If someone doesn’t pay their assessments, they will typically receive a few late notices from our office, including the imposition of late fees in accordance with your association’s governing documents. If they fall two or three full months behind and our late notices have not led to any communication or payment arrangements, the Board of Directors will likely vote to send their account to the association’s attorney for further collections efforts.

The attorney’s office will send what’s called a demand letter informing the homeowner the account has been turned over to their office, and it will add any attorney fees incurred to the balance. Either at that time or up to 30 to 45 days later, the attorney will record a lien against the property. If after another 30 to 45 days the balance still hasn’t been paid, the attorney will file a civil suit against the homeowner. Once a judgment is obtained, if the homeowner still doesn’t pay within 30 to 45 days from that point, the attorney will take actions to enforce the judgment.

The actions which the attorney will take to enforce the judgment vary depending on the unique circumstances of that homeowner and their property. Actions can include wage garnishments, bank levies, seizure of personal property such as vehicles, sheriff’s sale of the property or judicial or nonjudicial foreclosure.

In the end, all assessments and legal costs, usually including all late fees in accordance with the association’s governing documents, are able to be collected. If the homeowner files bankruptcy they may be personally relieved from obligation to pay pre-filing amounts owed, but those amounts remain owed by the property and can usually be collected in the future when the property sells. If a homeowner is foreclosed upon by their mortgage lender during this process, as often those not paying their assessments are also not paying their mortgage, the lender may not be required to pay the association in full, but the homeowner remains personally liable for the debt.

While not as secure as other types of debts like taxes, student loans or child support, it is very rare homeowners can permanently avoid paying the assessments they owe, even if they declare bankruptcy or at some point in the process no longer own the property.

There is a common belief that a lien can be filed against the property but then the association must wait for the homeowner to sell in order to collect what is owed, and there isn’t much else that can be done in the meantime. This is simply false.

Budgets are not written to factor delinquency, and thus no amount of the assessments are based on the expectation that some homeowners will not pay what they owe. Budgets are written under the assumption that every homeowner will pay their assessments in full and on time. While that, of course, isn’t always the case, typically income from other sources which is not budgeted will make up the difference. This can include late fees, fines, certain amounts of bank account interest earned, and often includes the collection of delinquent amounts from previous years. In other words, someone who isn’t paying timely today may be offset in the big picture by someone paying who incurred their debts in a previous year. In the end, the income the association collects in reality versus the budget is almost always near 100% of expectations, give or take a little.

First, congratulations on the purchase of your new home, and welcome to the community!

At closing, the title company should have collected the first full month’s assessment from you, so you shouldn’t owe any assessments out-of-pocket until your second full month. Sometimes the title companies don’t follow our instructions on this, but most often they do.

Once we receive that first full month the title company collected from you at closing, we will set up an account for you and mail out a welcome letter. That letter will include your account number and how to get set up with the Resident Center, if you choose to. There is nothing you need to do until you receive that letter, and since your first full month has already been paid, there should be sufficient time for the title company to send your closing proceeds to us and for us to send our welcome letter to you.

If you choose a fixed amount, the software will always withdraw that amount and that amount only on the day of your choosing. If that amount is too little, too much, no longer matches the assessments as the years go by and the amounts change, it will still just pull the same amount on the same day each month.

We recommend using the “Entire balance” setting with no maximum. This will give you the ability to set it and forget it. If you are ever underpaid for any reason, it will pull the extra amount outstanding. If you’re ever overpaid, it will reduce your payment by the amount of the overpayment. As assessments change over the years, you will not need to readjust it.

The one warning we offer is for early payers: When you use the “Entire balance” setting, the software can only see 5 days into the future. If you set your payment date too early, especially on 31-day months, it may not be able to see the future charges on the date you chose and thus won’t pull any amount out. We recommend choosing the 27th as your withdrawal date to prevent this from happening.

This could be for a few reasons you’d be on autopay but still have an outstanding balance..

You may have your autopay set to a fixed amount or you have a cap on the “Entire balance” setting that is less than the assessment amount. You need to adjust this to make sure your autopay is capturing the full amount.

From the main screen in the Resident Center, click Payments in the menu, then click “Edit” on your scheduled payment to make the changes. We advise choosing the “Entire balance” setting without a maximum amount. That will ensure your autopay changes as the years go on and the assessments increase or decrease over time.

The “Entire balance” option was introduced by our software provider in late 2023. If you’ve been with us longer than that, you probably set up your autopay with the fixed amount setting because it was all that was available at the time. We recommend switching so you don’t have to remember to adjust it every year anymore as assessments change.

The other potential reason is that you are paying your assessments early, and it’s too early for the software to see the upcoming charges. Our software can only see charges 5 days into the future. Especially if you picked a date like the 25th or 26th, this may be close enough to the end of the month in some months but not in 31 day months. If you choose the 27th, you will always be within 5 days of the end of the month and you shouldn’t have this problem. If your payment seems to be pulling every other month, which may also be causing you to incur late fees on the unpaid balance, this is almost certainly the reason. Just change your withdrawal date to the 27th. If you incurred late fees as a result of an issue like this, please enter a balance dispute with us by clicking here. This is an understandable mistake, and we can waive your late fees.

It may be necessary to make a one-time payment to correct the amount your payments have been short. You can do this by clicking the “Make a payment” button. You will be warned that you already have a scheduled autopay. Proceeding by clicking the “Yes, make payment” button will not interfere with your existing autopay going forward. When you make the one-time payment, please manually enter the amount to not pay the late fees and then enter a balance dispute by clicking here so we can remove them. If you pay them and we remove them, we don’t have the ability to electronically reverse the payment back to you. You will have to wait for a paper refund check in the mail. This is more easily avoided by just not paying the late fees and entering the balance dispute for us to fix it.

There could be for a few reasons your autopay didn’t withdraw.

First, please double-check your email. If your payment was rejected by your bank, you should have received an email with the reason your bank refused the payment.

The next most common reason is that your autopay is set to “Entire Balance” instead of a fixed amount and the date you chose your payment to withdraw is too early. Our software can only see charges 5 days into the future. Especially if you picked a date like the 25th or 26th, this may be close enough to the end of the month in some months but not in 31 day months. If you choose the 27th, you will always be within 5 days of the end of the month and you shouldn’t have this problem.

Lastly, very rarely, it sometimes just doesn’t work. In our experience, out of all of the communities and individual homes under our management, we see this occur once or twice a year. To know if the problem is on our end, when you log into your account click “Payments” in the menu and look at “Scheduled payments” at the top of the page. If the date is in the past, the failure was on our end. You can fix this yourself by clicking “Edit” on that payment and changing the date to the next date you want it to pull a payment to a future date. If you aren’t comfortable doing this, we are happy to help if you contact us via email at service[AT]ajenning.com. Please change the [AT] to the “@” symbol when emailing. Please email for help on this issue; don’t call. In order to make changes to your account for you, we need evidence of your permission in writing.

Regardless of the reason your autopay didn’t pull, it may be necessary to make a one-time payment to correct the error. You can do this by clicking the “Make a payment” button. You will be warned that you already have a scheduled autopay. Proceeding by clicking the “Yes, make payment” button will not interfere with your existing autopay going forward.

If you received a late notice, but your payment was received, this could be for a few reasons.

First, please double-check the date on the late notice versus the date your payment cleared. Very often late notices and payments cross each other in the mail.

Second, please review the statement attachment to the late notice, and log into the Resident Center and click Payments if you need to see more of your account history. It’s possible you have an outstanding balance from previously and your payment didn’t sufficiently cover it.

Third, if you paid via online banking, please be advised these are not true electronic transactions. A check is sent on your behalf from your bank, which does make it subject to the same potential issues with USPS had you mailed a paper check yourself. Please also be advised, some banks will show the payment as “cleared” on your end either as soon as they send the check or when they believe the check will arrive. The only way to pay from truly electronic means is through the Resident Center, and payments made using a bank account’s routing and account number carry no convenience fees and are instantly credited to the account.

If after reading this you still don’t understand the reason for your balance, you can dispute or inquire further about your balance by clicking here and completing the form.

You pay your association, not A. Jenning Properties. It is a very common misconception that homeowners directly pay the management company.

A. Jenning Properties is a contracted property management company, much in the sense that your community contracts for other services. And just as other service providers can be hired, fired and renewed when their contracts end, the same applies to our company. We do handle collecting your assessments, but that’s not “our money”. It belongs to your association. We are paid a flat contracted fee for our services.

Likewise, we don’t provide any physical maintenance services, and with only exceptions of the lowest, non-recurring costs, we don’t choose which companies provide services at your community. These decisions are made by the Board of Directors. Our job is to oversee those contractors, make sure they are performing to their contract specifications and address any issues that may arise. But their contracts are with your association, not with our management company. We have no profit-sharing arrangements with any contractors, or in other words, we receive no “kick-backs”. We have no motivation in the selection or recommendation of contractors other than who we feel will best serve your community’s needs.

The entity you are paying is your community association, not our company. The association is a non-profit entity, and it does not require homeowners to pay any assessments beyond what is needed to fund the community’s expenses and make contributions to its long-term reserves. Of course, part of your money goes towards paying our management contract fee, but that’s not a direct payment. You pay your association, and your association pays us, among its other bills.