It is exhausting running an HOA.

Common Cents was started by a board member of a 16-unit condo building in Chicago. The building paid a management company to run things, and it was expensive and miserable to deal with.

Friends kept telling the same story from the other side. Some were tired of dealing with their own HOA. Others had volunteered for their board and were spending far too much of their time on it.

Common Cents is for both: buildings that would rather manage themselves than pay a management company, and the neighbors who volunteer to do it, so that running the building takes minutes instead of evenings.