courtesy letters

Is the purpose of a Courtesy Letter to avoid a Hearing? If the HOA wants to have a Hearing they send a Hearing Notice, but not for every little infraction or mistake; so is the Courtesy Letter to remind people of something in the CC&R's, and if corrected there would be no point in having a Hearing? In other words, what is the difference between a Hearing Notice and a Courtesy Letter?

I also wonder why you ask.
We send a "warning letter" stating the problem along with the procedure and consequences of what will happen if the problem is not fixed in X amount of time.
After that time period, if the problem is not corrected, the owner is fined and is, at that point, given the opportunity to request a hearing.
It basically has nothing to do with the size of the violation.

Hi Richard:

Welcome to HOATalk.

The purpose of a courtesy letter is to inform an individual of any violation so that they have an opportunity to correct. In some states the statutes require or have certain notice provisions that an individual be given an opportunity to stop the violation before the association can assess a fine.

The NV Common Interest Ownership Act states in the following (if you are Condo could be slightly different):

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-116.html#NRS116Sec31031

4.  The executive board may not impose a fine pursuant to subsection 1 unless:
(a) Not less than 30 days before the violation, the unit’s owner and, if different, the person against whom the fine will be imposed had been provided with written notice of the applicable provisions of the governing documents that form the basis of the violation;

And this is just one small area discussing fines, but in this statute section a courtesy letter would insure that an individual had proper notice especially in situations where the owner has a tenant who actually committed the violation.

As further example another section states:

2.  The executive board may not impose a fine pursuant to subsection 1 against a unit’s owner for a violation of any provision of the governing documents of an association committed by an invitee of the unit’s owner or the tenant unless the unit’s owner:
(a) Participated in or authorized the violation;
(b) Had prior notice of the violation; or
(c) Had an opportunity to stop the violation and failed to do so.

Your association just needs to insure that any time frames are allowed for per your governing documents and state statutes before assessing a fine.

John,
Do you find that the nicer coursey letter works ? We briefly tried that and found it works if the owner is a first time "I didn't know" owner and didn't work for the "I'm going to do what I want" owner.

Fred

The I am going to do as I wish owner will always be such, no matter the procedure. My first brush with an HOA was a garden flag I was flying over my deck. I got a nice letter with a copy of the regulation prohibiting such and the flag came down the next day. Now they did not know if I was a do as I wish owner but the letter was very polite.

We do the following:

Informal notice - can be written or verbal
Formal notice - written (30 days after informal)
Hearing Notice - sent via certified mail (30 days after informal notice)
Hearing results - written within 10 days of hearing

In the 4 years I've been involved, most violations are corrected at the informal notice level. 2 have gone to hearings and been resolved at the hearing.

Janet,
As usual the government has managed to screw things up royally ... it seems more so in state like Florida, Nevada and Arizona.

Actually, Arizona has relatively few statutes regulating HOA's. As a result, there have been a number of stupid lawsuits arising from HOA's. In one case, one owner was sued by his HOA because when he repaired the back wall of his unit he was accused of not using the same stucco texture as the original and painting the repaired wall with the wrong shade of Navaho White. My favorite, however, was one HOA member being sued by her HOA because she left her back porch light on all night and another member a quarter mile away complained that it kept them awake. These stupid lawsuits should be proof enough that HOA's are quite capable of screwing things up royally without government assistance.