The AI HOA Assistant That Knows Your Community by Name
Free for 50 Properties. No Credit Card Required.
It is 9:47 p.m. on a Tuesday. You just sat down. Your phone buzzes: “Can I build a pergola in my backyard?” You do not know the answer off the top of your head. So you open the CC&Rs PDF, scroll to the architectural guidelines, find the relevant section, and type a careful response. Twenty minutes gone. Tomorrow, three more residents will ask three more questions, and you will do it all again.
Herald Chat is the AI HOA assistant that ends this cycle. It reads your community’s CC&Rs, bylaws, and rules, then answers resident questions instantly with references to your specific documents. Not generic HOA advice from the internet. Your rules. Your community. Each resident’s specific situation.
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Board members get their evenings back. Residents get answers in seconds.
Free for up to 50 properties. included. No credit card. No contracts.
You Volunteered for the Board, Not a Help Desk
The Community Associations Institute estimates there are over 369,000 community associations in the United States, serving 77 million residents. A significant share of these communities are self-managed by volunteer board members who have full-time jobs, families, and lives outside their HOA.
These volunteers spend hours every week answering the same questions. “What are the pool hours?” “When are dues?” “Can I paint my shutters?” “Where do I submit an architectural request?” Every answer requires the same steps: open the governing documents, find the section, read it, and compose a response.
That is not community management. That is an unpaid help desk, and it is the single biggest driver of board member burnout.
The problem is not that residents have questions. Residents should ask questions. The problem is that answering those questions requires a human to stop what they are doing, dig through a document, and manually reply. Herald Chat removes that bottleneck entirely.
How Herald Chat Works Under the Hood
Herald Chat is not a generic chatbot trained on internet content. It is an AI assistant built on a two-phase processing system that classifies every question and constructs a personalized, context-rich response from your community’s own data.
Phase 1: Query classification
When a resident asks a question, Herald Chat first classifies it as INTERNAL (answerable from your community’s documents and data) or EXTERNAL (requires crawling an outside website for the answer). This classification determines how Herald Chat builds its response.
Phase 2: Personalized context assembly
Before generating a single word, Herald Chat assembles a system prompt loaded with everything it knows about your community and the specific resident asking:
- Community details: Your community name, dues amounts, amenities, and contact information
- Every covenant rule: Each rule extracted from your CC&Rs, complete with descriptions and fine amounts
- HOA documents: Content from your bylaws, CC&Rs, policies, and other uploaded documents
- The resident’s own data: Their property address, financial balance, and role in the community
- External websites: Up to five community websites Herald Chat can crawl on demand, such as your city’s trash schedule page or your HOA’s public website
This is why Herald Chat does not give generic answers. It knows that the resident at 412 Maple Drive has a $0 balance and is asking about the fence height rule in Section 4.7 of your specific CC&Rs. It responds with that context, not a guess pulled from a search engine.
Powered by Google’s Gemini 2.5-flash model, Herald Chat delivers fast, accurate responses grounded entirely in your community’s documents and data.
What Makes This Different From a Chatbot
Most “chatbots” in software platforms are glorified search bars. They match keywords to a FAQ list or pull answers from a generic knowledge base. Herald Chat is fundamentally different in five ways.
It reads your actual governing documents
Upload your CC&Rs as a PDF. Herald Chat’s AI extracts every covenant rule, every fine amount, every architectural guideline. If your community caps fences at six feet and the HOA down the street caps them at four, Herald Chat knows the difference because it read your documents, not theirs. This is what makes Herald Chat a true AI-powered CC&R assistant, not a keyword matcher.
It knows who is asking
Herald Chat does not give the same answer to every resident. It factors in the specific person’s property address, their account balance, and their role in the community. A board member asking about enforcement procedures gets a different depth of response than a resident asking about fence paint colors.
It crawls your community’s external websites
Need Herald Chat to know your city’s trash pickup schedule? Your community pool’s seasonal hours from the management company’s website? Configure up to five external URLs, and Herald Chat crawls them on demand to incorporate that information into its responses. Residents get comprehensive answers without the board acting as a middleman.
It cites your documents, not the internet
Every response includes a reference to the specific section of your governing documents. “Per Section 5.1 of your Architectural Guidelines, exterior modifications require prior written approval from the Architectural Review Committee.” No ambiguity. No “I think the rule is…” The citation is right there.
It works at 2 a.m. on a holiday
Residents do not have questions only during business hours. Herald Chat answers instantly, every hour of every day. Board members never get another late-night text about parking rules or pool hours.
From PDF to Answering Questions in Minutes
The onboarding story for Herald Chat is the same as the rest of HomeHerald: upload a spreadsheet of your properties and residents, upload a PDF of your CC&Rs, and you are live.
Here is what happens when you upload your CC&Rs:
- AI extracts every rule from the PDF, parsing sections, descriptions, and fine amounts automatically
- Properties and residents map from your spreadsheet import, linking each person to their address and balance
- Herald Chat starts answering immediately, using the extracted rules and resident data to respond to questions with full context
There is no multi-week implementation. No consultant configuring your system. No training period where the AI “learns.” The moment your documents are uploaded, Herald Chat has the context it needs to answer resident questions about your community’s specific rules.
A QR code is generated for your community so residents can join from their phone in seconds. From the moment they scan that code, they can ask Herald Chat anything about your community’s rules, dues, amenities, or policies.
See Herald Chat in Action
Here is what it looks like when your AI HOA assistant handles the questions that used to land in your inbox.
Resident asks: “Can I replace my front door with a red one?”
Herald Chat responds: “Per Section 5.1 of your community’s Architectural Guidelines, all exterior modifications, including door replacements and color changes, require prior written approval from the Architectural Review Committee (ARC). Approved exterior colors are listed in Appendix B of your CC&Rs. To submit an ARC request, go to the Requests section in the HomeHerald app and select ‘Architectural Review.’ The committee typically responds within 14 business days.”
Resident asks: “How much do I owe in dues?”
Herald Chat responds: “According to your community’s bylaws, quarterly dues of $325 are due on the first day of January, April, July, and October. Your account at 412 Maple Drive shows a current balance of $0.00. Your next payment of $325 is due July 1. You can pay through the Payments section in the HomeHerald app.”
Notice the difference: Herald Chat did not give a generic answer about dues. It pulled this resident’s specific balance and property address. That level of personalization is what separates this from every other tool on the market.
Resident asks: “When does trash pickup change for the summer?”
Herald Chat responds: “According to the City of Cedar Park Public Works website, summer trash collection runs from June 1 through September 30. During summer months, pickup shifts to Tuesdays and Fridays for your area. Recycling remains on alternate Wednesdays.”
This answer came from an external website that the board configured Herald Chat to crawl. The board never had to look it up or forward the city’s schedule. Herald Chat handled it.
No Other HOA Software Does This
This is not a feature that competitors have a lesser version of. This is a capability that does not exist in other HOA management software.
| Capability | Herald Chat | Other HOA Software |
|---|---|---|
| AI reads your CC&Rs | Extracts and indexes every rule from your PDF | Document storage only, no comprehension |
| Personalized per resident | Knows each resident’s property, balance, and role | One-size-fits-all (if any AI exists) |
| Cited answers | References specific sections of your governing documents | Manual board responses with no citations |
| External website crawling | Crawls up to 5 community websites on demand | Not available |
| Available 24/7 | Instant responses any time of day | Board members respond when they can |
| Two-phase processing | Classifies queries and assembles full community context | Basic keyword matching or FAQ lookup |
PayHOA ($49/month) has no AI features. Buildium ($58/month) stores documents but cannot read or interpret them. AppFolio ($280/month minimum, 50-unit floor) has AI features for property management workflows, but nothing that reads HOA-specific CC&Rs and answers resident questions with citations. You can read our full breakdown of the best HOA management software to see where every platform stands.
Herald Chat Is Free to Start
Herald Chat is included on every HomeHerald plan, starting with Free. Upload your documents and start answering resident questions today.
| Plan | Price | Herald Chat Queries | Highlights |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0/month | Unlimited | Up to 50 properties, 100 users, mobile app, Herald Chat & Pet Protect |
| Automate | starting at $49/month | Unlimited | 200 properties, all 4 AI agents, Dues Chaser, Herald Shield, physical USPS mail |
| Enterprise | custom pricing | Unlimited | Unlimited properties, unlimited communities, dedicated support |
The Free plan is not a trial. There is no credit card required, no expiration date, and no artificial limit that makes it unusable. A self-managed HOA with 50 or fewer properties can use Herald Chat on the Free plan indefinitely.
For larger communities, Automate at starting at $49/month unlocks unlimited AI queries along with automated dues collection, AI-powered violation management, the Email Agent for inbox processing, and communication across five channels including physical USPS mail.
Compare that to a management company charging $10 to $20 per unit per month. A 100-unit community would pay $1,000 to $2,000 monthly for a management company. Automate is starting at $49/month with AI that handles the repetitive work those companies bill for.
No credit card. No contracts. Upload your CC&Rs and go.
Frequently Asked Questions About Herald Chat
How accurate is Herald Chat when answering CC&R questions?
Herald Chat uses Google’s Gemini 2.5-flash model with a two-phase query classification system. It reads and indexes your uploaded documents, then assembles the full context of your community and the specific resident before generating a response. Every answer references your governing documents with citations to relevant sections. When Herald Chat does not have enough information to answer confidently, it tells the resident to contact the board rather than guessing.
What types of documents can Herald Chat read?
Herald Chat reads bylaws, CC&Rs, rules and regulations, community policies, and other governing documents. Upload them as PDFs. The AI extracts text, parses individual rules with their descriptions and fine amounts, and makes the content available for resident queries immediately.
What happens if a resident asks something not covered in the documents?
Herald Chat will let the resident know the information is not available in the community’s uploaded governing documents and suggest they contact the board directly. If the answer exists on one of the external community websites you have configured (up to five), Herald Chat will check those sources as well. It does not make up answers.
Is our community’s data private and secure?
Yes. HomeHerald runs on Google Firebase with Firestore security rules that enforce role-based access at the database level. Your community’s documents, resident data, and Herald Chat conversations are isolated from all other communities. Daily automatic backups protect your data. Documents are never shared with or accessible to other communities.
Can Herald Chat handle questions beyond CC&R rules?
Yes. Herald Chat answers questions about anything in your uploaded documents and configured external websites: dues schedules, amenity hours, architectural review processes, community contact information, and more. It also knows each resident’s account balance and property details, so it can answer financial questions specific to the person asking.
Does Herald Chat replace the board?
No. Herald Chat handles routine, document-answerable questions: paint colors, pool hours, parking rules, dues schedules, and architectural approval processes. It frees your board to focus on decisions that require human judgment, such as budget planning, vendor selection, and community improvement projects. Think of it as the knowledgeable assistant who handles the repetitive questions so your volunteers can focus on the work that matters.
Your CC&Rs Should Not Sit in a Drawer
Every day your CC&Rs sit unread in a filing cabinet or buried in a shared drive, your board fields the same questions that document already answers. Herald Chat turns those static PDFs into an AI HOA assistant that works around the clock, answers with citations, and never sends you a midnight text asking about fence heights.
Upload your documents. Let residents get instant, personalized answers grounded in your community’s own rules. Give your board its evenings back.
Free for up to 50 properties. . No credit card. No contracts.
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