Associa CEO John Carona on HOAs, Growth, and European Expansion

The Building Texas Show has released its latest episode featuring John Carona, founder and CEO of Associa, the largest manager of homeowners associations in the world. Recorded at the company's Richardson headquarters, the conversation with host Justin McKenzie covers the origins of a company now in its 49th year, the misunderstood role of the HOA in a fast-growing Texas, and where community association management goes next as Associa expands across Europe.

Carona started the business roughly 18 months out of the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked three jobs to put himself through school. 'We started out with just two employees, myself and one rather elderly assistant who I loved dearly,' he told McKenzie. 'And from that we built this twenty-four thousand employee operation.' The growth came, he said, 'one client at a time,' organically at first, and increasingly through acquisition. Associa has now acquired more than 200 separate companies and adds another 25 to 30 management firms in a typical year.

Much of the episode is aimed at an audience with strong opinions about HOAs. Carona's case for them is a financial one. 'The most important thing homeowners associations do is they preserve the value for the owners themselves by adding some degree of conformity, some reasonable rules and regulations,' he said, noting that property values in communities with mandatory homeowners associations have been shown repeatedly to grow at a faster rate than those outside them. He also addressed the friction directly. Survey after survey, he said, shows that just north of 95% of residents living in community associations appreciate the experience. Associa now surveys every board of directors it represents three times a year to catch problems early enough to act on them.

Asked what sets Associa apart, Carona pointed to two things: technology and the amount the company spends each year training its people. 'We live in the Amazon age. People want more for less, and there's nothing wrong with that,' he said. 'That same technological application applies with community associations, and we have to be able to do a better job, a more timely job, and do it for lower dollars.' Associa operates 340 branch offices across the United States, serving 44 of the 50 states. Employees have voted the company a national best place to work for nine consecutive years.

Associa recently acquired the number two operator in Spain, its first large international purchase, and expects to be the number one operator in that market by the close of December. Carona described it as the opening move in a three-to-five-year rollout across Europe, with the UK, France, and Italy on the list. For homeowners buying into Texas's booming triangle, his closing advice was blunt: scrutinize transportation, scrutinize location, and scrutinize build quality, because Texas does not license builders. The full episode is available now wherever you get your podcasts.