Local HOA columnist marks 20 years

Barbara Holland, real estate professional and Las Vegas Review-Journal expert columnist, is celebrating 20 years of dispensing advice and helping settle impasses that arise, seemingly every day, at valley communities belonging to homeowners associations.

“Sometimes there’s a practical solution. Sometimes it’s commonsense wrong,” said Holland, regional manager at FirstService Residential in Las Vegas. “Sometimes it’s based upon the law. And there are times in which, unfortunately, the reader is wrong.”

Holland said she tries to remove the subjectivity and “bring it back down to here’s-the-situations.” Her assessments are not always warmly received. She recalled once receiving more than 80 prank phone calls in a short period and having to change her office phone number.

Nevertheless, the column has many fans.

“The purpose of the article was to inform, was to have an equal balance, and I think that’s one of the reasons that it’s been popular,” Holland said. “I’ve tried to maintain a proper balance, in terms of not being afraid to sit there and say the board, the management is wrong or the homeowner is wrong.”

Holland uses her knowledge of community management, in which she has practiced for more than 30 years, in her weekly contributed column. She owned H&L Realty and Community Management Co. — a community management company during much of that period. In July 2015, Holland brought her portfolio to FirstService Residential.

Holland’s educational attainments were in American history and government, she said. She is from the East Coast and obtained her master’s degree from the University of Connecticut and her undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Holland said her writing skills were sharpened during her studies as she put together lengthy papers.