Your perspective of Morris Management is going to depend on who you are and how you deal with problems. If you expect to shout into a telephone at a property manager and have a contractor in your house in five minutes, you're going to have a bad time. If you think your dues are too high no matter what value they are, you're going to have a bad time. If you think that your special assessment is unfair despite your board systematically underfunding your reserves for decades, you're going to have a bad time. If you demand every tiny rule is enforced on every other member of your community immediately but you refuse to pay your own late fees or follow the rules yourself, you're going to have a bad time. This is no matter who your manager is... even Morris Management. From most of the negative reviews I read here and all of the negative things I hear from residents of our association, this is the underlying reason why people hate Morris Management and/or their HOA.
If you have a realistic view of the world where services in a high demand market cost money and take time to complete, the fact that your association and board is only as good as those people in the community who participate, and that paying someone money doesn't entitle you to scream their head off... then you'll do just fine with Morris Management.
Morris Management has been managing our association for the past decade. I've only been a part of the community for the past several years and moved into a position to volunteer on the board. Generally, this puts me in a position to like Morris because they take the tough role of insulating me from the crankiest people in the community and they handle the orchestration of anything we would like done. With the realistic understanding that our association manager and our bookkeeper manage several communities, I would have to say that there are very few things that slip through the cracks. Some things take several months longer than I would prefer, but it's usually a subcontractor/vendor's fault more than it is Morris's.
It is true that when it comes to dues and collections, Morris will be able to answer you immediately. This is simple. It's because they handle that in house on behalf of the board. When it comes to a fire alarm panel that continues to be faulty month after month, they'll keep nagging the absolutely craptastic subcontractor who manages your security and fire systems until it is done. When it comes to your neighbor who refuses to comply with the rule/regulation that you think should be enforced... it's complicated. It can require legal, it can require multiple phone calls with your obstinate neighbor, it can require board discussions, and it can require sometimes just giving up because the cost isn't worth dealing with that butt head you live next to.
Our association manager at Morris has been amazingly flexible working with our board to decide how to share responsibilities, choose vendors, bring down costs, budget accurately, solve complicated problems, orchestrate contractors, schedule recurring activities, delegate advanced issues to project managers, and the list goes on. For a company who can help your association succeed with the situations I outline above and those you haven't even encountered yet, I cannot recommend Morris Management highly enough. Please give them a chance to show you what they can do for your association. read more