14 year expired poa

BillM25 (Florida)
Posts: 1

Posted:

I live in a poa that 3300 properties, suddenly we were in formed at a meeting that the deed restrictions had expired 14 years ago.During that time they collected more than $ 4,260,000 plus fines. They are still trying to enforce the restrictions and threaten us with fines after the revitalization is complete. We have security people who drive and check the neighborhood, but they also have been instructed to check for code violations and report them to the board. My neighbor was told by one of these security people that he had a thick file on his violations.
Where do we go with this?

DouglasK1 (Florida)
Posts: 2,046

Posted:

I assume they expired under the Florida MRTA law, here is a long thread about the topic:
http://www.hoatalk.com/Forum/tabid/55/forumid/1/postid/149433/view/topic/Default.aspx
You might want to look through there at KevinK7's posts, as he has detailed his travails dealing with his association on the topic.

If you are in a Condo association, you might contact the Florida DBPR (http://www.myfloridalicense.com/dbpr/lsc/condominiums.html) to see if they can or will help. If you are in a non-condo HOA, then there isn't any state agency that deals with association issues, so generally that leaves the courts as your method of redress. Unfortunately, this can get very expensive and time consuming.

If you haven't already, you might want to contact a lawyer to discuss your rights and options, and also possibly write a cease and desist letter to the HOA, which may or may not carry more weight than you writing your own. What are your goals? Do you want to stop paying dues and/or stop enforcement of violations? Any legal action you decide to take would be cheaper if you can get other owners with the same concerns and goals to band together and share expenses.

Note that even if the HOA is defunct, if there are common elements that need to be maintained, you might be on the hook for your share of that one way or the other, LarryJ has posted more details in various threads about this.

If you haven't already, you might want to review the HOA law on revitalization (this is the HOA version, condos might be different), see section 720.403 on near the end:
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/Statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0720/0720.html

Escaped former treasurer and director of a self managed association.