HOA Detective™ | July 29, 2025: In the ongoing struggle to battle the combined forces of HOA ineptitude, poor data management practices, abysmal or nonexistent HOA disclosure laws, and the inequities of buying a home in one the many aging HOAs throughout the U.S., the folks at CIDAnalytics are confronted on a near-daily basis with the dreaded HOA “Doc Dump.”
The HOA Doc Dump: This is a term CIDA examiners use when referring to what Adobe Acrobat software calls a “PDF Binder,” or simply “Binder.” A “Binder” is a collection of individual PDF documents that have been combined into a single, sometimes massive PDF document. The word massive can easily refer to a document more than 1,000 pages. In the worst examples, this morass of discombobulated data is delivered as a password-protected document with no index, no bookmarks, and a document title that reads something like 11.2024HOABinder.
Current Doc Dump Record: For those who may be wondering, the current record for the largest doc dump is 2,884 unindexed, unbookmarked pages.
11.2024HOABinder: In the case of the 11.2024HOABinder, experience suggests that 11.2024 refers to November 2024 in some way. Upon further examination, it was revealed that the document in question contains 6 pages of minutes from the November 2024 BOD meeting. The problem is that there were more than two dozen such documents, with the only difference in the title being the month/year designation, but not all contain meeting minutes. The only way to determine what information is in the file is to open it.
Mini Dumps: In total, the collection of “mini doc dumps” in which the 11.2024HOABinder was included, consisted of 23 separate PDF Binders which in total contained 289 pages of mislabeled, unbookmarked, not optimized for OCR processing, pages of information, some of which was password-protected, some not.
Not Optimzed for OCR: The fact that 95% of the time these Binders are not optimized for enhanced OCR processing, is highly disruptive to the buyer’s due diligence efforts as it means CIDA examiners (or the buyer) cannot use customized machine learning tools we have developed to assist with analyzing the hundreds of HOA documents we receive almost daily. Yes, the optimization process can be performed by the user assuming they have the correct Adobe software, but it takes time, and when the file is password-protected, optimization is not possible.
The Doc Dump Disclaimer: As a result of the abysmally bad data management practice known as the Doc Dump, CIDA has decided to add the following disclaimer to the CIDA REPORT™ and the buyer order interface:
Please be advised that the source documents provided for this CIDA REPORT™ arrived in the form of a PDF “Binder” and/or were password-protected.
CIDA hereby discloses to the recipient of this report the following material limitations resulting from this form of document management:
1. No Confidentiality Claim: The documents required to conduct the CIDA REPORT™ examination are not confidential, nor do they contain any personally sensitive information.
2. No Distribution Restrictions: ALL documents necessary to complete the CIDA standard due diligence examination should be readily available to all HOA members (i.e., sellers) and, by logical extension, made equally available to prospective buyers and lenders.
3. No Privacy Claim: There are no legal or privacy protection concerns that should warrant or justify the practice of password-protecting the documents, either by the HOA or a vendor responsible for generating the document/s. This includes all financial and insurance information, reserve study documents, and historical data such as meeting minutes and inspection reports.
4. Limitations of the PDF Binder: The use of a PDF Binder and/or the imposition of a password reduces the accessibility of the information and obstructs transparency for all stakeholders who may need to access the data for legitimate due diligence or compliance purposes.
5. Limitations of the Analysis: From an analytical standpoint, password-protected PDF Binders impair the efficiency of CIDA’s document processing methodology and increase the risk that critical information may be missed, misinterpreted, or underanalyzed.
6. No Guarantee Notice: For these reasons, CIDA cannot and does not guarantee the completeness, accuracy, or analytical thoroughness of any CIDA REPORT™ based on materials received in this obstructive format. This disclaimer serves as a formal notice to users of the report that the document management practices of the HOA in question constitute a material interference with the CIDA due diligence process. While CIDA will make every reasonable effort to extract and analyze the accessible data, we hereby advise the recipient to independently seek properly formatted, unprotected versions of all documents from the HOA or its authorized agent. Use of this report by the buyer or other involved parties will serve as acknowledgement of the limitations described herein.
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