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Reserve fund used up, special assessment idea spurned


Question:

condo-falling-apart.jpgI am on the VP on the Board at our HOA in Texas.

A water line broke to a fire sprinkler system. The project is going to cost over $100K to repair.

The president and treasurer decided to use our reserve fund to pay for this without the approval of the rest of the board.

The money they want to use is almost all the money we have in the reserve. It that took almost 9 years to accumulate. We have only been able to save $25K a year to put back into our reserve.

I am totally against using our reserve and requesting a special assessment. Our property has been sadly neglected and little money has been invested into it over these 9 years. They support fixing things. We have a list of projects that our outlined in a reserve study that have not been done, since the study was done in 2011. These are all major projects and the neglect of doing them is now going to cost more because we are talking more replacement costs and upkeep.

To catch up, we need an additional $100K a year in our budget. They have stated they do not want to do a special assessment, leaving our reserve fund with less than $30K. I am very concerned that this is a major mistake and can not convince them that it would be better to have a special assessment to pay for this project and leave our reserve alone.

If we had a special assessment, the homeowners can make payments over the next few months, and we can keep our reserve. I am afraid in the future we will not have funds to cover another emergency or we will not be eligible to get a loan, and lack of funds in our reserve will affect protential homeowners from getting a loan.

If we have another emergency, and we use our reserve now, we would have no choice but to do a special assessment on a sudden notice, which would devastate the homeowners.

I would appreciate your comments. I am so frustrated, The property is going up in value, nothing is being invested into the property and things are rapidly declining.


Answers (5)

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