrix, and exit terms.
• Records, owner access, and privacy - 10%. Require the taxonomy, request log, retention rules, redaction procedure, and export test.
• Meetings and owner service - 10%. Require the governance calendar, board packet, communication examples, and service-level report.
• Technology and cybersecurity - 10%. Require access controls, incident response, backup evidence, data restrictions, and portability.
• Transition capacity and references - 10%. Require a named transition plan, validation steps, and references from comparable Oregon communities.

Use written scoring anchors. A top score should mean the candidate produced relevant evidence, identified the responsible person and frequency, explained exception handling, and preserved association access. It should not mean the board merely liked the presentation.

Official Oregon sources to keep in the selection file

• Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 94 - planned communities
• Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 100 - condominiums
• Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 65 - nonprofit corporations
• Oregon Revised Statutes Chapter 696 - real estate activities and property managers
• Oregon Real Estate Agency property manager licensing
• Oregon Real Estate Agency property management agreement guidance
• Oregon Real Estate Agency clients' trust account guidance

Check the official sources again before approving the RFP and before signing the agreement. Statutes, rules, thresholds, agency procedures, and the services in the proposal can change.

Bottom line

The best Oregon association management company is not the company with the longest service list. It is the company that can show how its contract, people, systems, financial controls, reserve workflow, records process, owner service, technology, and transition plan fit the specific community and remain visible to the board.

Use Oregon law to frame the questions. Use documents, demonstrations, references, and contract language to evaluate the answers.