The conversation happened in February 2026. A new HOA board chair in suburban Texas told us their previous property management company had quoted $8,400 a year to handle dues collection, member communications, and quarterly board pages. The previous board had paid the quote for three years. They'd also lost half the original board to burnout, and the dues collection rate had dropped to 71%.
The new chair sent the management company a 30-day cancellation notice on a Saturday afternoon. By Sunday they had signed up for GetNeighbor Core ($39/mo) and started rebuilding.
This is the playbook.
Week 1: The 4-hour rebuild
The first weekend, the new chair and treasurer did three things:
- Exported the member roster from the management company's portal as a CSV. 412 doors, with primary contact, phone, email, and dues status.
- Imported into Core via the bulk-import wizard. Eleven validation errors (mostly missing zip codes), all fixed in 15 minutes.
- Connected Stripe to the HOA's existing checking account. Took 20 minutes including the verification micro-deposits.
By Sunday evening, the HOA had a working community page, a member directory, and a dues collection page. They sent a welcome email to all 412 households with a link to verify their contact info.
Week 2: The dues run
The board ran their annual dues collection through GetNeighbor for the first time. Members paid online (96%) or by check (4%). The treasurer reconciled by clicking "mark paid" on the four check entries. No bank statements, no paper-check matching, no chasing.
Total time spent on dues this quarter: 90 minutes. The previous board had budgeted 12 hours per quarter for the same task.
Week 3: The AGM packet
Quarterly board meeting. The previous packet was a 14-page PDF the secretary assembled in Word every quarter. The new chair generated it from GetNeighbor's reporting in 8 minutes:
- Current member roster (auto)
- Dues paid this quarter (auto, with running total)
- Board decisions log (Governance Pack — auto)
- Volunteer hours logged this quarter (Engagement Pack — auto)
They added the agenda by hand and posted the packet to the community page.
Week 4: The math
Here's the comparison the board ran for their first quarterly report:
| Cost item | Old PM company | GetNeighbor | |---|---|---| | Monthly platform | $700 | $39 | | Per-transaction dues fee | 3.5% on $48K = $1,680/yr | 0% | | Setup / migration | $1,200 one-time | $0 | | AGM packet labor | 6 hr/quarter @ $0 (volunteer) | 8 min | | Total Year 1 | $11,280 | $468 |
The Year 1 savings funded the Reach Pack ($25/mo) for the print newsletter the board wanted, and the Earn Pack ($19/mo) for a local sponsor experiment that brought in $1,200 from a credit union in Q2.
Net Year 1 outcome: $9,800 saved + $1,200 sponsor revenue = $11,000 better off.
What we learned
Three things the board chair told us in our last call:
The single biggest unlock wasn't the dues collection — it was the records survival. We finally don't lose 30% of institutional memory every January.
The Reach Pack paid for itself the first month. Half our homeowners don't open email. The print newsletter we hand-deliver gets actually read.
The board is having more fun. We meet once a month, we have records that explain everything, and nobody's chasing checks. Two volunteers said they'd stay on the board another term.
The takeaway
Property management companies sell labor at scale, not software. If your HOA has physical-world stuff that needs managing — maintenance contracts, amenity bookings, fines enforcement — you still need a person. But the records, dues, and communications side is software now. And it costs $39/mo, not $700.
The 412-door HOA in this story is one of our pilot leagues. Their full data and a redacted PDF of the Year 1 audit will be published as a case study after Q3 2026, once they've completed a full annual cycle on the platform.
If your board is looking at a similar quote, start free for the first 100 households and see what the rebuild looks like for your league.