Why we built Common Elements
After twelve years inside this industry, the same gaps keep showing up — boards making vendor decisions on word of mouth, RFPs running in email chains, attorneys and managers finding each other through luck. We built the operating system the industry never got around to building for itself.
The community association industry runs on email chains, phone tag, and word of mouth. After twelve years inside it, that's not a complaint — it's the most accurate description I can give.
A board needs a roofer? They ask the manager. The manager asks two other managers. One of them remembers a guy from a job in 2019. The board hires the guy. Six months later, halfway through the job, scope creeps, the budget breaks, and the board is in the impossible position of finding a new vendor mid-project or eating the cost increase.
A vendor wants to grow? They show up at chapter meetings. They cold-call managers. They build a Rolodex one association at a time. The good ones — the licensed, insured, reference-checkable ones — compete on the same channel as the unlicensed handyman who undercuts on price.
An attorney has expertise in 718-style condo law that would save a board $40K in litigation? They have to find that board through who-knows-who. The board has to find the attorney by asking around.
This is a serious industry — community associations manage roughly $100B in annual operating budgets across the U.S., and Florida alone has 1.7 million units in 50,000+ associations. And it operates on infrastructure that would embarrass a 2008 SaaS company.
The three things we ship
Common Elements is three products that share one user system:
The Common Area is the forum where the people who actually run associations talk to each other. CAMs, board members, attorneys, vendors, all in one place, with role badges so you know who you're hearing from. Public rooms for industry-wide topics, verified rooms for professional shop talk, org-type-scoped rooms for the conversations that should stay among managers, board members, vendors, or attorneys respectively.
The RFP Hub is structured bidding. A board posts an RFP once with the right bid fields for the trade, invites qualified vendors, and reviews responses on apples-to-apples terms. No more email chains. No more "I'll send the spec to whoever asks." Side-by-side comparison, structured proposals, real workflow.
The Vendor Directory is the searchable record of who's who. Verified vendors with license and insurance on file, references that are part of the record not a phone call, service-line and service-area filters that match what boards actually need to know.
Three products, one identity, one permission model. A vendor's profile shows up in the directory, gets pinged when a relevant RFP posts, and the same login carries them into the forum to talk shop.
What we're not
We're not a property management software replacement. (Common Management is on the post-pilot roadmap.) We're not a community engagement portal for residents — that's a different product for a different audience. We're not a generic SaaS marketplace pivoting to vertical.
We're vertical from day one because the community association industry is specific. It runs on Florida case law, post-Surfside reform timelines, hurricane seasons, carrier-exit dynamics, and the messy operational truth of how 600 associations get managed by one regional CAM team. A horizontal product doesn't know any of that. We do.
What's coming
The MVP launches with the three products above plus the user system that ties them together — organizations, memberships, the relationships between them, the act-as-org model that lets a portfolio CAM post on behalf of any of their managed associations.
After pilot, we know what's next: governance tools (Board Room — meeting agendas, minutes, document repository, voting), continuing education (CE Academy — LCAM CE, vendor certifications), and Florida-specific compliance automation (SB 4-D milestone tracking, SIRS scheduling, 718/719/720 reporting). Beyond that, owner-side features — assessment payment, document access, community engagement — and eventually the Common Management property-management-operations product.
We're shipping the wedge first. The wedge is the people layer — boards finding qualified vendors, vendors finding qualified RFPs, managers and attorneys and counsel finding each other on a real platform instead of through luck.
Join us
We're in pilot mode now, seeding the platform with real Florida associations, real management companies, and real vendors from the Ardoor and Palm-adjacent networks. If you're in the industry and want in early, sign up for an account — free at launch, no card required, the product gets meaningfully better the more of the industry shows up.
Common Elements is built in Florida by a team that's spent careers inside this industry. We answer real email at hello@commonelements.com.