Condominium Association and Property Management Specialists, Inc.
3335 W. South Airport Rd., Suite 9B
Traverse City, Michigan 49684
Phone: (231) 947-5181
Cell: (231) 631-5707
Fax: (231) 947-2748
Call (231) 947-5181 today for more information!
Karen Clark
Karen is a licensed broker in the State of Michigan and has been working in the real estate industry for 17 years. She obtained her Broker’s license in 1998 and her real estate sales license in 1989, which is required in the State of Michigan to lease property for others.
Karen has vast experience in leasing and property management as well as acquisitions and sales of real property. She has an extensive 17 year background in property management having managed residential, apartments, commercial retail, residential, multi-family condominiums and single family site condominiums. Her experience as a project manager also includes the responsibility for the development of a 32,000 square foot office building in down town Traverse City, as well as managing numerous commercial office build outs and renovations in Traverse City and Grand Blanc, Michigan. In addition, she has experience with zoning regulations having worked on the approval of two PUD condominium projects. All of this gives her a very broad background and exposure in every aspect of condominium development and management.
Several years ago Karen decided to specialize in condominium association management and pursued furthering her education in this field thus acquiring the Certified Manager of Community Associations Certification (CMCA), which is a national certification through the National Board of Certification for Community Association Managers (NBC-CAM). This credential allows her to manage condominiums anywhere in the United States. In addition, she continued her education to achieve the Association Management Specialist (AMS) certification through the Community Associations Institute (CAI) and CAI’s highest professional recognition available nationwide to association managers which is the Professional Community Association Manager (PCAM).
Karen has a vast and ever expanding knowledge of condominium documents which comes from working with a variety of condominium associations including commercial office, retail, residential; both single family site condominiums and multi-family condominiums, as well as storage facilities. Over the past three years, she has assisted developers and attorneys reviewing and making recommendations for their condominium documents coming from a “user” stand point. Karen relates very well with her Board of Directors as she too has had personal experience sitting on a Board of Directors and performing the treasurer’s duties. She has managed both master and sub-associations.
Her extensive record keeping background encompasses experience with corporations, condominium associations as well as property management.
Karen doesn’t only talk the talk, but she walks the walk and is personally a member of four condominium associations in which she resides, vacations, works and stores her family’s belongings. This experience makes it very easy for her to relate to association co-owners.
In order to qualify for the PCAM designation, Karen had to complete an analysis of a 202 unit apartment condominium conversion in Atlanta, Georgia, reviewing all areas of the project and making recommendations for improvements. Areas addressed included administrative (i.e. administering the association, governing document enforcement, recommendations for amendments or changes to the governing documents), risk management (including insurance, reserves and liability), financial (financial statements, checking accounts, budgets and reserve study), property management (contracts, property maintenance and contractor records) and staff (payroll and staff records). She had 30 days to submit a 200 page case study outlining all of the areas that needed to be addressed along with suggestions for improvement. The Case Study is reviewed by a Board of Review and if approved, the case study is sent on to the Association so that they can actually make the recommended changes. There are about 1,600 PCAMS in the United States with 18 of them in Michigan. Sixteen are located in Southeastern Michigan and Karen is one of two PCAMs in Northern Michigan.
Karen is a member of the Community Association Institute and her affiliation with them has provided her contact with several resources that would not be locally available. This results in additional savings to our clients.
