What To Do

I live in a condo complex with 12 units. The president of the association is being foreclosed on his unit. I have health issues, so can't be president. I talked to every owner, but no one wants to be president.

Who is foreclosing – the Association for non-payment of Association Fees, or the Bank?

Donald,

One of the fundamental shortcomings of condos is that people buy them so that they may own their own home without having to actually become involved with home ownership. They are perfectly willing to pay a few bucks a month to let someone else do the work.

It is not likely that the same owners who do not want to be involved with their own homes will wish to become involved with the entire complex.

JohnB26 offers good advice.

An alternative is to find a management company and turn everything over to them. My brother-in-law lives in an 11-unit complex and their association meets once per year. Literally everything else is done by the management company.

Looks like Capt. Mike has gone of his meds again.

Mike,

If you read some of my latest posts you will find that I have no love for condos. Yet I cannot imagine how you could have a condo without some sort of association.

Are you suggesting that condo owners would be better off if their local governments took over management of those properties? Would the councilman from District 9 make better decisions than someone who actually owns an interest in the property?

In Florida there are some condos run by residents....who are also organized crime members!

They are stealing from their "neigbors" and there is nothing to do about it!

At least with a public official, everything MUST be transparent, including the financial reports.

Just try to get the financials of your condo and see what happens....in short...you won't

The theft and corruption of these places is easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars and NOTHING is being done about it.

It is like living in some third world kleptocracy that could easily be resolved if we imposed the requirment that PUBLIC government run the show, with all the checks and balances, election laws, public meeting laws, chain of custody of ballot laws....

None of which applys to these private governments!

Jon you are a buffoon and have no idea what you are talking about.

Jon you are a PERFECT candidate for board membership in an HOA!

I will ask this though....can I see YOUR HOA financials?...with special interest in any credit card issued to you by the HOA...

Any purchases for personal gas, meals or anything your heart desires...all justified by your selfless "volunteering"?

How about it Jon. Can we do an audit of your HOA?

Sorry, can't really believe you.

Everything I have gotten from my HOA is not worth the paper it is written on.

Lying is a way of life for my, and most HOAs.

Would love to see that audit though....why don't you post that instead of my docket info?

Our lawyer was a good guy, and still is counted as a family friend. He has done quite a bit of (unrelated) legal work for me since the HOA lawsuit.

I do admit that he was not up to dealing with the HOA attorney who blatently lied on documents and "got away" with it.

As far as the current litigation, well it ain't over yet.

When it is over, perhaps you will be entitled to your very nasty gloating...but at this time that remains to be seen.

So lets check in periodicaly on the last two petitions that are still before the courts (Appeals and SJC)

Otherwise your nasty posts are just ignorant ranting...something which I think comes easily to you...

Yes there have never been cases of government employees doing anything improper or illegal. Just like the dead don't vote in Chicago.

Court systems and prisons are over burdened now and you want to add to it for your perceived yet not proven views. When you only get one vote at the annual meeting when all of your neighbors said they would vote for you, it doesn't necessarily mean the fix is in. It means your neighbors lied to you to get you to shut up.

Actually most Boards have D&O insurance which pays for their defense from baseless and frivolous lawsuits but if the Board member did something deliberately negligent, the D&O doesn't pay.

FYI at our monthly meetings our evil and greedy Board actually has the audacity to pass out financial statements to all that attend which includes a balance statement, YTD P&L, listing of where all reserve funds are on deposit and a modified list (no names) of delinquent accounts. Yep they're trying to pull a fast one over the homeowners.

Oh and condos without a HOA are called apartments.

Mike, I've read a number of your posts on a number of subjects and I have to ask - WHY ARE YOU HERE?

You don't like your HOA or HOAs in general - that's your opinion and that's fine, but on this site, some (most of us, actually) are or have been Board members and are trying to do the right thing. Yes, there are some bad board members, corrupt property managers, greedy attorneys and apathetic homeowners (you may not believe the part about the apathy, but trust and believe it does exist), but there are well over 100,000 HOAs in this country and if all of them were as f---ed up as you'd like us to believe, they probably would have been outlawed by now.

So why do you continue to come here and howl about how bad HOAs are? Do you expect all us to say "hell yes, he's right?" Read (and reread) the purpose of this site - we are trying to share ideas and learn from each other. What do you want us to do instead?

If you really want things to change, you need to have a sit down with your legislators - local, state and perhaps federal. They're the ones who enacted the laws to require HOAs in new developments (at least that's how it worked in Indiana) and you're a voter (I hope). Get some of your like minded friends together and see what happens. But really, you need to quit wasting everyone's time coming to a website where most of us really are trying to help other homeowners work through their questions or problems. No we aren't perfect, but in order to begin to resolve problems, one has to be willing to listen. We aren't going to tell you what you want to here, so you need to find something else to do. Instead, all I've seen you do is rant and rave about HOAs being unconstitutional and other than suing people, I haven't seen anything you've done to try and resolve the problem.

You want things changed - do the work. Set up your own website or blog and talk all you want about horrible HOAs. Get involved with your own HOA and change things. Sorry, it won't happen overnight. Yes, you have to do the work and run the risk of being yelled at or laughed at, but I don't know of any movement anywhere where things changed because people sat on their ass and did nothing.

I said I wasn't going to feed the troll, but I guess I couldn't resist. Respond to this if you want to, or not at all it won't hurt me. Meanwhile, I'm going to continue to do what I can to make my community better - not everything will work, but at least I tried and I can put up my efforts against anyone in my community on any day (or on my lunch break) and dare them to match it. What can you do?