I need to pay to review the financials?

I find it amazing that a company of that size can't just provide some sort of financials of the pdf variety via email. If I had a homeowner ask that of my company and I was in the office, it is done in 15 minutes.

How are you going to review? You're in Washington and the company is in Tennessee and Wyoming.

Then the issue is with the Board and not with [name removed]. As others will attest to, the marching orders come from the Board.

They seem to have offices all over. We actually mail our payment to North Carolina. I find it hard to believe that a company this large doesn't have a way to share financial information with owners....

They could, BUT their duty is to the people who hired them, the BOD.

This is a case of an HOA board being blatantly non-transparent about the organization's finances. It symptomatic of a culture that isn't well. Keep in mind, the property management company is supplying the BOD with financial records and are not charging for the service.

Asking the same question multiple times is kind of like watching the Titanic ... The ship still sinks in the end. Therefore, asking the same question multiple times will get you the same answers .

Come to Florida. Florida has a lot of problems but owner access to HOA financials isn't one of them (unless the board is crooked).

FS 720.303(5) INSPECTION AND COPYING OF RECORDS
"The official records shall be maintained within the state for at least 7 years and shall be made available to a parcel owner for inspection or photocopying within 45 miles of the community or within the county in which the association is located within 10 business days after receipt by the board or its designee of a written request."

The fact that your records are clear across the country in Tennessee says somebody has something to hide. That's how it looks, anyway.

As MarkM said in the other thread, the controlling statute for condominiums is RCW 64.34.372: "All financial and other records of the association, including but not limited to checks, bank records, and invoices, are the property of the association, but shall be made reasonably available for examination and copying by the manager of the association, any unit owner, or the owner's authorized agents."

I do not think the Washington non-profit corporation act is going to trump this, since the Washington Condominium Act is more particular to condominiums than the non-profit corporation act.

If I recall correctly from the case law, "reasonably available" tends to pertain to times when the records may be viewed. A charge of $423 to view six months of records is not reasonable and I agree with others that this should be fought. The Board of this condominium is disinterested in transparency and is trying to suppress members' legal rights.

DougM5, can you run for the board with a majority of like-minded people?

We are fairly small, 40 units across9 buildings. Most owners don't seem to care, excerpt when dues are raised. The board hired a,company on the other side of the country to handle the finances, the rest they are doing themselves. The ex-presidents husband does the maintenance/pool care. The board raided our reserves a couple years ago to make a payment for insurance. At one point we had 60k in reserves and operating funds. I am curious where we are now, financially....

I appreciate your concern about your community’s financial status, but doesn’t your board publish some sort of annual financial report where you can see how well the association did in staying within budget? Have you been getting copies of the annual budget regularly? If you don’t have a clue about what’s going on financially, looking at all the financials might not do you any good because you don’t know what you really should be paying attention to.

Of course, it may be the board likes it that way – after all, no one else has asked questions because they’re happy dues aren’t raised. Maybe they figure if they charge you a bunch of money, you’ll be quiet. Then again, if the company doing the finances is across the country, that could be yet another reason for the $423 quote - they'd have to ship all this stuff to you.

And speaking of dues – have yours kept up with inflation? 2012 dollars won’t pay for the same amount of goods and services in 2017. “Keeping dues” artificially low has gotten lots of HOAs and condo association into trouble because they don’t seem to understand the price of everything goes up sooner or later. Homeownership isn’t cheap – if you didn’t want to take care of your home properly (so the property values will increase), you should rent an apartment. And then deal with rent increases because the landlord has to do maintenance and replacements too.

I think you need to first consider what bothers you the most about the finances and that will help determine what you need to look at first. For example, if you were to look at the year ending income/expense reports for the last five years, you might want to note which line items have been increasing and then ask why. Perhaps the snow removal budget has been blown because you had several bad winters two or three years in a row. Check the board meeting minutes to see what’s been discussed.

Back to reserves – what is the current balance? Reserves are supposed to pay for major repairs/replacement to the community, such as roof replacement. Was the money used to pay the insurance ever been replaced? When was the last time you had a reserve study? Has the board EVER commissioned a reserve study? If so, how well is the association following the study recommendations? Do you have any major repairs coming up this year, such as street or parking lot repaving? If so, has the board budgeted for that?

I suggest you start with an overview of the entire budget and then start drilling down. Perhaps ask for the year ending income/expense reports for the last five years – get it on a spreadsheet so you can compare line items and see how well the association stayed within budget. After checking the minutes to see what the discussions have been, you might want to have a sit down with the board members -– for example, did they look for other contractors before settling on the former president’s ex-husband to do the maintenance work? When was the last time anyone evaluated his quality of work or renegotiated his contract?