About Common Elements

The “common elements” is a defined term in community-association law: the shared parts of a property that every owner jointly owns and maintains. The pool, the clubhouse, the lobby, the elevators, the roof, the exterior walls, the landscaping out front, the parking lot. The things no one owns alone and everyone has a stake in. They’re what turns a building or a subdivision into a community: the shared property that the board governs, the manager coordinates, the vendor maintains, and the attorney interprets the rules around. We named the company after them because that shared stake is the entire reason this industry exists. The work of caring for the common elements (making decisions about them, paying for them, keeping them running) is the work this platform was built to support.

Common Elements is the platform for U.S. community associations, centered on the associations themselves: homeowner associations, condominium associations, and the management companies, vendors, attorneys, and insurance agencies that serve them. We have a national registry of associations and we work with boards, managers, and vendors across the country. We bring the industry together in one place. What lives today across spreadsheets, email chains, voicemails, and trade-show floors starts with four things:

• An industry forum (the “Common Area”) where boards, managers, vendors, and counsel discuss what actually works.
• An RFP Hub with structured bid fields, side-by-side proposal comparison, and a single audit trail.
• A vendor directory with credential-backed verification rather than pay-to-play badging.
• A unified user model so a single person can wear board, management, vendor, and attorney hats without juggling logins.

Around those sit the rest of the expo: free association websites, a services desk that connects boards to vetted firms, industry data and a developer API, free calculators and statute reference, and a jobs board.

The work of running an association looks the same in every state. Three competitive bids, vetting a contractor’s license, documenting reserves, answering an owner’s question. In every state it still happens in PDFs, BCC’d emails, and the twentieth phone call of the day. Statutes have moved (Florida’s SB 4-D and SIRS post-Surfside, California’s SB 326 balcony inspections, the state-by-state push toward funded reserves). Software hasn’t caught up.

The team behind Common Elements has lived inside this industry. Managing portfolios of associations, holding the licenses, sitting across the table from vendors and counsel, long enough to see where the workflow keeps breaking. We’re building the tool we always wanted. Our deepest coverage starts in Florida: every association registered, the statute mapped to a tool, post-Surfside obligations mapped to tools and checklists. We started there because that’s where the regulatory pressure is sharpest and our network is densest. Florida is the proof, not the boundary. The same registry, the same forum, the same RFP hub, and the same vendor directory now serve associations in every state, with state-native depth rolling out behind it.

We’re not a property management company; we don’t compete with the firms that use us. We don’t sell ranking in the vendor directory: verification chips reflect real credentials (LCAM, contractor license, insurance license, attorney bar admission), not ad spend. When you request vendor quotes, we connect you with independent, licensed firms, and we explain how that is funded in how we make money below. If we ever change how the directory works, we’ll change this page first.

Here is the honest list. It will grow and change as the platform grows. The rule above will not.

• Data and API access. We have spent years building the most complete public-record map of community associations in the country. Businesses that want that data pay for it, through a developer API sold in usage tiers and through bulk data licensing for commercial use. This is the public record and our own directory data, sold to companies. It is walled off from what any board, manager, or vendor sees on the platform, and it never touches directory rank, bid lists, or reviews.
• Sponsored directory listings. A vendor can pay for a labeled, featured spot in the directory. It is marked as sponsored, on the same screen, every time. It does not move them up the organic results, and it does not put them on anyone’s bid list.
• Affiliate links. Some of our buyer guides link to products at retailers like Amazon or B&H. If you buy through one, we may earn a small commission. It never changes the price you pay or which product we recommend, and every page that has them says so at the top.
• Referrals and lead-gen. On some pages we help you find an insurance agency, a lender, or a management company, and we may be paid a referral or lead fee for the introduction. Those surfaces are labeled, and they sit apart from the neutral directory and the RFP hub.

• Where a vendor ranks in the organic directory results.
• A spot on an RFP bid list, or the order proposals show up in.
• The outcome or the score of a review.
• Which vendor or product we recommend in a guide.

An affiliate link is a normal link with a tag on it that tells the retailer we sent you. If you buy, they pay us a small cut of their margin. You pay the same price either way. We only point to gear we would tell a board to buy, and we say what to skip. If a product is on the list, it earned the spot, not the commission.

Our software reviews are independent. No vendor pays us to be reviewed, and no vendor sees or approves a review before it runs. We review the tools boards and managers actually use because a good buyer’s guide helps you no matter what you end up choosing. Common Elements is not one of these tools and is not a replacement for them. We stick to facts you can verify, we date them, and we tell you to confirm current pricing and features with the vendor before you sign anything.

This page makes a promise: if we ever start selling rankings, we change it first. This is the current, honest description of how we earn. When it changes, it changes here before it changes anywhere else. Questions go to hello@commonelements.com.

The fastest way to reach us is by email at hello@commonelements.com. If you’d like to read more about the platform first, the blog carries our deeper takes on statute changes by state, reserve studies, vendor vetting, and the operational reality of running an association well.