Olddebts.com - effective?

It is a rip off. Any of those type businesses are. Even heard of one offering it as "Insurance". Rule of thumb: If it sounds too good to be true it usually is...

Your best bet is to have a set policy in place and file liens. Our policy was 6 months behind with no payment arrangements, we liened. After a year or more we would consider foreclosure but only in very very selective situations. This usually got people to pay up or weed out the bad ones.

Filing liens, foreclosures, or lawsuits do NOT ever guarantee money back owed to the HOA. The bank always gets paid first. Lawsuits judgements have little enforcement and not good options. The best a HOA can do is to file a lien and hope things work out and people pay up. There is no 100% collection method available.

Here's the deal. The HOA should NOT have access nor do they need access to one's social security number. In order to report non-payment or pursue collecting debts by garnishing wages, one would need the person's social security number. That is why the HOA can file liens against the property by using the address of the property.

There are no collection agencies that will take on this kind of debt. If they do, it takes the right of the HOA to collect any further debt. So it's just best to understand that there is no legal ways of 100% collection. The best you can hope for is to stop the bleeding and get new owners in that will pay on time from now on.

Melissa - I need to correct some of the misinformation you're put forth in this thread.

First, you intimate that a SSN is required to "report non-payment". Not true. Appropriate, accurate and legal reporting to credit reporting agencies can be done without the need for a SSN.

Secondly, you said, "Lawsuits judgments have little enforcement and not good options." This is merely your opinion and not always true. In fact, often an HOA's Declaration will specify that the payment of HOA dues becomes a personal indebtedness of the owner. In this case all legal means of collecting a personal debt apply including suits, judgments, garnishment, and other legal forms of collection.

While it IS TRUE that there is never a guarantee of collection, I can tell you that our HOA obtained a judgement against an out-of-state owner. When there were no attachable assets within the state, we successfully were able to domesticate our state's judgement to the state of residence of the owner. At that point, he was served and the judgment became enforceable within his home state. We then were able to attach bank assets, perform interrogatories if necessary, and seek payment through all legal means.

Thank you for the sage advice. I've read some of your other posts on this forum and can see how (un)civil you are to most posters. So this post is no surprise either. Would love to have you in my community so I can get you arrested. LOL!

As for the arrest warrants, we have unit owners owing 5 figure amounts that have been served with court notices to appear at depositions. Their failure to do so have triggered the arrest warrants.

OK people put your thinking caps on. What action could an HOA proceed with concerning back dues where if the owner did not showup, they could be arrested for failure to appear?

Just another "method" to make people pay.

All is fair when you owe me money.....LOL