From the Foundation for Community Association Research (and our friend, Clifford J. Treese, CIRMS), the Community Association Fact Book was developed to support the Foundation’s mission of providing research-based information to all community association stakeholders – homeowners, board members, management professionals as well as attorneys, accountants, developers, mortgage lenders, federal agencies, public officials and others – all who work with the Foundation and the Community Associations Institute to build better communities.

Here are some of the statistical highlights:

  • As of 2017, there were approximately 344,500 community associations in the United States, which means that approximately 22-24% of the U.S. population lives in an association.
  • Of those 344,500 community associations, about 54-60% are homeowners associations, 38-42% are condominium associations, and 2-4% are cooperatives.
  • Approximately 70 million people live in a community association in the United States.
  • By comparison, in 1970, there were only 10,000 community associations (housing approximately 2.1 million residents).
  • The states with the most community associations in 2017 were: (1) Florida (48,000 associations) and (2) California (45,900 associations). Texas remains a distant third (20,000 associations), followed by Illinois (18,650 associations), North Carolina (13,950 associations), and New York (13,850 associations).
  • New Jersey is 17th with 6,850 associations and Pennsylvania is 18th with 6,800 associations.
  • Seven (7) states still have fewer than 1,000 associations: Alaska, Arkansas, Mississippi, North Dakota, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming.
  • There were approximately 2,380,000 community association board and committee members in 2017, who collectively performed approximately 80,500,000 hours of service for their associations (the estimated value of that volunteer time totals $1.98 billion).
  • There were approximately 50,000-55,000 community association managers and between 7,000-8,000 community association management companies in 2017.
  • It is estimated that between 30-40% of all associations nationally are self-managed, meaning they do not employ a professional manager or management company for day-to-day services.
  • Approximately $90 billion in assessments was collected from community association homeowners in 2017, and $25 billion was spent from accumulated reserve funds for the repair, replacement and enhancement of common property.

You can find the 2017 Community Association Fact Book (as well as the 2015 and 2016 versions) by clicking here.

To view the New Jersey State Summary, click here. For the Pennsylvania State Summary, click here.

Thanks again to Cliff Treese and the Foundation for their hard work on the Fact Book this and every year.

For more information on this or any other issue concerning your community association, please contact one of our Community Associations attorneys. For breaking news or updates on new blog posts, follow us on Twitter at: @njcondolaw.