Condo Association Management Blog

hiring an uninsured company is against the law and also they probably did not have compensation which your building could have been liable if someone got injured. 
 
Also they would have to had three bids to do work before selected company was approved. I would think that the management company should be held responsible and repor them to appropiate Florida division

I'd like to hear the Board and the Property Manager on this.

you might want to consult with counsel since your questions are of a legal nature. My comments are not to be construed as the unauthorized practice of law (disclaimer).  
 
Have you taken a look at your condo docs and bylaws to see how they speak to the issue? Why was the roof being replaced? I find it hard to believe that they replaced a perfectly sound roof for no reason under a no bid contract - that smacks of colusion and if that's the case - there may well be a criminal infraction to consider.. that having been said, your contract with the association is a civil matter.. so I'm not sure the attorney general would be the place to go if you found evidence of colusion. If you're in Florida, you'd go to the DBPR - Department of Business and Professional Regulation for assistance. But before you go that route.. sit down with the PM and find out what the reasoning behind this all was. If your condo docs require that the person be licensed and insured - find out why that requirement was not adhered to... gather all the facts before jumping to conclusions.. condos can be a real pain - particularly with the swath of rumors and innuendos that tend to surround condo living. Good luck!

First, review your documents and bylaws for peretinent information. Scond,download the Florida HOA Act and review it for pertinent details. Between thaose documents you will find thahe legal way the Board has to follow to approve a major mainetenance/restoration project of this magnitude. 
 
Armed with this information write aletyter to board,send it registered return receipt and make them aware of your findings. If they did violate your state law you may wissh to advise them that they are now not covered by the immunity clause in the bylaws because they acted illegally and thus could be help both personally and collectively legally liable.

what state are you in? in florida i can guarantee you the building dept. has an interest in getting this done correctly with licensed and insured contractors. no permit??? the assn. can be fined and the contractor if not licensed is in deep " you know what" call the building dept to get there advice.

Re: Marvin 
 
How so right you are! This association did exactly that and when after 4 years and almost paid off did we find out what our screwy board had done to us.We trusted them and now we are in a pickle jar. The roof was no longer warrented and the guy (whom was the one boards friend) left town never to be seen. 
 
 
 
Now we have the balance of the roof to pay off (assessment to each) and a leaky roof over top of 3 of the units. Today almost 9 months later it is still not fixed. 
 
You talk about against the law. Well just where do we go when someone is stupid to the point of saving a few dollars and does this? 
 
They can stick the rules and laws up their butts and I am selling out of this nightmare before we get accessed again. Those laws don't mean a thing when someone else controls them and dosen't abide by them. 
 
I am so bitter tdoay, that I was so stupid to have moved here without checking everthing out before hand. 
 
 
 
A word to everyone that reads these blogs..............Please Please Please read and act before it is to late to try and fix it. 
 
FYI the board is no longer. Management has taken us over (for we thought that to be better than what we had) and yet to this date we don't even have a board in place to oversee the management. 
 
Trying to get a meeting from them, but they are in the drivers seat and they do know we can't fight them unless we pay for a lawyer, who will probably take our money and hoover over the situtation for another year. I am so LOL when I think about comments saying "READ YOUR STATE LAWS and By-laws" 
 
Have a good day everyone........ 
 
I am going to have a beer and 
 
look for my next little pad to move into, rest assured it won't be an association or HOA!

You have no one to blame but yourself. Did you ever attend a Boaed meeting?? Have you had annual meetinsg? Have you had an annual election of new mwmbers to your Board? If not why did you sit on yopur a-s and do nothing??

Contact the Florida Department of Business/Professional Reulation. They will assist you in getting properly Organized. By your state law you must have a board of directors. The m,amnagement company only provides support to the board and the association. They are not legally chartred to make any decisions. Decisions are the perogative of the Board and the council of unit owners exclusively. Time you acted to break up this racket which is rip[p[ing you and your fellow unit owners off illegally!

Mr. Adler 
 
I hope you were not referring to my comment. FYI to you if you were, I just want you to know that I have gonne to every meeting and I voted also. And I want to be a board member, but you need to have a meeting and have voting to do that. Nobody here wants to be on the board other than myself and I just can't seem to make that happen. Oh they all say we will vote for me, but we need management to schedule that meeting to get it done. But when someone lies to your face and does nothing after you make a complaint and says 
 
"It will be taken care of in a few days" and then it never happens, what do you do then. I have fought with the former board to get things done and they basically just 
 
keep lieing to you. So don't tell someone that they sat on their ash when in deed I have been working hard to get order back to our association.I along with others are growing tired of all this. And now management seems to be doing this to us also. What do you do go to their office an beat down their door for them to hear you? 
 
Furthermore the only comments you ever give is "Read your state laws" or "read your by-laws". They mean nothing to me anymore unless we pay a lawyer to bring peace back to our association. And that my friend takes money, and they all know that. People do read these things and when they try to follow the standard procedure and the board just keeps shutting you off it gets old after a while. We do not have a board anymore and we keep asking for a meeting to vote one in and the management is doing nothing to get us our meeting. This is one of the reasons people back away cause they just think it is a waste of their time to keep asking. Phone calls are being made weekly to management and either they lie to us or they don't return our phone calls. 
 
Don't judge somone until you really know what is going on. I sure hope you are not one of those BOD that do that to your association. Now you go and have a good night now and remeber those that judge are also being judged them selves. I will wait until the end of the month and that will make 8 months of begging from the former board and now the management service and after that it will be the first of the year and if I have to pay for a lawyer myself to get order put back into our place and get the repairs we so badly need, I rest assure you somebody is going to get sued! Have a nice night!

crabby - i know this advice is not going to be well taken at once.. but here it is. Do not get emotional about this. You are not seeing things clearly when you do. Nobody can. It's just human nature. 
 
 
 
you have been given really good advice which apparently, you don't want to take. READ YOUR BYLAWS AND THE STATE STATUTE. There are provisions for unit owners to be able to call their own meeting. usually it's 10% of the unit owners signing a petition or something and it's considered a real meeting. You can do this - but if you don't want to take the time to read and understand your rights.. then you're probably better off paying an attorney to do exactly what you can do yourself. 
 
 
 
Hint - if you really want to be on the board - don't depend on other people telling you how to do things. You will get screwed. You have to have the time, desire and intelect to be able to research this information on your own and bring things to fruition yourself. 
 
 
 
THAT is the true sign of a leader. I believe you can do it. It won't be easy and it will take your time (which is why nobody wants to do it) - But get ready for the "masses" to turn on you when you're on the board - because there is always an "us vs them" mentality in these commmunities. And unless you can articulate exactly what is going on to the neighbors (not what you think is going on).. you will lose credibility.  
 
 
 
good luck to you with all of this. I wish you the very best.

Nancy--exactly-well said!

Have you thought about contacting the off ice of your state's Attorney General?? That office is charged with enforcing the laws in their state and the Condominium Act is in fact a state law. Most staes Attorney Generals will respond with assistance in cases such as you describe. A letter from the Attorney General to the Board has miraculous powers in getting the board to respond. Best of all you incur no expensse for services of a lawyer.

This is more proof that condos are nothing but trouble waiting to happen. When you give up control of your property and finances to others, this is what you may get. In my state, boards need not publish minutes and board meetings can be closed to owners other than the annual meeting which is often too late to do anything to stop this type of abuse. I know. it is happening here while our property value has plummeted and with multiple units for sale, nothing has sold. I am willing to bring cash to the closing table to get out, but there are no takers. 
 
 
 
Stop being self righteous critics. Try walking in our shoes and see how much you like it.

Mr. Adler 
 
 
 
In April of this year, yes I took the proper procedures and drew up a petition and had 9 out of 15 members sign a petition with 2 others that would not sign but said they would support me for a meeting. This was with the former board. At that time we not only dicussed going with management, but that is when they (all 3) dropped the ball) and said they are no longer going to stay on the bord. This was when our problems started. She (the president) said she would stay on until management service was in place. I got another management service and all the information to match with her management service. Her being president she pulled rank on me and later I found out that management was a friend of her family. Whatever!.....So now management is being put into place as votes were in. I had no objection to management and I assured everyone else who is on my side that we will be happy with them as our money is now is someone else's hands and not the one we thought ( sec'ry) to mismanageing our money. 
 
That was 8 months ago. 
 
Now we are faced with new management, a firm that will not get a meeting to vote in new board members, won't return our phone calls, (and believe me when I say) I am not the only one making these phone calls to them. I had one return phone call that the person handling our account said " It's the holidays and vacation time and we don't know when we can get a meeting together to do this. Mean while the former president now snubs some of us,which makes me believe that her so called friend in management is relaying information back to her about us trying to get the ball rolling with them. 
 
3 roofs were promised and had estimates for damage taken back in June and it is still waiting to be fixed to this date. 
 
I am not getting emontional I am getting really nervous about being with management right now. Did we the 9 people do the right thing about going with them? and what will happended when we no longer want them. We have a 1 year contract, so now we must wait for 1 year to be up before we can get another management service to straighteen us out. 
 
This is like a drama on t.v. and I feel a lawyer is our only soultion right now.  
 
Thanks for your advice, but as you now see I am along with others are not sitting here doing NOTHING. 
 
Another petition will not help as I can see the others are growing tired and are starting to back off from all this. We already had 6 meetings this year and now they are growing tired, each meeting someone else drops back. Thankx I think it's time for a lawyer and I will wait until after the holidays and then the certified mail will start back up. Why do people think that you don't mean business and they think they can just keep playing around with you, this is why we went with managment and now we are still faced with the same B.S. this is so unfair!

I should add that I put dow in excess of 30% at closing and see that as totally lost. I am willing to part with up to 10% more and there are no takers. Part of the problem is that the mismanagement has made this property highly undesirable and the banks are thing twice. One deal was lost when the banks declined it. As an aside, a friend owns in another HOA in which FHA declined to finance due to poor reserves and negative cash flow. A job was lost since they can not relocate.

Thanks to "Condo Hater" 
 
 
 
Thank you, you do understand and I know there is many more associations out there with the same problems as ours. 
 
Read th laws, read the rules, and read the by-laws. That's what we are told and yet what good are they? 
 
 
 
I will not give up ship. My whole thought on this mess, is there must be a cover up or they would let me and others take over the board. They keep stalling and I will get to the bottom of it. Thankx man for being understanding

Condo Hater 
 
 
 
My thoughts exactly. I want the others here to know what you just said and those are my fears that when and if I want to sell out, I am not going to be able to do so. 
 
Some people here don't care, they just live in their place, stay behind their door and don't care. I myself care that if the place goes downhill (repairs to the common grounds) and (people getting behind)and (not enough money in our reserves) then this makes for a bad resale on anyones unit. These are my main worries! I have invested my retirement savings into here and I will be damn if I am going to lose it!  
 
I am not sitting here doing NOTHING, like Mr, Adleter says I am.

I have walked in your shoes. I live in a 480 unit high rise condo in Maryland. We suffered nder a dictatorial board for six years before the path to freedom occured tio me. A group of disaffected unit owners combined their talents and each spent a bit of money to coontest the annual election. We had only 1 mwember of the board who sided wityh our views and the other 4 acted as if they were mioniature hitlers. We rann a campaing based on the subject,"It's your money--protect it. We suceeded with an overwhelming election of 4 of our candidates to the board. Now peace has decended upon us. Try it you may like it. Your state law demands that annual election be held. I believe it also limits how many terms a board member may serve. Check iot out.

Waiting for an annual meeting is not an option for most and waiting 6 years should not be an ooption for anyone. The need to be able to sell a loser property without incurring more loss comes before petty condo politics.  
 
 
 
The condo laws in my state are so weighted to boards that individual owners that we have lost our right to participate in decisions including budget formulation that affect us directly. We have no voice.  
 
 
 
Time is not on our side. A year's poor management can only made a made situation worse when bad decissions are made by a secretive board.  
 
 
 
Property needs to be saleable. This form of ownership takes away our rights to our property. OOther people are telling us how to live (ban smoking in our own homes), where we can park our cars on our property on penalty of towing, what we can or can not hang in the window, what decorations we can hang, what comes out of our pocket for condo fees that are not going for what we intended or need, whether we can have a pet and what type of pet,whether we can rent our own property, whether we can put up a sign and possibly avoid foreclosure, and the list goes on and on. 
 
 
 
We are pay for the priviledge of losing our freedom and losing property value.

You have not lost your rights!. You just don't understand howert your rights. In every state the Attorney General is charged with enforcing the state law. Call that office and you'll be surprised when you find their is a formal process under which you may file a complaint and get help.

I understand my rights perfectly well. Our ag is not interested, only interested in criminal fraud. No consumer protection rights enforced by our state's attorney general and we are now seeing reports of property managers having stolen $$$$ from associations in at least 3 cases that i know of being prosecuted by district attorneys not the attorney general.

Have you searched the Internet for "Employee's dishonesty bond" "Fidelity insurance", to see if you can claim insurance benefit for your association, if your association has purchased such insurance? 
 

This one is for "Condo hater": 
 
I am looking for cases against the condo by the district attorney. Please let us know the names of the case (If they have been appealed and the appeals court has given its opinion).

Mr. Charles Adler, I like your thinking and am having the same issues with my condo board here in maryland....where do you live? 
 
The willoughby? 
 

I have lived at Grosvernor Park II condominium at 10500 Rockville Pike ,Rockville MD 20852 Unit 1611for 37 years. Telephone 301.493.5173. In addition to my invoplement of the affairs in my own community I am a paid consultant to three other condominiums in my area.