A resident asks for a charger. What they have actually started is a building decision that moves through eight separate checkpoints — and any one of them can stop the clock.
It starts with one resident
The first request almost never arrives as a project. It arrives as an email to the manager: "I just bought an EV — can I put a charger in my spot?" The honest answer is rarely yes or no. It is "that depends on the building," and most residents have no idea how much sits behind that sentence.
A good manager does not say no. But they cannot say yes alone either, because the decision is not theirs to make. That is the first place momentum is lost — the gap between a reasonable request and an organization that has never had to answer it before.
The board has to decide who decides
Before a board can approve a charger, it has to establish whether it even has the authority to — and whether the parking space in question is owned, assigned, or common. In most condominiums and HOAs, the parking is a limited common element the association controls, not private property the resident can modify at will.
That single question — who has the authority to say yes — routinely adds a full meeting cycle or two. Boards meet monthly at best. A question raised in March may not get a vote until May, and only then if legal counsel has weighed in first.
A resident at a mid-rise condo requested a charger in January. The board agreed in principle the same month — then spent until June confirming, with counsel, whether approving one resident's charger obligated them to approve everyone's, and on what terms. The delay was never about the charger. It was about precedent.
Someone has to pay for it — and that is rarely simple
The resident often assumes they will pay for their own charger, and sometimes they do. But shared buildings rarely have shared answers. Who pays for the circuit? The panel upgrade? The metering? If the building's electrical service needs to grow to support charging, that cost belongs to the association, not the individual — and that means budgets, reserves, and sometimes a special assessment.
Funding is where projects quietly die. A board that is comfortable approving a charger becomes far less comfortable approving a six-figure infrastructure upgrade that benefits a handful of owners today and the rest of the building later.
The building has to actually have the capacity
This is the constraint residents never see coming. A building has a fixed amount of electrical service, and most of it is already spoken for — elevators, lighting, HVAC, life-safety systems, and the units themselves. EV charging draws from whatever is left.
Answering "is there enough power?" requires a load study, and often a conversation with the utility. If the answer is "not enough for more than a few," the project shifts from buying chargers to planning capacity — a different scale of decision entirely.
Parking, vendors, and legal review
- Parking assignments. Chargers have to go where the power can reach and where the spaces are. Assigned parking, deeded spaces, and rotating layouts all complicate which residents can be served first — and which feel passed over.
- Vendor selection. The company a building chooses will manage its charging for the next decade. Hardware, software, billing, warranty, and who answers the phone when a unit fails all matter. This is a procurement decision, not a purchase.
- Legal review. Amended rules, license agreements, insurance, and liability all pass through counsel. Necessary, but slow.
Then, finally, construction
By the time a building reaches construction planning — permits, conduit routing, panel work, inspection, energizing — the hard decisions are behind it. The physical install is often the shortest and most predictable part of the whole timeline. Which is exactly the point.
The charger is usually not what causes the delay. The building is.