common components of planned development

Hello,

I am a member of a community that is classified as a planned development in California. These are attached SFRs, 2 homes share a common wall, fence and roof. There are 25 such attachments in the community. Today as per the existing CC&Rs and bylaws; we have roofs, fences, siding, trim, garage of the personal property of the lot owner covered as common components. These common components are included in the reserve study and funded through our monthly dues to the association.

The association has had a history of negligent (sometimes willful) expenditure on common components; and many homeowners (not sure if it constitutes a 75% majority or not) are of the opinion that we should remove the roof, fence, garage, siding, etc. from the common components and give back responsibility of maintaining those components to the lot owner. In short, anything present on the lot of the owner should be his/her own responsibility.

I have been trying to search this board for a topic that resembles my question at point but am not able to get anything conclusive, so posting this question for senior members who may be able to help on this matter:

1. If we have a majority of homeowners requesting to take back the maintenance of their properties, what is the best way to go about removing these components from the governing documents.

2. If we do succeed in removing these from the governing documents, how should disputes between two homeowners be handled by the association. e.g. a shared fence collapses and one homeowner blames it on the other homeowner, and nobody is willing to repair/replace it.

3. How do we handle the issue of pests and organisms ? California law states that the pest and organism issue is each homeowner's responsibility, but negligence from one homeowner can cause the pests and organisms (especially termites) to travel from one home to another, right?

Thanks in advance for your help. Looking forward to your valuable suggestions.

This would be done by amending the documents. The Board (or the membership through a petition) calls a meeting and the members vote on the proposed amendment. This is also how the transfer of responsibility should happen.


Part of the amendment should address these items and typically the Association would not become involved with neighbor/neighbor disputes. They would rely on the neighbors to settle the issue amongst themselves or through the courts.

I'd suggest language similar to what my Association has about party walls (see attached file)


Again, this would be a dispute between neighbors. Something the Association should not become involved in.

If you are going to do this. I would also recommend running any proposal through an attorney so the language properly transfers control and/or ownership of the roofs to the members as its possible that in addition to your governing documents, deeds may or may not need to be amended and insurance policies (both homeowner and Association) might need to be amended.

Tim

Question:

Is your Association considered a condominium?

Tim,

Thank you for the replies. I have checked the welcome packet that I received when I bought into the unit. The welcome packet includes the CC&Rs and bylaws. The CC&Rs have a section from the Department of Real Estate which refers to our project as a common-interest subdivision of the type referred to as a "planned development".

Thanks.

Robert.

Petunka,

I also live in a Town-home development where the owner is 100% responsible for all items on their property (roof, exterior of building, fences, etc.). I must say, it works very well.

Are you considered a condominium association? Mine is not. This could be the difference.

That would be fine too. Most homeowners would not be averse to a special assessment for inspection purposes. They would definitely be wary of putting this under monthly dues though, due to the negligent spending of such reserve funds as stated earlier.

Thanks,
Robert.

That would be a little gray in my opinion. Is it legally possible to mandate that the owners have such an inspection carried out at their own expense from a list of professional agencies reviewed and approved by the board for purposes of such an inspection?

I don't know

"Hence, I would like to know if the association can still mandate that individual homeowners maintain the exterior of the buildings, replace their roof and fences, etc."

Robert,

If you can't trust the board to maintain the common elements who do you think "the association" is above, who will mandate the maintenance? The association can only act through the board. If they are not doing their job, get someone onto the board that will. I think your approach of returning maintenance responsibility to the lot owners would make things worse, not better.

Robert,

When was your last reserve study update conducted? Are the reserves being funded to the level recommended by the study? If you have had an update to the study since the time that you say the board spent large amounts on other reserve items, then that study should have called for increased contributions to replenish the reserves. If you have not had an update, when is one due?

I'm a bit puzzled by your saying that reserve funds were spent on item you don't want to identify on a public forum. What's that about? Do you suspect something illegal?

The reserve study update is conducted every year where we live. Every three years, there is a physical inspection for the reserve study. I do have the answers to your questions, but I am afraid I will be violating certain privacy on this forum, and I do not wish to do that.

Suffice to say, that currently our reserve funds are only partly funded as per our accrued liability on the reserve study. And one of the reasons for that is that approximately $150K was spent on a few components to replace them, whereas the repairs could have been made for just under $40K to the exact same specifications. What made the homeowners more mad was the fact that these component replacements were handed off to vendors without a defined scope of work. So at the end of the replacement, the root cause of the problem was still not fixed, and we had to spend another $30K to do that.

The legality/illegality factor is something I do not want to visit on this post.

All I know is that most homeowners are of the opinion that their reserve funds are not protected securely enough, and are at the discretion of which homeowner comes to the board when. They would rather pay 10% more to handle their own replacements/repairs for their lots, than pay that money to the reserves for it to be spent on some other component altogether.