Condo Association Management Blog

To avoid Director liability and insure that the insurance is complete I highly recommend a consultant to totally review and design your coverage, If you have the right consultant they will also be able to introduce the right carriers and insure that pricing is reasonable and competitive. Unless you are a expert in insurance you are simply flying blind with what could prove to be a very expensive oversight,

Yeah, try and a find an honest consultant who don't have a list of his pals and associates that he "highly recommends." And that goes for all consultants and engineers and architects.

Due to high insurance premium costs, my condo association executive board wants to find ways to make owners more liable for claims' deductible expenses. It's looking to promulgate a set of "written maintenance standards" to which owners must hold or be subject to assessment for deductible costs or any amounts that insurance doesn't cover, pursuant to a recent amendment provision in the Common Interest Ownership Act. The way the law reads is that an owner may be assessed if association expenses result from the owner's willful misconduct, gross negligence, or failure to comply with written maintenance standards. 
 
 
 
In CT, associations must cover the interior of the units (except for personal property of the owner), including "improvements and betterments," applicable to most condo complexes. 
 
With my limited knowledge of condominium insurance, I'd like to know what damage-causing incidents affecting the inside of a unit are NOT covered by the master insurance policy. For example, some owner, while cooking, starts a fire only damaging only the interior of his unit; or some owner leaves a bathtub on, and the water overflow damages only the interior of his unit. It's my understanding that costs for such repairs must be the association's -which doesn't seem fair to me, with respect to causation. Any insurance experts out here who can suggest policy changes as to covered risks? 
 
Also, in another association I'm aware of, more than half the units are investor owned, so tenants are the issue, and damages are more often caused by tenants than by owner occupants. Does anyone know of associations who require "beefed up" HO-6's in order to cover risks that would take some of the burden off of the association's master policy and shift that burden onto the owner's policy, so that the master policy would not get hit every time there's damage caused by an owner? 
 

I live in a condominium community that was managed by Dale Palmer of Homeowners Association from January of 2009 until March of 2011. The president of the association is still telling us owners that Mr. Palmer is still being investigated for stealing our association's money.  
 
 
 
Before He closed his office in March 2011, Mr. Palmer, contacted my lender and claimed that I owed $425 to the association. I didn't owe this money. My lender paid Mr. Palmer the money. I was not notified of the debt and the debt/lien was not filed in the assessor's office. Now my lender is trying to make me pay this debt. 
 
 
 
The condominium association board president knew that Palmer did this to me and that I did not owe this. The president has been the president for over 20 years and claims to keep getting scammed by management companies, contractors, etc. I'm not sure if the board president/Dale Palmer was bonded. The president nor the insurance company the association has the Master Policy with will not give the owners any information as to whether they are/were bonded. I would like to know how I can file a claim against Dale Palmer for the $425 my lender is charging me?