Townhome, condominium, and other homeowner associations (HOAs) are nonprofit housing organizations. HOAs have little interaction to share information, collaborate, or advocate. Using QGIS and open parcel data, the HOA Leadership Network published 3,700 HOAs to an interactive online webmap.
Townhome, condominium, and other homeowner associations (HOAs) are non - profit housing organizations built in the urban centers and suburbs of the 7-county Minneapolis – St. Paul – Bloomington metropolitan area. Led by a volunteer board of directors, HOAs exist to protect and maintain their homeowners’ property values. While individual HOAs differ, they share responsibilities in governance, business administration, and community development. HOAs operate independently with little interaction to share information, collaborate, or advocate for shared interests. The mission of the HOA Leadership Network is to connect and support HOA board leaders through education, collaboration, and research.
Using open-source software (QGIS) and open data (the MetroGIS Metro Regional Parcel Dataset) the HOA Leadership Network identified and mapped over 3,700 HOAs comprised of 187,000 parcels. We considered parcels to represent townhomes or housing units in condominiums or cooperatives.
In this this presentation, we describe how the HOA parcels were identified and aggregated with attribute data to form their respective HOAs. Summary information was obtained and mapped about each HOA, for example, the number of housing units and total estimated market value. Parcel-level data for each HOA was exported for descriptive statistics in MS Excel and Tableau.
The HOA geospatial data was also published to HOA Maps, an interactive online webmap, to support education, collaboration, and research. Users can explore the distribution and characteristics of HOAs, their relationships to other HOAs, and to features and events in their surroundings. When location is known, inferences about HOAs can be drawn from the American Community Survey, the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, FEMA’s Resilience Analysis and Planning Tool, and other population-level data sources. HOA Maps also supports the Network’s Insurance Advocacy Work Group by placing HOAs in their Minnesota Legislative Districts. We also note limitations in the tax parcel datasets and our methods.
