Make Your HOA’s Management Company Prove What It’s Actually Allowed to Do

Day to day, the community-management company can feel like it is the HOA — it sends the notices, signs the letters, takes the positions. But a management company isn’t the association and has no inherent power of its own. Whatever authority it has was delegated by the Board, in writing — and a Board can only delegate powers it actually holds under the governing documents. The way to see the real boundary is simple: get the contract, and check it.

A manager’s authority is delegated, written, and limited

Most governing documents let the Board delegate certain powers to a management company — but with two built-in limits that matter:

• Only pursuant to a written contract. The delegation has to actually exist in the management agreement; a manager can’t assume a power the Board never handed over.
• Only powers the Board itself has. A Board can’t delegate authority it doesn’t possess, and some powers — adopting rules, imposing fines, setting enforcement policy, taking legal positions — are typically reserved to the Board acting as a body, not something a manager decides alone.

And no contract, however worded, can delegate legal work to a non-lawyer — see a management company can’t act like a lawyer.

Get the contract — it’s a record

The management agreement is an association record. Under § 33-1805 (or § 33-1258 for condos), “financial and other records of the association” are open to member examination — and the contract that spends your assessments and defines who’s allowed to act for the association is squarely one of them. Request it:

Log the request and the response in your Records Request Tracker, and insist on the document itself, not a summary.

Check the delegated scope against your governing documents

Once you have the contract (or the delegation statement), put it side by side with your bylaws and CC&Rs and ask:

1. Does it delegate only powers the bylaws actually give the Board? If the contract hands the manager authority the Board doesn’t have, that part can’t stand.
2. Does it purport to let the manager do things reserved to the Board? Watch for language letting the manager adopt rules, impose or waive fines, retain counsel, or set legal/enforcement positions without Board action.
3. Does it try to delegate legal services? It can’t — that’s lawyer work regardless of the contract.
4. Are there fee or conflict terms worth a closer look? Cross-check against the conflict-of-interest rule and the fee limits elsewhere in the statutes.

Why this matters

When a manager sends you a violation, a legal position, or a demand, the real question is whether the manager had the authority to do that — or whether it was something only the Board could do. If the action falls outside the delegated scope in the contract, or beyond what the Board could delegate, it may not be a valid act of the association at all. “The management company handled it” isn’t the same as “the association lawfully decided it.”

Your move

1. Request the management contract in writing under § 33-1805 / § 33-1258 — full document, PDF by email.
2. If they balk, demand the delegated-powers list in writing.
3. Compare it to your bylaws and CC&Rs, and flag anything the manager is doing that isn’t actually delegated — or that the Board couldn’t delegate.
4. Ask for the basis in writing when a manager acts beyond scope — the Board’s authorization, or the governing-document provision. Use the governance self-audit to check the whole picture.
5. Escalate a records refusal or an unauthorized action through an ADRE petition.

Grounded in A.R.S. § 33-1805 / § 33-1258 (records access) and the delegation limits typical of HOA governing documents. General homeowner education — not legal advice.