Reading your reserve study
The reserve study is the most important document your association owns and the least read. This guide takes you through it end to end: every section of the document, the one number that measures your community's health, and how to tell a careful study from a careless one.
Open your reserve study next to this guide and you'll be able to read every section: what the component list is telling you, what percent funded actually measures, and where the 30-year table says you run out of money.
One is a document, the other is an account — and every conversation about your HOA's long-term money runs through both. Here's how the study and the fund relate, and how to check the health of each.
Most boards flip straight to the contribution table. The percent-funded figure tells you more: what it measures, how it's calculated, what the bands mean, and the honest limits of the number.
A reserve study is only as reliable as the work behind it — and some of the tells are visible to any board member willing to read closely. Here are six, with what each one means and what to do about it.