In common wall communities, individual owners turn over their exterior building maintenance duties to the association and agree to pay a fair share of the costs. IF proper planning and exection are involved. Reserve funding is an issue that frequently causes associations to stumble. The premise of reserves is that money is set aside systematically to pay for big ticket items like roofing, painting and street maintenance. Since these repairs or replacements crop up infrequently, when they do, the costs are significant.
Special assessments are the product of poor planning.
They penalize current owners who are unfortunate enough to live in the community when major costs come due. Prior owners skate on their obligations leaving current owners to hold the bag. Associations that fail to plan for major long range expenses typically do not handle day to day association business very well either. The two seem to go hand in hand. Those Associations typically keep fees unrealistically low and, by so doing, services are starved, maintenance lags and curb appeal suffers.