Drive through almost any new neighborhood in the Phoenix metro and you’ll notice the same thing: gates, community signs, shared pools, manicured common areas. Arizona has been building fast, and most of what it’s been building comes with an HOA attached.
HOAs that are well-run are a great addition to any community, but it does come with a lot of responsibility.
Most boards figure this out the hard way. A reserve study is how you figure it out the easy way.
What’s driving the HOA surge
Arizona’s population has been increasing very fast in recent years, and the trend is set to continue.
This growth has led to more construction, particularly lots of new communities that are HOA-governed.
In Arizona, almost one-third of all houses are part of an HOA, which is a crazy statistic.
The problem with rapid growth
When new communities are built quickly and HOAs form fast, reserve planning often gets treated as something to sort out later.
Boards get up and running as fast as they can, often forgetting about long term planning.
The problem is that deferred planning often becomes a very expensive emergency. Roofs wear out. Pool equipment fails. Parking lots crack. Elevators need replacing.
These things shouldn’t be seen as a surprise, and should instead be part of a plan to identify and manage correctly.
When the planning hasn’t been done, boards are left with bad options: drain the reserve fund, issue a special assessment, or take out a loan. Special assessments in particular tend to land hard on residents and generate exactly the kind of conflict that makes HOA governance miserable for everyone involved.
What a reserve study actually does
A reserve study is a financial and physical analysis of a community’s shared assets. It inventories everything – the components, their current condition, their expected useful life – and builds a funding plan that allows the HOA to accumulate reserves at a rate that keeps pace with future costs.
Done well, it’s not a complicated document. But it requires expertise, on-site inspection, and updated financial modelling to be genuinely useful rather than just a checkbox exercise.
National providers like Reserve Study Group have built their practice around exactly this – working with HOA boards and property managers to produce studies that are accurate, actionable, and easy for non-financial volunteers to actually understand and implement. As Arizona communities mature and boards face increasing pressure from homeowners to demonstrate sound financial management, the demand for this kind of professional guidance has grown alongside the state itself.
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What Arizona boards should be thinking about
Arizona law doesn’t currently mandate reserve studies the way some other states do, though that conversation has been gaining traction at the legislative level. But the absence of a legal requirement doesn’t change the financial reality. Communities that don’t plan adequately for capital expenditures eventually pay for it – and so do their homeowners.
The boards that are doing this well share a few things in common. They treat reserve planning as an ongoing process, not a one-time document. They update their studies regularly, especially when the community adds amenities or major infrastructure ages out of its expected lifespan. And they communicate the findings clearly to residents, so that funding decisions feel reasoned rather than arbitrary.
As Arizona continues to grow, the communities that stand out – the ones with stable finances, well-maintained shared spaces, and low conflict between boards and residents – will increasingly be the ones that got the planning right early.
The good news is that the tools and expertise to do that exist. The harder part, as always, is actually making it a priority before something expensive forces the issue.
