HOA Security Assessment for Orlando Boards
Nexus Security Firm walks the community with your board or manager, writes down what we find, and puts an annual cost against every option, including the ones that involve no officers. Our agency license is FDACS Class B number B 1900066 and the assessment document is yours to take to any bidder.
What the assessment produces
The assessment is a walk of the community and a written document that tells the board what is happening, what would address it, and what each option costs for a year. The walk happens at the hours the complaints are about, which for most associations means after dark.
We cover the perimeter and where it fails, the entrances and how vehicles get in, the lighting including the poles that are out and the stretches that were never lit, the amenity center and its gates and latches, the parking inventory and where it runs short, the mail kiosk, the streets where vehicle burglaries have landed, and the sight lines that landscaping has closed. We read the manager's incident log and the resident complaints alongside it, because the two rarely match. The document then lists findings in the order we would fix them, with coverage patterns costed by weekly hours, hourly rate, annual total and cost per home per month.
The boards that need this before they need officers
Four situations account for most assessments. A board split between a staffed gate and cameras with no figure for either. A board facing an owner vote on a dues increase and unable to answer the question of what the money buys. A board holding three security quotes that describe different services and cannot be compared. And a new manager inheriting a community with a security line in the budget and no record of why it is there.
The common thread is that the board is being asked to spend owners money on something the owners cannot see. Security is the line item that draws the most scrutiny at an annual meeting for exactly that reason, and a board that walks in with a written document, a set of costed options and a clear statement of what it chose and why is in a different position from a board with a single proposal from a company that came recommended.
Most assessments start with something cheaper than officers
Lighting is the first recommendation in most residential communities and it is the first thing boards recommend to each other. It is a capital item instead of a recurring one, it works every night without a schedule, and dark stretches are where residential vehicle burglaries concentrate. The second item is usually the least glamorous thing on any list, which is getting residents to lock their cars and to report what they see, since most vehicle burglaries in Central Florida communities are unlocked cars worked on foot.
After that come the physical items that turn up on almost every walk: a pedestrian gate that does not latch, a fob reader on a gate that no longer closes, overgrown landscaping across a sight line, a boundary section that ends at a retail lot. Those get fixed by your landscaper, your fence contractor or your gate company. Nexus Security Firm sells and installs no cameras, alarms, gate hardware or access control equipment, so nothing on that part of the list is a product we are selling you.
Coverage enters the recommendation when the incidents continue after the cheaper items are done, or when the problem is one only a person can address, such as who is admitted at the entrance or what happens on a pool deck on Saturday night.
Where cameras usually sit in the conversation
Cameras come up in every one of these board discussions and deserve a straight answer from someone with nothing to sell on the subject. Skepticism about camera spending in low crime communities is persistent among boards who have been through it, and at least one board reported its own attorney advising against association owned cameras, on the association's exposure once it holds recordings and residents expect them to be watched.
The related point comes from a commercial property owner who observed that recordings deter nobody when almost nothing gets prosecuted. A camera answers the question of what happened, which matters for a fining file or an insurance claim, and answers very little about whether it happens again. A board weighing a camera proposal against coverage should ask who watches the recording, who retains it, who responds when it shows something, and what the association's attorney says about holding it. Those questions belong to your attorney and your own vendors, and the assessment writes them down rather than answering them for you.
What the assessment costs and how the numbers are presented
For boards considering coverage, the walk and the costed options are part of quoting the work, so ask when you call. Where a board wants a standalone written assessment with no coverage decision attached, that is quoted as supervisor hours on the same rate basis as officer time, and you get a figure before anyone comes out.
The costing inside the document uses one rate basis throughout: $24 to $34 an hour unarmed and $32 to $46 armed in this market, built from Florida officer wages of $14 to $18 an hour unarmed and $18 to $26 armed (ZipRecruiter, Salary.com and Indeed, August 2026) and the 1.5 to 2 times bill rate markup reported by Belfry Software in 2026. Every option carries weekly hours, annual total and per home monthly cost, so a 24 hour gate post appears as roughly $209,000 to $297,000 a year and, in a 300 home community, as $58 to $83 per home per month. Owners will do that division in the room, and the board should have done it first.
What we look at that is specific to Central Florida
Local conditions change what a walk finds. Conservation and retention pond frontage gives long dark boundaries with no houses facing them. Communities built in phases have an active construction area inside the walls. Amenity centers sit at the front of the property with parking that serves anyone who drives in. Short term rentals appear on residential streets in the communities closest to the parks, and Orlando drew a record 76.7 million visitors in 2025 (Visit Orlando).
Hurricane season changes the picture twice over: weeks of contractor, adjuster and tree crew traffic that no access list anticipated, and damaged fencing and lighting that stays broken through a claim. Theme park and hospitality shift patterns put heavy vehicle movement through communities at midnight and at 8am, which is when tailgating at a gate happens. A walk that ignores all of this and counts entrances produces a report any agency could have written about any community in the country.
Checking who is writing your assessment
Nexus Security Firm holds FDACS Class B agency license B 1900066, verifiable on the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services public license search. A security assessment carries weight with an insurer, an attorney and an owners meeting in proportion to who signed it, and an unlicensed consultant produces a document a board cannot lean on.
Officers and supervisors hold individual Class D licenses, requiring 40 hours of FDACS-approved training and valid two years (FDACS Division of Licensing). The assessment document names the license, and you are free to run it. Take the findings to other licensed agencies as well, because three bids against one written scope is the only way a board gets comparable numbers.
What boards usually pair this with
Associations that buy this usually look at these at the same board meeting.
How an assessment runs
Four steps across a couple of weeks, and the board holds a usable document at the end whether or not it hires anyone.
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A call about the community and the disagreement
Number of homes, entrances, amenities, what has been happening, and where the board is divided. Fifteen minutes usually shows whether the community needs an assessment or a straight quote.
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Documents before the walk
The incident log, resident complaints, the parking rules and any covenant language on rentals and guests, plus any quotes already received. The gap between the log and the complaints is frequently the first finding.
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The walk, after dark
Perimeter, entrances, lighting, amenity center, parking, mail kiosk and the specific streets where incidents landed, with a board member or the manager along. Daylight walks miss the thing most communities are suffering from.
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The written document and a meeting
Findings in the order we would address them, coverage options costed by year and per home, and the items to take to your own contractors. We will attend a board meeting to answer questions about it.
Why boards ask Nexus Security Firm to do the walk
The document costs us business as often as it wins it
Plenty of these walks end with a recommendation for lighting, a gate latch and a conversation with residents about locking cars, with coverage reviewed in six months. That is the right answer in a low incident community and a board can act on it within its existing budget. A board that gets told plainly when a staffed gate is the wrong spend has a reason to trust the number on the coverage it does need.
A 24 hour gate post runs roughly $209,000 to $297,000 a year, against a lighting repair a board can fund from operating.
Every option carries an annual figure and a per home figure
Boards lose security votes because the proposal has an hourly rate and no annual total, and an owner does the multiplication out loud at the meeting. Every option in the document shows weekly hours, the hourly rate, the annual cost and what it comes to per home per month, with the rate basis and its sources written out so the numbers survive scrutiny.
Security bill rates run 1.5 to 2 times the officer wage, with officer pay near 70 percent of the rate (Belfry Software, 2026).
The findings are yours to bid out
The assessment is written as a scope a board can hand to other licensed agencies, which is the only way three quotes become comparable. It also lists the questions to ask each one: annual turnover, who supervises the post and how often they attend overnight, what happens when an officer calls out an hour before shift, and what the officers on the contract are paid.
Turnover in security guarding hit 77 percent in 2024 (ASIS International).
What Reddit Says About HOA Security Assessments in Orlando
Board members who have worked through this decision are consistent about two things. The first is the arithmetic. Guard service gets discussed at around $40 an hour, a 40 hour post works out to tens of thousands a year, and boards describe a resulting dues increase near a fifth. The repeated advice is to bring that annual number to owners early, before the board has committed, because owners react to the surprise rather than to the figure.
The second is the order of operations. The consistent first recommendation is lighting, followed by getting residents to lock their vehicles. Camera spending draws persistent skepticism as reassurance in low crime communities, and one board reported its attorney advising against association owned cameras. A commercial property owner made the related point that recordings deter nobody when almost nothing is prosecuted.
There are two warnings worth writing into any scope. Coverage gaps sold as coverage: one association contracted four hours a night, four nights a week, and was hit during the unguarded hours. And lowest bidder economics: a security branch manager's thread on how bill rates are built drew the observation that competing on the lowest bid decides who ends up standing at your gate, with another contributor describing the pressure to hire people they would never otherwise hire for the work.
A typical assessment and where it lands
The situation: A common call from a 260 home community in Orange County. Over a year the board has collected complaints about car break ins, a propped amenity gate, and two incidents of teenagers in the clubhouse parking lot after midnight. One director wants a 24 hour staffed gate, another wants a camera system, and the treasurer has pointed out that either would need a special assessment or a dues increase. Owners are already unhappy about the last increase.
What gets done: We read the manager's log against the resident emails and find nineteen complaints and six logged incidents, which tells the board it has been arguing about an incomplete picture. We walk the property at 10pm and again near 1am. Six light poles are out along the two streets where most break ins occurred, the pedestrian gate at the rear does not latch, landscaping has closed the sight line from the clubhouse across the lot, and the entrance arm can be tailgated with no difficulty. We write the findings in order, cost a 24 hour post, an overnight post, a patrol program and weekend amenity coverage, each with annual and per home figures.
How it turns out: The board funds the lighting repairs and the gate latch from operating, trims the landscaping, and contracts a patrol program with weekend amenity hours through the summer, at a fraction of the gate post it had been debating. The camera proposal goes back to the association attorney with the questions from the document attached. The board reviews the patrol logs at six months and has a record to argue from either way.
Assessment questions Orlando boards ask
What the document is and what it costs first, then the questions boards ask about the recommendations themselves.