RaffiM (California)
Posts: 7
Posts: 7
Posted:
I live here in California, I recently purchased a condo in an older association, and along with me there have been at 6-7 new owners (out of 20 total units) that have all bought in alongside me within the last year.
The building is in pretty rough shape, and more than a few of the new owners paid market value and some a bit over because units here rarely hit the market, also a few of us (myself included) bought privately direct from the old owners, most of the units in the building have never been remodeled since the 60's so every one of us new owners spent a small fortune remodeling our units happily, we all love the area and the charm of the building.
we were all aware of buying into an HOA but we were not expecting a board like this.
So that being said, we have nothing in our HOA that states we can not have cameras.
There is a board of 3 members, two of those board members( who do not live on site they are renting their units out) own multiple units so whenever we've had a vote on anything in the last year there is no winning our opinions mean nothing and they control everything.
Because they literally own so many of the votes.(not that we are too upset the majority of issues are trying to get the building back together but some of the money spent we believe is a bit much for the work we receive, but most of us are ok with it but again our opinions don't matter)
We have had a few incidents since we've been here over the last year, i.e. car break ins,
a neighboring property had a loose dog that came and attacked an owner on our property and the obvious porch pirate stealing packages .. along with homeless people camping in common areas and sometimes in the elevator. Some of us new owners have installed ring doorbells and blink cameras in our doorways so we can see in front of our doors(and a few those doors point down the hallway due to the direction of the door, but those do not see into any windows or doorways) all of our doors are set in, and all of our doors and walkways are open to the public so anyone can just come in off the Street.
Even though most of the owners on site are OK with the cameras there are the two board members above who keep saying it's a privacy issue (again public common area where there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy) and now they plan on voting and changing the CC&R's, which we really shouldn't spend the money on because our funds are severely depleted and we have bigger things in need of the time and money like plumbing issues ect.
The new owner's all feel that the board does not want change and are doing this just to spite us and abuse power. What we are concerned about here is our safety and protecting our property and we feel that the A/V devices and the technicality of the law is what the board is going to use to make this change happen just because they can.
We all feel defenseless and defeated and more than a few of us are staring to regret the purchase of our homes.
It's like the CC&R's don't matter because if they don't like something they are just going to vote to change it. They don't like something, just amend and add it to the CC&R's.
They are even considering a removal of our security doors which from my understanding have been installed by previous owners of units many years ago.
We are all looking for any loophole to be able to keep our rings, and our right to protect our property and our safety.
Thank You.
The building is in pretty rough shape, and more than a few of the new owners paid market value and some a bit over because units here rarely hit the market, also a few of us (myself included) bought privately direct from the old owners, most of the units in the building have never been remodeled since the 60's so every one of us new owners spent a small fortune remodeling our units happily, we all love the area and the charm of the building.
we were all aware of buying into an HOA but we were not expecting a board like this.
So that being said, we have nothing in our HOA that states we can not have cameras.
There is a board of 3 members, two of those board members( who do not live on site they are renting their units out) own multiple units so whenever we've had a vote on anything in the last year there is no winning our opinions mean nothing and they control everything.
Because they literally own so many of the votes.(not that we are too upset the majority of issues are trying to get the building back together but some of the money spent we believe is a bit much for the work we receive, but most of us are ok with it but again our opinions don't matter)
We have had a few incidents since we've been here over the last year, i.e. car break ins,
a neighboring property had a loose dog that came and attacked an owner on our property and the obvious porch pirate stealing packages .. along with homeless people camping in common areas and sometimes in the elevator. Some of us new owners have installed ring doorbells and blink cameras in our doorways so we can see in front of our doors(and a few those doors point down the hallway due to the direction of the door, but those do not see into any windows or doorways) all of our doors are set in, and all of our doors and walkways are open to the public so anyone can just come in off the Street.
Even though most of the owners on site are OK with the cameras there are the two board members above who keep saying it's a privacy issue (again public common area where there isn't a reasonable expectation of privacy) and now they plan on voting and changing the CC&R's, which we really shouldn't spend the money on because our funds are severely depleted and we have bigger things in need of the time and money like plumbing issues ect.
The new owner's all feel that the board does not want change and are doing this just to spite us and abuse power. What we are concerned about here is our safety and protecting our property and we feel that the A/V devices and the technicality of the law is what the board is going to use to make this change happen just because they can.
We all feel defenseless and defeated and more than a few of us are staring to regret the purchase of our homes.
It's like the CC&R's don't matter because if they don't like something they are just going to vote to change it. They don't like something, just amend and add it to the CC&R's.
They are even considering a removal of our security doors which from my understanding have been installed by previous owners of units many years ago.
We are all looking for any loophole to be able to keep our rings, and our right to protect our property and our safety.
Thank You.