2025 HOA Changes to RowCal
Page Updated: 5/16/2025 2:00PM
We live in a great community and in an amazing place!
The Cumbre Vista Board of Directors (BOD) is extremely grateful to live among wonderful neighbors and friends with these scenic mountain views. It’s the people in our community that make this place great, and we feel privileged to live among you. To better serve the community, the BOD is changing our HOA management company.
Cumbre Vista HOA 1 (CV1) will be changing HOA management companies from RealManage to RowCal.
Beginning June 1, 2025, our HOA will be transitioning from RealManage to a new community management company, called RowCal.
Over the past sixteen months with RealManage, we’ve encountered persistent challenges that have impacted both the Board’s ability to function effectively and the quality of service homeowners have received. Chief among these issues has been the lack of continuity—RealManage assigned five different Community Association Managers (CAMs) during our contract period, each requiring time to get up to speed. This high turnover, coupled with internal reorganizations within RealManage, has undermined accountability and consistent service delivery.
In addition, we’ve had to address repeated errors in homeowner billing, some of which resulted in late fees being mistakenly assessed to nearly all homeowners due to incorrect information on the 2025 assessment notices. Although these charges were eventually reversed, RealManage then billed the HOA to correct their own error.
Here is a summary of the ongoing performance issues we have experienced:
– Lack of continuity: five different CAMs in 16 months
– Failure to conduct on-site community inspections for over six months
– Delays in processing ACC requests, with limited Board visibility
– Late and incorrect mailing of 2025 assessment notices
– Inappropriate late fees charged to homeowners due to RealManage’s mistake, followed by fees to correct it
– RealManage staff struggling to use their own management portal effectively
– Chronic delays in communication and lack of responsiveness
– Multiple homeowner reports of unreturned calls and poor service desk follow-up
These issues have strained the relationship between RealManage, the Board, and the community. After careful evaluation, onsite meetings with RowCal and due diligence reviews of their operations, the Board has chosen to partner with RowCal, a firm with a stronger commitment to service, communication, and operational consistency.
RowCal will begin managing our community on June 1. Each of you has already received a postal letter in the mail detailing how to setup your account with RowCal on their HOA portal. You may also send an email to careteam@rowcal.com or call them at 651-233-1307 to get your account setup in the portal. We’re confident this transition will bring improved support and service for our neighborhood.
Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to better serve our community.
There are two other HOA communities called Haven and CV2 that are right next to CV1. Please click here to see which community you live in. These changes are only affecting the CV1 HOA Community.
The new management company, RowCal, has a great amount of work to do to introduce themselves to each of you and to enter each homeowners information into their HOA management system. A significant portion of that information will be coming directly from RealManage to Rowcal, but the payment information (for our annual HOA assessment fee) has to come from each one of us individually.
Rowcal will be in contact with each of you before June 1, 2025 to get that part started. In fact, the postal letter you received this week from Rowcal contains important information for you to setup your account. The HOA assessment fee you have already paid this year is the fee for the whole year. The 2026 HOA assessment fee is not due until January 1, 2026.
1. The 2025 annual assessment of $308 has already been paid by most of you. There is not a new annual assessment fee just because we switched HOA management companies. Rowcal’s management fee is actually less than RealManage’s management fee and that will be reflected in our 2026 budget.
2. What if I’ve already paid my 2025 Assessment fee?
As part of the transition to the new management company, RealManage will be transferring the complete CV1 financial general ledger which includes all homeowner payments. This will include a record of 2025 assessment fees already sent to RealManage.
1. Look for communication from RowCal in your postal mailbox before June 1, 2025.
2. Follow the instructions in that letter or on the signs posted in our community to setup your HOA account with Rowcal.
3. You could also just send an email to careteam@rowcal.com or call them at 651-233-1307 to get your account setup now.
Not a problem. Just send an email to careteam@rowcal.com or call them at 651-233-1307 to get your account setup. Tell them you didn’t get a postal letter and need to setup your homeowners account. They will gladly lead you through the process.
Click here to view the letter
While the letter includes information about how to pay assessments, please note that our HOA collects assessments only once a year in January—unless you’re a new neighbor who moved in during the year.
The BOD went through an extensive search for an HOA management company that we felt would fit our community. Our selection process used the following questions to help guide us through the selection.
Each board member reviewed the proposals, the feedback from the introductory meetings, the email responses to our questions and the reference responses.
Evaluation Criteria.
1. They have knowledgeable and experienced staff.
2. Their technology platform is leading edge and they demonstrates the capability of continuing improvements into the next 10 years.
3. They demonstrate the current ability to provide HOA online voting, survey’s and opt in text message updates.
4. The management company’s HOA processes seem mature and robust.
5. We believe they will have an excellent communication style and enforcement of CC&Rs with our community.
6. We believe they have an excellent ability to help keep our HOA legally compliant.
7. Their management and administrative fees are reasonable compared to COS market rate.
8. They have the HOA services we need now and demonstrate the ability to carry us into the future.
9. We believe they will be responsive to BOTH the board and homeowner requests in a timely manner.
10. Their references were strongly in favor of them.
1. The staff we talked with were very knowledgeable and experienced.
2. They invested in their staff by paying for their HOA certification path and the training classes needed to earn those certifications.
3. Their technology platform is leading edge and they have a mobile app to manage your HOA account and submit architectural change requests.
4. They have mature HOA business processes.
5. Their technology platform was capable of online voting, surveys, opt-in text messaging and email. All features were built into their platform.
6. Their management fee was reasonable and in-line with COS market rates. In addition, RowCal agreed to limit the escalation of their management fee to 5% or less increase per year, approximately matching the employment cost index (ECI) set by the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics.
7. Their CC&R enforcement included learning the culture of our community and issuing a gentle reminder email notice first before issuing a potential violation notice.
Click this link to their website.
1. Complete a successful transition to our new HOA management company.
2. Update our governing documents. We currently have builder centric HOA governing documents which made sense while Keller was building out this community. There is a heaviness and routine in them that favor a builder and not the homeowners. We are looking at updating our governing documents to be reflective of the season of this community, to favor the flourishing of homeowners, to maintain our HOA common areas and to keep our neighborhood an attractive place to live. The BOD will put forth suggested changes to the governing documents that will need a 67% homeowner approval to pass. We hope to be able to use RowCal’s online voting platform to make it easy for you to vote your opinion.
3. Work with RowCal to ensure a common sense approach when it comes to enforcing our CC&Rs allowing for gentle reminder emails before a violation notice. The CC&Rs will be enforced as per the homeowner signed agreements, but not with the heavy handiness of a builder’s HOA management company.
4. Review and establish maintenance plans for our common areas and HOA assets.
1. The CC&R’s ensure there is a common understanding amongst the homeowners for how to keep our neighborhood an attractive and pleasant place to live.
2. According to a 2005 study by George Mason University, it’s estimated that having an HOA increases our property values by 5%.
3. We have common areas and assets in our community and thus need maintenance contracts to keep them up. We also need insurance to cover any damage to those items. For example, the community “Cumbre Vista” signage, the 13 clusterbox mailboxes, and the common fences and retaining walls are some of those assets in our common areas.
4. As a community, we get lower prices for shared services. For example, our HOA waste management contract reduces the cost of waste services to this community from $20.00/month/bin to $13.57/month/bin. This saves the homeowner 45% on waste collection services and it also means that, as a community, we don’t have 5 different waste vendor trucks in our neighborhood servicing various homeowners on different schedules.
One of the 2025 BOD goals is to review the maintenance plans for our HOA common areas and assets making sure they are reasonable, updated and funded accordingly. CV1 carries maintenance funds and insurance on the common areas and assets as defined in our plat map. This is in accordance with the CV1 governing documents, Article IX, Section 9.4(j) of the Declaration.
As we review the plans, we will reach out to the neighboring HOA’s where we share a common interest in the maintenance of a particular asset that may exist on or near the plat border lines of two HOAs.
The City of Colorado Springs Public Works Division and Woodmen Heights Metropolitan District 2, managed by Walker Schooler District Managers, are also two other entities that have certain responsibilities for the common areas and assets in our community. Coordination with them is also on the agenda to review as we look at CV1 maintenance and funding responsibilities.
Woodmen Heights MD #2 Tax Boundary Map