About the Practice

A Contractor's Eye, On Your Side of the Table

Empowering Boards to Decide for Themselves.

This practice exists because HOA boards deserve one advisor in the room whose fee never changes based on what the board decides.

Who You're Working With

The consultant

Matt Hardinger

Principal Consultant & CEO

From the forest to the wall. Matt can tell you how the product on your wall came out of the forest or the ground, how it was milled or formed, how it moved through a warehouse, and what it takes to install it so it lasts. A 31-year building-products career across hundreds of community associations.

Most people advising HOA boards have seen one side of the table. This practice was built from several: a career in building products that ran from manufacturing and distribution to hands-on installation, years spent running education sessions for property management companies on maintenance, insurance, construction projects, and RFP building, and active service in the community-association industry.

That combination is the point. A board hiring this practice gets someone who can read a pay application like the contractor who has installed the work, read an RFP like the person who has taught managers to write them, and read a roof or a wall like someone who has manufactured, sold, and installed what's on it.

Active in service to the community association and construction industries, including advocacy work at the Minnesota State Capitol and in Washington, D.C.

Board member, Community Associations Institute (CAI)
Contractors Association of Minnesota (CAM) Labor Advocacy Chair
A 31-year building-products career across hundreds of community associations
Educator for property management companies: maintenance, insurance, construction projects, and RFP building
Developer of our own inspection report format

How We Choose Our Work

The first condition

The first condition of working with this practice is that everyone at the table demonstrates high caliber and high character, boards, managers, contractors, all of it. Truth, as best we can see it, is the operating standard.

Our Promise

Our Promise: How We Handle Conflicts

Our fidelity is to your board.

We work with everyone at the table, boards, managers, contractors, engineers, attorneys. That's how projects actually get built. But our promise is singular: at every step, we direct your board to the best course of action for your community. Not the convenient one. Not the profitable one. The right one.

Any financial interest we hold, you will see in writing before you hire us, every relationship, every time, before any recommendation is made. And our advisory fee never changes based on which contractor your board selects. Nothing we earn depends on where your project lands.

Integrity isn't a policy we adopted. It's who we are, above all else.

In practice, that means:

Fee neutrality, in writing. Our advisory fee is set in the engagement letter and never changes based on which contractor your board selects. We never waive, discount, credit, or rebate our fee based on who wins a bid.
Every relationship disclosed, before you hire us. If any member of our firm has a financial or personal relationship with any candidate contractor or partner touching your engagement, your board receives it in writing before work begins, not after a shortlist exists.
Your board controls the bidder list. You decide who is invited to bid. Bids arrive sealed and are opened together, on the record, and any of our people with a relationship to a bidder steps back from scoring that bid at your board's direction.
Insurance work on your side of the table. We document the damage, we assist your board through the claims process, and we coordinate with your carrier on the association's behalf. Where a claim calls for an attorney or another licensed specialist, we help your board bring in the right one.
We work with your attorney, not around them. We're not a law firm. Legal questions go to counsel; we make sure counsel gets clean facts and documents to work with.

Where any member of our firm holds a financial or personal relationship with a company that could bid your project, your board receives that disclosure in writing before work begins. If such a company is a candidate contractor, your board controls the bidder list, at least two additional independent sealed bids are opened together, and your board directs how that person participates in scoring. The full Conflict of Interest Disclosure and Bid Integrity Policy is provided in writing at the start of every engagement.

Read the full Transparency Pledge.

The one-page Services Booklet

Everything this practice does, on a single page your whole board can read before the next meeting.

Download the Services Booklet (PDF)

Judge for yourself

The fastest way to know if this practice is what your board needs is a phone call. Bring your hardest question.

612-440-8660 Book Free Consultation