What is a Reserve Study?
(From Wikipedia)
“A reserve study is a long-term capital budget planning tool which identifies the current status of the reserve fund and a stable and equitable funding plan to offset ongoing deterioration, resulting in sufficient funds when those anticipated major common area expenditures actually occur. The reserve study consists of two parts: the physical analysis and the financial analysis. This document is often prepared by an outside independent consultant for the benefit of administrators (Board of Directors or Strata Council Members) of a property with multiple owners, such as a condominium association or homeowners’ association (HOA), strata, containing an assessment of the state of the commonly owned property components as determined by the particular association’s covenants, conditions, and restrictions (CC&Rs) and bylaws. Reserve studies however are not limited only to condominiums and can be created for any “common interest community” (CIC) properties such as resort (shared vacation ownership) properties, community/neighborhood associations, coops, etc.”
Our Reserve Study Template makes planning easy. The state requirements I found for reserve studies basically said we needed to have some sort of a plan that took into account how much it would cost to fix and replace the commonly owned structures and systems in our association.
And I found a few sample reserve studies that were about 50 pages long, with charts and graphs, detailed explanations of different ways of looking at the budgets, pictures of an anonymous property, and a LOT of text.
But as I kept researching the requirements and looking through the samples, the marketing materials from the various firms, and reading some HOA forums, I started to realize that it was a lot simpler than some would make it out to be.
Why choose this?
I made a simplified version of a reserve study spreadsheet, without all of the extra pages and documents that I don’t think is needed (do your own research as well to make sure you are satisfying requirements). This spreadsheet was made with clarity in mind, so almost anyone could use this to help plan out their next 10-30 years of funding for their HOA reserve study.