Late HOA Fee

Homeowner was late in paying HOA dues - per our Declaration and a Delinquency Policy that all homeowners are provided, there is a late fee charged when a homeowner dues payment is overdue. No exceptions are made, whether it's the postal service's fault or whatever. It's not our business to keep track of where their payment is. It's pretty cut and dry.

We have a homeowner who has been late once before with payment and paid his late fee. Once again, he was late and wants this on the Agenda at the next Board meeting so he can have his "day in court". I understand that homeowners are entitled to be heard, but if you have a policy in place, is this really necessary? I checked Davis Stirling and couldn't find anything.

Thanks!

Linda,

What can it hurt to listen?

Let the person present their issue to the Board.
Simply limit the issue to 15 min. max.

Thanks for the responses .... this homeowner is not only a repeat offender, but he is retired and manages to take up Board time on a pretty regular basis. He visits other owners in the community and riles people up. Pretty frustrating.

We have no pool, etc. in the community, so no privileges can be removed. We do have a clubhouse, but he doesn't use it. He's pretty much a hermit.

I did manage to find something on Davis-Stirling ..... from my understanding, he needs to pay his late fee and then we have a meeting and if the Board decides to refund it, they can. If I also understand correctly, the Board doesn't have to have a meeting - we have a late fee policy. He didn't follow it, so no refund on the late fee.

Tim - I can see where you're coming from, but how many times do you have to let someone have their say on the same topic? (late fees in this case) I feel like this guy has nothing better to do than take up our time - I'm speaking from past experience with him. He writes letters on a fairly regularly basis complaining about things and often brings up things at Board meetings just to provoke people and many of the things he brings up are absolutely ridiculous (as seen from Board and homeowner reaction). Maybe if I didn't work or have anything else going on in my life, I wouldn't be so sensitive to this, but that's not the case.

This is NOT a discussion that should be on the agenda for an open session in California. IF, the owner wants to make a comment during open forum, so be it. The Board DOES NOT have to respond.

IF, this is to discussed by the Board, then 5 minutes can be arranged in Executive Session.

Of the 31 owners of the 32 units in our condo development, some of the owners are perpetually late on paying their dues, some by as many as many months behind at any one time. Our financial year runs from January to December, so we just make sure that every owner is paid up in full for each year by mid-December. There has always been late fees, and some of the late payers pay them, and some of the late payers never pay them - so for 2016 we just dropped all of our late fees all together. Since we're volunteer self run, and we don't have any interest in becoming collection agents; we're just happy if everyone pays in full by year's end -- and they always do.

Kerry, you're absolutely right and I agree with you! We've scheduled a meeting with this homeowner. He has 5 minutes on the docket. We didn't want to bring this up at a regular meeting, so it will be done at an Executive meeting. He's tried bringing items up at meetings, but is silenced because it wasn't on the agenda. I think we're doing all the right things. I try to follow the rules and abide by the law - I just want to cover Board member's rear ends. I so appreciate everyone's feedback.

I'm glad you're helping your Board comply with the Open Meeting Act, Linda!

Oh, Richard; you know full well, that the scuzzy ploy to have an Owner bring up a non-agenda item topic in Open Forum so that the Board will discuss it and even vote on it violates the Open Mtg. Act! Yuck.

Non-agenda items in CA HOAs can be discussed and acted on in certain circumstances, e.g. emergencies, etc., but NOT for the reason you've written. Please not only cite your source to correct me, but actually cut & paste a quote.

Thanks,Kerry. You are correct. :-)

Being self managed, we are not set up for direct payments (also known as ACH payments).

However, we do encourage members to utilize their financial institutions bill pay service (where the bank writes a check and mails it on your behalf). We currently have about 1/3 of our membership utilizing this service and it helps tremendously.

Right, it's simply too expensive (at least with the one's I've checked).

That is why we encourage use of the Bill Pay Service (which is normally a free service to the member).

We are self-managed - we put a vote out to the homeowners a couple of years ago asking of interest in auto payments. The overwhelming majority didn't want to do it because it would have been an added cost. Of course, now the homeowner we're having issues with regarding late payments tells us he wouldn't have this problem if we had an auto pay system (even though he has a 15 day grace period to pay).

We tell out homeowners that if they have a problem with getting payments in on time, they can pay quarterly, every six months or even a year's worth of HOA dues (many in the community do this). Otherwise, they are out of luck.

My question for those of you with the bank payment system - what do you do when the bank makes the payment and it's late or they don't make the payment at all? We've had this happen on many occasions and we charge late fees. Kind of like the post office - we don't feel it's our problem if the post office or bank screws up. People can always hand deliver their payment to our on-site mailbox if they want an absolute guarantee that the payment will be in and on time. The majority of residences are retired, so they have more than enough time to make the short walk (or drive) to the box to do this.

Linda

Not sure I understand your question but our bank payment system is for collecting dues only. All collections are then transferred to the PM. Bills are paid by the PM. If one is late it is not a bank issue. It becomes an issue for the PM to "recognize" with his system.

To clarify the bank collects only. It does not pay anything nor monitor late payments. Bill paying and late payments are a function of our PM.

I believe our PM uses the same bank for collecting from other associations they manage and maybe for their own account thus I expect they get a good fee rate. Some have said when they looked into a bank "lock box" system the cost was too expensive for them.

How does your HOA presently do it?

We've had some homeowners use bank-issued checks and they regularly get deposited LATE. It's unbelievable. They don't use this service anymore.