LEGALITY OF OWNER APPOINTING REALTOR AS HIS REPRESENTATIVE

HELLO AGAIN! There is an out of town owner/investor who has purchased 2 properties in my HOA. I was told upon inquiry that the realtor of this owner is now permitted to attend meetings because the owner told the property manager that he was his representative. The agent is now attending the meetings and is quite vocal and most recently asked the Board to appoint the owner's adult daughter to a vacant board seat. The board repeatedly told the agent that this was not allowed as the daughter is not on the deed and is not an owner. The agent in a very persistent manner asked to see if the board could check and see if there wasn't something they could do. I have read the governing documents and really can't see where this is addressed. The state statutes talk about statutory agents. This investor is planning to rent these properties and our HOA is not that kind of a community although this is now what seems to be happening throughout the country. Does anyone have any insight into how much rope this "agent" gets? One committee is including him on their emails. THANKS!

This is somewhat off topic but you stated something which is becoming a greater concern:
"This investor is planning to rent these properties and our HOA is not that kind of a community although this is now what seems to be happening throughout the country."

With the bad economy there have been many foreclosures. Investors are buying up cheap properties and leasing them. I have experienced this degrading communities and creating numerous problems. We have been researching ways to restrict leasing and requiring language to be included in Board approved lease agreements.

Roger,

This is exactly why my Florida HOA passed the rental agreement to the CC&Rs, restricting any rental of any property without the ownership of the unit being held for 2 full years prior to renting. 2 years might be a tad long in duration but it put the skids on all of the speculators and investers grabbing up the properties when the price dropped and the banks took them to auction after foreclosure.

Hi Tim, Yes I learned that and I don't know if out PM even knows that as he is quite inept. Absentee ballot is the only way to to vote according to the State Statutes. What concerns me is that rumor(yes I know all about rumors) has it that this investor is interested in another unit coming up for trustee sale next month. Our HOA doesn't have any limit as to how many units an investor can buy, but we have the potential to have almost 15 percent of the units rented and that is not good but only my opinion. It just so happens that the realtor is linked to the investor in that the realtor finds and sells the investors the property and then oversees the renovations. The realtor lives in a nearby community where he owns a couple of places that go back and forth on Trustee Sales to cancellations of the sales only to get rescheduled again. This is a nightmare for an HOA.

I think I am going to turn up the volume on this because there are several owners in here who were witness to the pushiness of the agent and unfortunately, the BOD gave him way too much time at the last meeting which ran the clock out on other important items. Thanks for the great input and support as always.

Thank you so much for the response. I am going to copy your email to some other owners that are concerned about the agenda that this agent has. There is already talk about him using substandard materials to renovate a property he just bought that is in serious disrepair. I think the agenda is that if he can't get approval from the Arch. Committee, he can appeal to the Board and if he is "on good" with them, he can get his wayl There is something sinister but I just can't put my finger on it yet. I am going to ask the PM to refer me to the sections in the goverining docs that give this stanger permission to attend out meetings and speak. Thanks.

There are actual laws against frequent house/condo flippers. Not every state has this law but I know Florida does. The law is due to scrupilous house flippers who fix condos/houses with sub-par materials and sell them quickly. There is a limit on the number of house transactions that can occur in a year before it violates this law. It's not the type of law you call the police on. You may need to go to the District Attorney's office for an investigation. Provide PROOF before.

Realtors are like used car salesmen. There are some good ones out there but it's the bad one's that give the industry the bad name. This Realtor is of questionable intent. They also can be reported to the Realtor board for investigation as well. Truly, they don't have a right to be at your meetings. Realtor's aren't even responsible for telling their client the rules of the HOA just the existance of one.

It is a misconception that rental property lowers property values. (Boy will that statement cause an uproar on here..) There is soooo much more that goes into property value that rental isn't much of a factor in the overall picture. Property values are based on what similar property of the same bedroom/bath and house size has sold for in a specific area. That area is about 1 - 3 miles of eachother. The real devalue factor is the amount of FORECLOSURES or Short sales that have occurred. Those sale for much lower prices than homes in good shape/standing.

The example you gave. The houses sold for 1.4 mil. However, now there is a record of a house selling for 590K. That means if anyone puts up their house for sale for the next 6 months, they CAN ask for 1.4 mil but it won't appraise/sell for that amount. The potential buyer is going to offer less and the appraisor will appraise it for less. The appraiser has to go with "comporable" properties that recently sold in the area of which to base their price. A buyer isn't going to purchase a property that doesn't appraise for. A seller can set the price to whatever they want. It doesn't mean the house is less value because it sold for less than asking price.

It's pretty complicated and rental property does play little into those factors. The only time rental use comes into play is if the HOA fills out paperwork for certain type of loans. Not ALL loans are available for ALL areas. The paper that is filled out just asks how many properties are used as rental and how many are in good standing. They take this data and factor it in for loan risk for that particular area. Which just means they may not offer all types of loan options to potential buyers. Which basically just limits the pool of potential buyers. However, that's already slimmed down due to the property being in a HOA...

I used to rent my HOA home. Had one of the worst tenants on the planet. Took 5 months to kick him out and he moved a baby EMU into my back yard without my knowledge...So I know a thing or two about rental property nightmares. My point is that BUYER's can skip out on a deal because they don't like the wallpaper just as much as they can because of the amount of rentals. I can't isolate a buyer's decision to NOT purchase down to rental property. The buyer may intentionally be buying a home to use as rental property just as much as they are as a permanent residence. It can make a buyer even more nervous knowing they may face limitations if their financial situation was to change they couldn't rent out.

The irony is, the HOA can hold an owner responsible for the neglect of their rental property. Instead of taking those options, they instead try to make rules to limit rental property. Holding the owner responsible is the best option and doesn't violate anyone's rights to rent their property if the need arises.

To anyone that has been reading this.......another owner who has some concerns about a non-owner attending and speaking at our Hoa Board meetings wrote to the PM today to express those concerns. The PM replied that he had written authorization that his daughter(not an owner) and the realtor could attend meetings and speak on his behalf. The PM referred to a AZ state Statute but DID NOT give the number. Is this legal since I can find nothing in our governing docs about it? Thanks

LOL ... of course it does state "any person" and not "person(s)"

You are most welcome. Good luck!