HOA responsibilities? Help please!

Hi,

Our neighborhood is new to homeowners actually running the HOA board. The developers and those appointed by the developers have been responsible in the past.... A few questions we have concerns with are as follows:
1. Are we as an HOA responsible for assuming payment towards loans on amenities such as pool and pool house?
2. We know we are responsible for handling the common ground areas but that for further development should be left to the builders?
3. Aren't HOAs responsible for ensuring rules/covenants are abided by and collecting dues to "maintain" (not payoff debt from that of developers) common areas, pool, pool house, signage, streets, fencing structures, and landscaping? Or are we responsible for more?
4. How long do your HOA board members usually serve to keep some type of consistency going when we were put in place and basically started from scratch with little or no documentation?

Any help would be appreciated! Thanks in advance!

The answers to your questions will be found within the CCRs as recorded and referenced by your deed.

(conditions covenants & restrictions)

If you don't have 'hard copy', go to the Register of Deeds at your 'county seat'.

Read document.

Reread document.

Read again.

THEN STUDY the document.

? Still have questions ?

Time for a consult with an attorney versed in contract law as well as real estate law (BOTH).

Assuming the developers are gone and homeowners are now running the show, you may need to hire an attorney to answer your first question - I would think the developer would have paid off the costs of building the pool and pool house before turning the community over. Our developer was long gone by the time I bought into my community, but based on what I've seen on this website, it appears this is typical of builders - make lots of promises, throw up houses as quickly and and as cheaply as possible and then bail, not providing guidance for the homeowners who will be running the show. I believe that's the underlying reason for so much of the chaos you hear about HOAs being mismanaged.

As for everything else, the first place you should start is with your governing documents - at the very least, there should be Bylaws and CCRs. The Bylaws dictate how the Association should be run, such as number of board members and how long they should serve, while the CCRs dictate how the common areas are to be used. That's where you'll see exactly what the HOA is responsible for and then you can set up a budget. You may also want to consider if you want to hire a property management company to handle daily operations or be self-managed - which is more detailed than what you might think.

Yes, the HOA is responsible for enforcing the CCRs, so you'll need policies on how that will be done - identifying problems, notifying homeowners of violations, fines schedule (if your state allows this), appeals process and so on.

Your association may want to start by talking to the people who were appointed by the developers to get some idea of what they did and how - it would have been nice if they kept homeowners informed of this from the beginning, but from reading your post, they either didn't do so or no one (homeowners) paid enough attention.

People have varying opinions about the Community Association Institute, (CAI), but it does have a number of materials new HOA boards can use to get set up and best practices to follow. Everything from determining if you want to hire a management company to collections, and some states have local chapters. Google their website and get some of their materials. If your area has a local chapter, reach out to them, as they may have local seminars you can attend and the members may be able to provide references for good attorneys, accountants, etc. Good luck!