Common Interest Advisors, LLC
We help boards, owners, attorneys, lenders, and developers understand the financial risks hidden inside community associations — through independent analysis, forensic investigation, budgeting expertise, and governance review.
CPA • CMA • CFA • MBA
40+ Years Accounting Experience • 30+ Years Serving Community Associations • 200,000+ Documents Reviewed in a Single Engagement
Illinois IDFPR-Approved CAM Continuing Education Sponsor — License No. 292.000041
Risk-Free Engagement
Most community association consultants charge fees regardless of the outcome. Our Distinguished Budget Preparation process is different.
If we cannot identify at least $30,000 in recurring annual operating savings, you pay nothing.
This service is designed for associations seeking an independent review of operating expenses, vendor contracts, staffing models, reserve funding practices, and long-term financial planning.
More than one in three American households now lives in a community association, governing trillions of dollars in property and collecting more than one hundred billion dollars in assessments every year. Yet the financial oversight protecting those assets is often thinner than owners realize. Boards are volunteers. Managers and vendors are frequently the same people who prepare the numbers the board is asked to approve.
Common Interest Advisors was founded to bring independent financial analysis, forensic accounting expertise, and governance transparency to community associations. Too often, owners and directors must make significant financial decisions without the information they need to evaluate risks, reserve obligations, or long-term consequences. CIA exists to help clients obtain objective answers before problems become crises — delivered by professionals whose only obligation is to the facts and to the client who engaged us.
Common Interest Advisors is an approved Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation (IDFPR) Continuing Education Sponsor for Community Association Managers (CAMs) — Sponsor License No. 292.000041.
We are also willing to do what many advisors avoid: ask hard questions and follow the answers wherever they lead. When the facts support it, we will challenge a management company, a board, an auditor, or a reserve specialist — not as adversaries, but as independent analysts who report what the evidence shows.
Our work begins and ends with evidence, not accusation. Our role is to analyze, document, and explain — clearly enough for a board to act on, and rigorously enough to stand up under cross-examination.
If any of these sound familiar, your association may benefit from an independent look:
If any of these sound familiar, schedule a consultation.
We provide independent financial and governance expertise across the full life cycle of a community association — from routine oversight to high-stakes disputes.
Featured Case Study
Sudler Property Management refers to the John Hancock Center as its flagship property. Following a forensic investigation commissioned by a group of owners, Common Interest Advisors evaluated one of Chicago's largest condominium associations and identified significant governance, financial reporting, reserve-funding, and transparency concerns.
Think of PATScore as a condominium CARFAX — a single 0–100 signal of an association's financial health. The forensic review documented:
Flagship Offering
The budget is where financial risk becomes visible. Most associations approve budgets without understanding their reserve-funding implications, hidden operating deficits, vendor pricing issues, or future special-assessment risk.
Common Interest Advisors provides independent budget preparation and budget review — built on evidence, not last year's numbers — and backed by our $30,000 Budget Guarantee.
If we cannot identify at least $30,000 in annual operating savings, you pay nothing.
Signature Framework
A 0–100 financial transparency and governance risk score for community associations — think of it as a condominium CARFAX. PATScore distills an association's reserve study, audited financials, tax returns, and budget into a single, comparable signal of risk for buyers, lenders, boards, and owners.
Continuing Education
Beyond the Budget is a four-part educational program, offered monthly May through November and approved for Illinois CAM continuing education credit. It helps directors, managers, and owners understand budgeting, reserve funding, financial reporting, governance, and long-term financial planning.
Illinois IDFPR-Approved CAM CE Sponsor · License No. 292.000041
Flagship Case Study
An in-depth examination of governance, reserve funding, budgeting, transparency, owner rights, and financial oversight at one of Chicago's largest condominium associations.
In the community association industry, the people who prepare the numbers, sell the services, and review the results are too often connected. Common Interest Advisors is structured to avoid those conflicts entirely.
Independence is not a marketing word for us. It is the structural reason our analysis can be trusted by boards, owners, attorneys, lenders, and the courts alike.
Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner
Michael J. Novak co-founded Common Interest Advisors to bring institutional-grade financial expertise to a part of the housing economy that rarely sees it. He holds one of the most complete credential sets in the field: he is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), a Certified Management Accountant (CMA), and a CFA charterholder, and he earned his MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Over more than four decades in accounting, finance, and consulting — including more than thirty years serving community associations and nonprofit organizations — Michael has worked across corporate planning, forecasting, budgeting, reserve and capital planning, governance, and forensic investigation. That combination is unusual and deliberate: most professionals who touch association finances are auditors or analysts or managers. Michael's background spans all three, which lets him look at an association's financial statements, reserve study, and governance record together — and see the connections single-discipline reviewers miss.
He is the creator of PATScore, a financial-risk signal that gives buyers, lenders, and boards an objective read on a community association's financial health. He is frequently engaged in forensic investigations involving community associations and provides expert analysis and testimony in financial and governance disputes.
Co-Founder and Co-Managing Partner
Christina Novak is a co-founder of Common Interest Advisors. She brings extensive operational, administrative, and client-service experience developed through federal public service and private-sector leadership roles. She oversees firm operations, client engagement, and project coordination — the discipline that keeps the firm's investigative work organized, confidential, and accountable to the clients it serves.
Senior Managing Director
Tatiana Fotini Novak, J.D., serves as Senior Managing Director of Common Interest Advisors. She earned her Juris Doctor from Gonzaga University School of Law and assists clients with governance research, records analysis, litigation support, regulatory matters, and forensic investigations involving community associations. Her legal training is central to how the firm evaluates governance records, statutory and documentary requirements, and the questions that arise when association disputes head toward litigation.
Every engagement follows the same disciplined sequence, because that discipline is what makes our findings defensible.
Common Interest Advisors has conducted investigations involving associations with more than 700 units, reviewed more than 200,000 documents in a single engagement, evaluated reserve programs exceeding $23 million, and analyzed unfunded reserve liabilities approaching $30 million.
Located in Glenview, Illinois, Common Interest Advisors serves clients throughout the United States. Our proximity to Chicago places us at the center of one of the nation's largest concentrations of condominium and community associations, while allowing us to support clients nationwide through remote and on-site engagements.
Our engagements span some of the largest and most complex community associations in the country.
700+ units
Forensic investigation of a mixed-use high-rise on Chicago's Magnificent Mile
$23M
Reserve analysis conducted for a single association
$30M
Unfunded reserve liability evaluated
200,000+
Pages of supporting documentation reviewed in a single forensic engagement
Expert
Litigation support and expert-witness engagements
Clear boundaries are part of being trustworthy. Here is exactly what we do and do not provide.
Common Interest Advisors, LLC provides non-attest forensic accounting and consulting services and is not a licensed public accounting firm or private investigation agency in any state.
Condominium associations, homeowners associations (HOAs), cooperatives, master and mixed-use associations, and the boards, owners, attorneys, developers, and lenders connected to them.
We are independent of both. We don't manage associations and we don't sell the services we review, so our analysis carries no conflict of interest. We also focus exclusively on community associations, a specialized financial and legal environment most general-practice firms are not built for.
We combine forensic accounting, document and reserve-study review, internal-control testing, and interviews to evaluate what the financial statements alone don't reveal — always working from the evidence and the documentation.
Yes. We provide independent analysis, reporting, and expert testimony for attorneys in community association financial and governance disputes.
We are based in Glenview, Illinois, and work nationwide — with significant experience serving condominium, homeowner, and cooperative associations in Illinois, Nevada, Florida, and other jurisdictions.
Yes. The first conversation is a no-obligation discussion of your situation and whether our work is a fit. Typical response time is one business day.
Schedule a free, no-obligation consultation. We'll tell you honestly whether your situation warrants a closer look — and we answer only to you.
Typical response time: one business day · Confidential
