Condo Association Management Blog

Great article. We also ready articles atwww.hoamanagement.com/blog and have found those to be helpful as well.

Do you live in the condo ? If so, I would pay my regime fee/HOA fee a head of the due date. If you mail it, mail it with a certified with return receipt, so you see when they get it. If it is paid local walk it in and get a receipt for your payment with a signature and date they received it. You should not get a late fee and tell all your neighbors to do the same. Check your real estate laws. Here in SC we have to deposit checks within 48 hours of receipt. I assume you checks are mailed to the mgmt company ? I would check with an attorney if this person who owns these 50 units (developer/owner) if they can by law hold out and not turn the association over to the residents after 8 years. He is the investor. Does your docs say after 75% of the units is sold they will turn over the association to the residents? Maybe he can't sell them due to the conditions of the economy. Check with an attorney who specializes in HOA's... That is what we did here in SC.Property management companies in NY should also be licensed. If you can prove they are holding checks to be late call your real estate board and see what the laws are and if they have a license. There are laws governing holding back checks.

Also, how can they be on the board and represent the rest of the units not living in the unit ? To be on our board we must occupy the unit. If there units are up for sale they don't care what happens to the rest of the units. See what your docs say on that. Next election get members who live there and their homes are NOT UP FOR SALE.

Are you sure the same owners doesn't have something going on in N.J. We have a management person and HOA who have fined a deceased person's estate for $3,750 for burned out light bulbs after she was dead and the management person actually bragged about going to the closing to collect the $3,750 from the woman's estate. People get fined $500 a day for forgetting to move their truck and trucks are not allowed. Some little guy who works in a bank goes around spying on others. I have gotten fake fines which means no pool passes or voting. I know something is up with the HOA and the mgmt. person who is employed by her husband who owns the firm. They are now trying to say they started the rumor about them being married to see if others are creditable. How stupid and yet some believe them. This woman is called Hilter by many people who were not born in the USA. Can you imagine what must be going on if they don't want to admit they are married...possibly they might have others think if they admit they are married that they may be cheating. They just made me replace all of my 7 skylights and the replacement were worth 1/5 of the original ones which is against the bylaws. No one even looked into the kind we had and now that they know others with the skylights I had are not being made to replace theirs. We were in the model condos and the first builder put skylights in that didn't even need to be cleaned as they got washed when it rained. Funny thing is that all of my new Velux skylights (the cheapest one Velux makes) are getting condensation in between the glass and you can't even see out of some. Skylights are not supposed to have the seal broken and if it is broken, they you get skylights that look cloudy and get condensation in between the glass when there is different temperatures inside and outside.  
 
Sorry to hear about your dilema but I also think this man should not make the rules by himself or the fines. I think you can have him thrown off the board if he doesn't have the best interest of the other owners. You also can take him to small claims court. Call up one of the N.Y. newspapers and see if they will write a story about it. One time a TV station called me to see if my condo made people replace items before they needed replacement. At that time, I had to answer no because that didn't happen. Finally we got a president who needed some money and a mgmt. person who didn't think ethical was important and everything started with them. Last year we voted the president off the board and the new president threw the new elected person off the board because she visited her Mom in India for 3 months. Others have done the same without losing their position.