President and Chief Executive Officer
Richard S. Monson has more than 35 years' experience in Financial, Administrative, Real Estate and California Homeowner Association Management. He has 30 years' experience as a Real Estate Broker and Association Manager. Mr. Monson is a professional, specialist and expert in the sale, ownership and management of Condominiums and Community Associations. He served nine years as the Assistant to City Manager, Chief Financial Officer and City Clerk of California's City of San Marino. He received a B.S. degree from Brigham Young University and an MBA degree from Pepperdine University and has been a Real Estate Broker for more than 30 years. Mr. Monson is married with four children.
A wise and intelligent man once said, "we cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them." (Albert Einstein).
Often the purpose of the Homeowners Association is to engage the services of a property manager or a consultant or an expert witness to affect a new vision or concept of thinking into the activities of the Association. The benefits provided by an expert witness or consultant are based on the consultant's education, training, knowledge, and experience encounters in the industry and centered on the experiences of life, all of which come to bear when a person makes a decision.
My life's experiences began when I was very young man about the age of 14; along with a number of other young men in our Boy Scout troop, I achieved the status of Eagle Scout. During my high school years, I chose to play the trombone. With only a single formal lesson, I taught myself to play the trombone. Learning to play this instrument has been invaluable. When playing the trombone, one must hear the note in your mind and find the note by moving the slide of the instrument to the location where the note can be found. But hearing the note in the mind is essential for unlike a piano where a single or group of keys can be depressed to sound the note, the ear and mind must find the note after hearing it in the mind. This skill, in practice, has been very valuable. For listening and hearing the feelings and opinions of others and adapting them to form the correct tone or solution is indeed an accomplishment.
My father thought I should be an engineer because of my math skills, and I set out to be an engineer, early in college I decided that I wanted to be in business and not in engineering and switched to accounting and economics with a minor in math. Following my high school years and with a year of college behind me, my friends and I joined the National Guard and served six months active duty. The discipline learned in the military, together with love and respect for our country and military, has been of great value to me all my life.
Completing the Eagle Scout project was an indication of my intent and ability to endeavor to complete a task. While still very young I desired to serve 2 1/2 years representing my religion in a foreign country. This too was a valuable experience and contributed to the vast amount of knowledge and experience that I was acquiring. I learned to appreciate the viewpoints and commitment others had for their own inner feelings and desires and realized how many people are good. Following my tenure in Denmark, I returned to Brigham Young University and completed my education with a Bachelor of Science and later achieved an MBA degree from Pepperdine University.
Following college, I was immediately hired by Southern California Edison as a "Management Trainee," I reported to the southern division manager in Long Beach. I was there about a year and a half when the City of San Marino offered me employment. An opening in the administrative staff had occurred and they asked if I would be interested in being the Assistant to the City Manager the Chief Financial Officer and the City Clerk in San Marino. I took the job and served there for nine years. While in San Marino I acquired a real estate license having decided that government was not going to be my profession. I chose to go into real estate and eventually acquired a broker's license which is active to this date.
After opening a real estate office and performing Real Estate functions, I began to acquire clients seeking management for Homeowners Associations. The industry, in those days ,was much different than it is today. It was my good fortune to acquire a number of clients and eventually I migrated to Homeowner Associations and the Community Association industry rather than real estate functions although I still continued to do some.
About the year 2000 I founded the "California Association of Homeowner's Associations, Inc. It was my intent to provide consulting and administrative services to the community association industry. It has been my good fortune to continue to develop this profession over the last 20 years. Today I do a significant amount of consulting administrative in the homeowner's association industry. I am the president of the California Association of Homeowners Associations Inc. Our website is www.calassoc-hoa.com.
Services we perform for homeowner associations include, but not limited to: comprehensive financial services, organization and administration consulting, elections, collections, including small claims, reinstatement of suspended associations, formation of associations with developers, assist boards in resolving difficult homeowner problems, train boards how to run an effective homeowners association board meeting, assist board members with duties of the board of directors, assist associations resolve their financial problems and prepare association budgets, assist boards with basic parliamentary procedure, assist boards and homeowners understand their association's governing documents and California Corporations Code and Civil Code, to mention a few.
EXPERT WITNESS * CV (Curriculum Vite)