February 13, 2017

Meet Neda Nehouray of HOA Organizers in Van Nuys

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Neda Nehouray.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
I first got into property management when I was 18 years old but never thought it would develop into a career. After working in the industry while in school, I initially thought I was pursuing a career in law. As I became more and more involved in the industry and had some great opportunities come my way, the career in law was a distant memory.

After 8 years in the industry, I decided to form HOA Organizers back in 2008, taking the knowledge and experience I had gained to make my company even better. I initially envisioned that we would focus on offering consulting services and administrative services to Homeowners Associations throughout Southern California. While we still do a bit of the consulting and admin services, our primary focus has been on managing the communities. HOA Organizers has been in business for 9 years now, and we manage over 90 communities and have a staff of 19. We are about to branch out to our second location this year.

Has it been a smooth road?
Starting a business from scratch on your own is hard enough, but being a young entrepreneur presents another set of challenges.

When I first started my business, I had a home office and worked around the clock. I was fortunate enough to gain a handful of clients, but it took a lot of dedication and hard work to prove myself and my abilities. After a year of working 12+ hour days, 7 days a week, it was time to get an office space and an assistant.

We moved into a 400 square foot office, and I finally had some help to alleviate all of the pressure. It appeared that we had steady growth each year, and with our client growth, we required space and employee expansion as well. After expanding our office space to 800 square feet in our third year of business and having a team of 5 employees, we moved to our current location.

In this location, we have also expanded our office space two additional times to keep up with the growth. Each time you hire someone new and take on that expense, or each time you push out in office space and incur additional expenses, there’s that level of uncertainty in hoping that the growth and expansion were done at the right time. I always wonder, am I taking on too much? Thankfully, my intuition has been pretty good, but it’s always stressful to take on the additional responsibilities.

Being among the youngest in my industry has also been difficult. Often times, people think I am a manager as opposed to the business owner. When my Director of Operations and I attend meetings together, they often address her with respect and the person they assume is the owner because she is twice my age. I have had comments made towards me about whether or not I would be capable, as such a young individual without as much life experience, to be able to handle the job.

We still continue to struggle, and I think as long as we are in business, there will always be hurdles to get through. The key is to work through them and devise a plan to get past difficult situations.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the HOA Organizers story. Tell us more about the business.
HOA Organizers is a property management company that focuses on the management of Homeowners Associations in Los Angeles and Orange County. We do not focus on management of any other type of property.

We pride ourselves in being known for customer service, providing direct and high levels of attention to our clients, and participating in high levels of education to ensure our clients are working with quality individuals.

When working for other companies in the past, it was always strange to me that they would hire managers that never had direct experience in this particular field. The amount of knowledge and law that a manager needs to know fundamentally in order to do their job takes at least a year of experience and about 4-6 weeks of very specialized training. Although we do compensate our managers a higher salary, we also make sure that they are highly experienced and continue to receive at least 2 weeks of training per year through our company.

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
I’m hoping that more companies in our industry will use technology for communication. I don’t really see too many big changes in our industry.

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