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Can Our Condo Association Charge a Move-In Fee?

Posted on Mon, Jun 01, 2009 @ 04:22 PM
  
  
  
  

Question : I live in a condo complex and serve as a director for the homeowners' association. Every time a new owner moves in, we have to change all our office records, issue new keys to the security gate and repaint hallway walls that have been scuffed up by movers To offset the cost of doing all this, we've been thinking about charging future buyers in the complex a $100 or $200 fee before they're allowed to move in. Would this be legal?

Answer : Probably. A growing number of condo associations across the country are charging "movein" fees to help defray the cost of doing all the work that's involved when someone new moves in.

Before you and your fellow board members enact a move-in charge, however, you should talk to the association's attorney and property managers. If a future buyer challenges the fee, it might be hard to collect if the association can't justify it.

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COMMENTS

As a former board president I fought against the move in/out fees. In my opinion they are highly unethical, and I have lobbied my representatives to pass a law banning them. 
 
1) They are commonly used to discriminate against renters. There are plenty of tools that most boards are too lazy to use to deal with specific problem renters. Plus I ran statistics on our perceived "renter problem" in our association, and found all but one of our major problems were caused from homeowners. In fact, normalizing for the population, a homeowner was 4.5 times more likely to be involved with illegal activity or cause damage to the common property than a renter was. By discriminating against renters, you are punishing a large percentage of people for things they haven't done. Last time I checked, that violates Ethics 101, and some could call it a form of bigotry especially if when faced with the cold hard facts, as so many of our "anti-renter crusaders" were and continue to deny the real problems. 
 
2) People move in and move out all the time. It's as natural part of the business as mowing the grass and fixing the concrete - everyone has to do it eventually. If you feel you need to charge people extra money for moving in and out, you are failing to create a proper budget and are trying to do an end around your assessment fees. Regarding keys, you could look into electronic solutions that would be far cheaper than changing the locks all the time. Again, you're just being lazy by charging people more instead of looking for better long term solutions. 
 
3) Charging people a fee for damage they MIGHT do is extremely unethical. Plus scuffing of walls is a cheap and easy repair and probably far less expensive than the damage probably done to the mover's property. But there is a solution to this - it's called a security deposit. Why are you trying to re-invent the wheel? 
 
Bottom line, It's been my experience that if you are running your association correctly there is no need to charge extra fees. And a move out fee that is significantly higher than a move in fee, has no other explanation other than the association trying to milk people on their way out.

posted @ Friday, April 17, 2009 10:54 AM by Chris


As the President of my HOA I'm going to recommend a modest move-in fee to the Board. Security deposits involve a lot of administrative overhead. Furthermore, how do you collect a move-out security deposit?  
 
Adjusting our budget and assessing fees on owners who are not renting their units to cover additional maintenance overhead from moving activities amounts to subsidizing other owners who are leasing their units.  
 
The only way to ensure the Association has funds to cover routine maintenance overhead due to moving activity is to charge an up-front fee.  
 
 

posted @ Tuesday, January 26, 2010 8:39 PM by Howard


We charge a fee to monitor the move-in/out only if it occurs outside normal trading hours. If damage is done the party is then asked to reinstate. 
 
Chris I agree that moving in and out is a natural as mowing or concreting, however I am yet to find a contractor that works for free.

posted @ Thursday, November 24, 2011 8:25 PM by Rick


We lease a Condo and received the move in-move out guidelines. Now that we are moving out the Condo BOD has revised the Move in-Move out guideline 2013. As tenants we never received a new copy of the revise move in-move out guidelines from our "Landlord or Condo BOD". Asking us to use put a deposit down $500 is refundable but another fee of $150 non-refundable. Does make sense to anyone out there?

posted @ Wednesday, January 30, 2013 7:04 AM by Ninfa Carpenter


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