If you're lucky enough not to be entangled with Long Beach Home Solutions yet, stay clear. If not, our story might be helpful.
We are a small Homeowners association (four houses on a shared land) with few needs (about 4K yearly expenses between insurance bill, tax prep and LBHS's fee). In 2019 the Association had the misfortune to trust LBHS with the nearly 40k they had collectively saved up for 15 years, along with a few basic maintenance requests such as curb, driveway, mailboxes fixing and fumigation.
Four years later and after having collected another 9K in fees from owners, none of the work was done or followed up with. Our maintenance reminders were not even denied, they were just plain ignored.
By December 22', when we manage to get out of LBHS, we were left with 45% of our original assets, no work done on the property and an administrative mess (conveniently blamed on the payment difficulties of the most pandemic affected owners):
1. Secretary of State and Franchise Tax Board status corrupted for tax-delinquency
2. Insurance payment delinquency (increasing our premium by 500% in 4 years - while losing the mandatory fidelity bond coverage that would have protected our savings from financial malpractice related loss)
3. Errors on our IRS returns by unprofessional contracted third party accounting services (such as failing to sign the returns, overestimating our expenses by 1,000%, charging us 3x for the same prep or for their turbo tax license renewal).
Essentially, the only work LBHS ever did for us straight and timely was charging for their services, which themselves were mostly plain ignored.
If you find yourself in a similar situation, here are a few leads that helped for us:
If you're an LLC like us, check your HOA's status on the California Secretary of State website (https://bizfileonline.sos.ca.gov/search/business). Just enter your association's name in the search bar and you will know on the spot if your entity is in good standing or not.
If you're NOT in good standing, someone on the board (secretary, treasurer or president) can reach out to the Secretary of State to help you get reinstated.
Get someone on the board to request your association's detailed financials from LBHS.
Once you have the financials, make sure to check:
Insurance bills (see if your premium increased from a year to the next, if you paid useless installment fees, got fined for late payment or lost your policy for non-payment - most importantly - make sure you're currently covered)
Service invoices (make sure the services charged have actually been performed by third-parties that actually exist and are legit)
Tax returns (if LBHS bills you accounting services for filing your taxes, which is likely, make sure the accounting services are legit and sign your returns in their name)
Go through your Association's By-laws and CC&R to verify whether LBHS manages accordingly.
This being said, these guys are amongst the cheapest on the market; a textbook case of you get what you pay for. I hope this will help some of you out there! Reach out if you need help or have questions :) read more