The board meeting is in November. On the table: three landscape maintenance bids for next year, a budget line that has to be set before January, and a stack of resident emails about the entry beds. One bid is the lowest. One is from the company you have now. One came from a neighbor’s recommendation. They all promise weekly service and a well-kept property.
So which one will still look like the right call in August, when the irrigation is running hard and someone on the board is fielding complaints about the clubhouse lawn?
Why do HOAs choose landscape maintenance at the end of the year?
Because the budget does. Most HOAs work to a strict annual budget, so the maintenance contract gets reviewed when next year’s numbers are set, usually in the last months of the year.
That timing shapes the whole decision. A board that starts comparing bids in December is choosing under a deadline, with the proposals that happened to arrive. A board that starts in October or November has time to walk the property with each company, ask the same questions of all of them, and read the scope line by line.
Commercial properties outside an HOA review their contracts all year, but fall is the common time there too. The reason is the same: next year’s plan gets made before the growing season starts, not during it.
Back to the three bids on the table. They look similar because they all describe the same visit. What they don’t describe is what happens on the weeks that go wrong, and that’s where the differences sit.
Who actually does the work on your property?
Ask who the crew is, whether it stays the same, and whether the people on it work for the company. A bid that can’t answer those three questions is describing a schedule, not a crew.
The same faces matter more on a shared property than in a private garden. A crew that knows the site knows which sprinkler zone floods the walkway, which corner of the entry bed the residents walk through, and which shrubs were pruned last month. Each maintenance property keeps the same crew, so the people caring for your garden in March are the same ones there in November.
Who employs them matters too. Every crew member is legally employed by us, with benefits and insurance that go beyond what the law requires. For a board, that’s a liability question as much as a quality one: ask every company how its crews are employed and insured, and ask for the certificate.
What happens when someone on the crew is out?
Someone will be. People get sick, take vacations and leave jobs, and a property with forty units can’t wait for one person to come back.
If someone on your crew is out, another crew covers the visit, so your garden doesn’t wait for one person to come back. Ask every company the same question, and ask how you’d know: does the visit still happen on the scheduled day, and who do you call if it doesn’t?
This is the quiet difference between a company and a small operator. A one- or two-person service can be excellent right up to the week the owner’s truck breaks down. That’s not a reason to rule them out. It is a reason to ask the question before you sign rather than in July.
What should the written scope include?
Everything the crew does on a regular visit, everything that’s included through the year, and how anything outside that gets quoted. If it isn’t in writing, the board can’t hold anyone to it, and a new board member can’t find out what was agreed.
A regular visit on our properties follows the same routine: the crew arrives on the scheduled day, mows and edges the lawns, weeds and tidies the beds, does the seasonal task that’s due, then rakes and blows everything clean. Leaf cleanup, irrigation winterization and fertilization come with the maintenance program; you won’t see them as extras.
Then there’s the work that isn’t routine: mulching the common beds, pruning the ornamental trees at the entrance, replacing shrubs that didn’t make it through winter. Your maintenance scope is written down, and anything outside it is quoted separately as an enhancement. For a board, that line keeps the budget readable. You know what the monthly number buys, and anything else comes to you as its own written quote you can approve, defer or put in next year’s plan.
On most HOA properties, the day-to-day contact on the association’s side isn’t the whole board; it’s the landscaping or gardening committee. Ask each company how the committee’s requests reach the crew, and who answers when they do.
How long do clients stay with the company?
Ask it directly, and ask for a number. Retention is the one figure that sums up everything above, because a client who stays has had the same crew, the covered visits and the clear scope year after year.
Fewer than 2 in every 100 of our maintenance clients leave in any given year, for any reason at all. That counts every reason a client leaves, not only the unhappy ones.
A low turnover figure also tells you something about the company’s side of the relationship. A maintenance company that loses a lot of clients every year is always onboarding someone new, and the crews feel it. One that keeps them spends its time on the properties it already has.
One more thing to check before you compare anything: whether the company maintains properties where you are. We offer full service in Kirkland, Woodinville, Redmond, Bellevue, Edmonds and the cities around them.
The bid the board will still be glad it chose in August
Go back to the November table and the three bids. Put the same four questions to each: who does the work, who covers when someone is out, what the written scope includes, and how long clients stay.
The lowest bid may answer them well. So may the company you have now. The point isn’t the price on the front page. It’s that in August, when the irrigation is running every night and a resident emails about the clubhouse lawn, the board knows who will be there on Tuesday and what they agreed to do.
If your property is in our full-service area, see how our landscape maintenance program works, or read what to look for in a maintenance company for the questions every homeowner and board should ask.