Community Association Managers Require Licensing

If you are involved in community association management, or if you are a member of or on the board of a community association looking for a new manager for your association, you need to know that effective October 2012, community association managers in Illinois must be licensed under the Community Association Manager License and Disciplinary Act (CAMLDA).

Community association managers are not the same as property managers.  To fall under the purview of the CAMLDA, a manager must be managing one or more community associations.  A community association is a group that 1)  individual unit owners must be a part of as a result of their ownership in a condominium association or other such homeowners’ association, and 2) the association must have a right to impose assessments on unit owners.

Moreover, a community association manager may have a lot of responsibilities that a property manager doesn’t have, such as collecting assessments, organizing and assisting with association and board meetings, maintaining association documentation and other records, dealing with unit owners selling their property in the association (as well as prospective buyers), and preparing budgets for board approval. 

If all the manager is doing is managing rental apartments on behalf of an owner, he doesn’t need a license under CAMLDA (although if it’s not his own building, he may need a real estate license, but that’s the subject of a separate post)!