Our management company hosts knowledge conference calls with industry professionals. Last time was a presentation about Reserve Studies and why they're useful presented by Association Reserves. They had a specialist who works with Colorado HOAs and another one that works with Northern California HOAs. In terms of the two states, Colorado has less laws about Reserve Studies their statistics (based on about 1000 HOA clients in each state) is that Colorado HOAs are less well funded and more in danger of having to resort to special assessments. So sometimes a lot of regulations work out and I guess that's because people are not willing to spend money on common area stuff.

Some notes:

We need to start addressing AB 1572, which is about replacing irrigation water with non-potable water for non-functional areas (i.e. you don't expect even pets to be playing there).

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a soft criteria that at least 15% of an HOA's annual budget go into reserves. I guess statistically this shows that an HOA is at least minimally funding their reserve fund. We are at 35%.

They showed a chart. If your reserves are at less than 30% the chance of having to do a special assessment greatly increases.

They stressed that funding reserves a little more than your comfort greatly increases funding level down the road. This is because most associations underfund. Similarly 100% funding level is nice because it covers unanticipated expenses (for instance we never budgeted to replace the patio waterproofing so that was $600k+ we had to cover).

For owners who don't want to fund something that will be replaced after they either sell or die, the argument is that each year you are paying for 1 years use of that item.