Condo Association Management Blog

put "louisiana Condominium Act" into your search engine. You'll find it shall identify a number of sources from which you may download a copy of your state's law related to condominiums and Home Owner Associations. State law takes precedence in case of conflict with bylaws.

I am unsure of what you mean when you say, "Property manager", In most condos the property manager is an emplotyee hired by the Board of Directors or is an employee of a licensed management company who supplies this individual under the terms of their contract woth the Council of Unit owners. In any event that individual has absolutely no authority to levy any fines. Onlt the Board of Directors has that perogative. The property manager reports to the Board and takes direction from the Board.

I can feel your frustation, but you say "old" HOA President, which I am assuming means that person is no longer the Association's President. This tells me that this former President may have told you that the fines would be waived but did not communicate that to the people who do the bookkeeping for the homeowner's accounts. You should consider writing the Board to request a hearing about your account. To help in your hearing be sure to ask for a history of charges and payments on your account. This is basically a list of all the amounts that have been assessed to you and the amounts that you have paid on your accounts. Sometimes not everyone understands what a receipts journal is, particularly people who are not accountants. Associations may withhold privileges if a homeowner has not paid their assessments. In the property managers defense, she may simply be following a Board approved procedure for delinquent accounts.

Our property manager is a hired employee of the HOA who takes directions from the Board of Directors and whose job description is, among other things, "to enforce the Rules & ByLaws of the HOA". 
Therefore, if "$500.00 fines" are in your bylaws/rules then she is within her scope of duties to assess the fine. 
Before you start complaining, read your CCNR's and make sure you know what you are talking about, because when you confront them at the next board meeting you can bet they will have all the rules/bylaws/ccnr's with them.

This is another case of a disgruntled homeowner who is not satisfied with the way he or she is being treated. I'd like to hear the other side of the story.

We do seem to see many posts where owners who do not understand the role of a property manager too willingly claim that the property manager isn't doing their job, it is doing it improperly, or just don't know what they are doing.  
 
Many times this is caused by owners buying into a restricted property without understanding what they are buying in the first place. They buy because it was what they could afford and they liked the way it looked...until what they bought into applies to to them.  
 
In this situation, a simple understanding of the property managers' role, the Association/Condo docs & State Laws would hopefully be all that is needed. 
 
Then again, I do see where when you try and educate, they still believe it shouldn't be that way. 
 
Lose ...lose.

As a board member and now president of my HOA, I do understand the "other side." Monthly bills must be paid, all of which require timely dues. If the only way to get them is by fines, lien and foreclosures, we are stuck with that, or we quite literally have to turn out the lights! The pool is a privilege that also costs money to maintain. Changing laws in the past 2 years are killing us with unexpected costly updates, repairs and modifications. If I understand correctly, the $500 is not in the form of late fees but fines. Legally, in NC, they can only come after repeated warnings that go unheeded and, in our case, followed by a meeting with the Board itself. I think there is much more to the story than what we see here and ask all homeowners to keep in mind that the Board members serve at your pleasure, but they carry a heavy weight of trying to accomplish goals beneficial to the entire neighborhood while dealing with homeowners only interested in their own personal space and property. Everyone needs to widen out in both their expectations, consideration for others, and take an active part (and I don't include complaining as being active) to help the Board in its job. Heck, join the board yourself if you're that unhappy. As mentioned before, the property manager is under the direction of the board, not the other way round.

Please excuse me, but fines should NEVER be levied as a source of income; they are for infractions of rules. Therefore, if there are no rule infractions, there should be no fines. In addition, collections from fines should be part of the budget (as they ARE income), and therefore, become part of the operating expenses in most cases.

I wouldn't include "fines" as income in any budget. Although you may have income from fines, you may not always have homeowners that need fining and would therefore not have that income. Each budget is in theory supposed to be created with the intention of breaking even at month's end and year end. So, if you included fines as a source of income and didn't have to fine anyone, you would end up with a shortfall in your budget. 
 
BTW...if you're in Florida and this is an HOA or condo, the "Manager" is not able to simply just fine you.  
 
Fining requires at least 14 day notice to the person against whom the fine is sought to be levied and a hearing before a committee of non board members or employees of the association and who are also not relatives of same. The committee would need to approve the fine by a majority vote.

The procedure you must follow to asses a fine must be in accord with your bylaws and wityh your pertinent state laws. Any deviation by the Board from these provision is not only illegal but could result in their being held liable. Most bylaws hold board member blameless EXCEPT IF THEIR ACTION IS UNLAWFUL!

i would like to know what can we do regarding our hoa, they r getting really out of hand they r posting signs for vistor's only on our parking spaces some of us have only one car garge and have two cars and also they r putting sign that all vistor's must move their cars before midnight or it will be towed, now the holidays r coming up and we all have familys from out of state. and will be staying in our homes where r they going to move their cars to. what can we do about this.

our hoa is imputing frivolous fines and fees because they know that we are running for the board. recently we attended a hearing to dispute fallacious allegations against us. the lawyer they got was extremely frustrated with their inconsistencies and unfounded violations. the board is now trying to stick us with the legal fees for their unjustifiable call of inspections. obviously, they are trying to prevent us from running by means of outstanding fines/legal fees. what is the best way to handle this moving forward?