Associa CEO John Carona Discusses HOA Management, Growth, and Expansion in Building Texas Show Episode

Associa founder and CEO John Carona appeared on the Building Texas Show to discuss the company's 49-year journey from a two-person operation to the world's largest manager of homeowners associations, now with 24,000 employees. Recorded at Associa's Richardson headquarters, the conversation with host Justin McKenzie covered the origins of the company, the misunderstood role of HOAs in fast-growing Texas, and the future of community association management as Associa expands into Europe.

Carona started the business roughly 18 months after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked three jobs to put himself through school. "We started out with just two employees, myself and one rather elderly assistant who I loved dearly," he told McKenzie. Growth came "one client at a time," organically at first, and increasingly through acquisition. Associa has now acquired more than 200 separate companies and adds another 25 to 30 management firms in a typical year.

Much of the episode aimed to set the record straight on homeowners associations. Carona made a financial case for HOAs, stating, "The most important thing homeowners associations do is they preserve the value for the owners themselves by adding some degree of conformity, some reasonable rules and regulations." Property values in communities with mandatory HOAs have been shown to grow faster than those outside them. He also addressed resident friction directly, noting that surveys show just north of 95% of residents appreciate the HOA experience. "Now, four to five percent out there feel otherwise. And it's our job as a management company to try to address the issues that those four to five percent bring up." Associa now surveys every board of directors it represents three times a year to catch problems early.

Asked what sets Associa apart, Carona pointed to technology and the amount the company spends each year training its people. "We live in the Amazon age. People want more for less, and there's nothing wrong with that," he said. "That same technological application applies with community associations, and we have to be able to do a better job, a more timely job, and do it for lower dollars." Associa operates 340 branch offices across the United States and serves 44 of the 50 states. That footprint allows employees to move markets without leaving the company, contributing to a culture where some employees have 25, 30, and even 40 years of tenure. Employees have voted the company a national best place to work for nine consecutive years, an achievement Carona singled out: "Nothing makes me prouder than that."

Looking ahead, Associa recently acquired the number two operator in Spain, its first large international purchase, and expects to be the number one operator in that market by the close of December. Carona described it as the opening move in a three-to-five-year rollout across Europe, with the UK, France, and Italy on the list and inbound interest already arriving from Germany. The vocabulary changes by country—parts of Canada call them stratas—but the work does not. "Whatever they call them, the procedure and the type of service is more or less the same."

For homeowners buying into Texas's booming triangle, Carona's closing advice was to scrutinize transportation, location, and build quality, because Texas does not license builders. "From time to time, bad actors can come on the scene." The full episode is available now wherever you get your podcasts.