Legal Action or something else?

Last December I was elected to the HOA BOD and became the HOA President. My second stint at this position. In reviewing our financials I noticed that we had accumulated a 14 liens in the previous year against homeowners. As of writing this we have eliminated 13 of the 14 liens and only have one left. In diving further into the remaining lien I discoverd that the homeowner/member had not paid any assessements for the past 3 years! It appeared that the previous managemnt company had been sending delinquent noties and that the HOA attorney had attempted to make contact with the member to no avail.

About 6 weeks ago I asked the HOA attorney to offer a deal to the member. We only wanted to collect the past due aseessments and the legal fees dealing with this issue. We were willing to waive the fines and late charges if they would pay up within 30 days of receipt of our proposal.

NO LUCK! A couple days ago I emailed our atorney asking for an update on the Boards proposal. Yesterday I received an email indicting that after numerous atempts to deliver a certified letter to the member, proving receipt, it had been returned to the attorney by the Post Office as "undeliverable". The attorney sent me a copy of the letter, the envelope and the notice from the Post Office.

I have personally made a couple of trips to the members house in hopes of getting them to work with the HOA on resolving the past due payments. They have never answered the door during my attmepts ot contact them. Our HOA Secreatary also sent emails seeking a resolution but they were kicked back as undeiveralbe also. we have discovered that she works from home and does not have an office address or phone number that we know of.

Next month we will be sending out assessment notices for 2023 which are due Feb 1. I do not expect to receive any payment from the member for the current or past due payments. This will put the member in arrears for 4 years!

Our attorney has indicated that there are a couple of options available but all of them require us, the attorney or the court to make direct contact with the homeowner. Late last year, we had had a lawsuit filed against them regarding the past due payments however the court records show that they were never served with the it...no response at the door when the sheriff made numerous attempts to serve them.

My board has been reluctant to want to spend more money in trying to collect the assessemets from 2020, 2021 and 2023. With a new assessment notice going out just after Christmas i am not optomistic at all. We are holding a meetingthis week to review various issue and I'm at a loss as to what comes next.

Does anyone have any ideas as to how to solve this dilema?? We are a GA HOA with 189 single family homes.

Dennisg7

Talk to your attorney about doing a foreclosure- that may get the homeowner's attention. And don't bother going to the house - these days, people are too volatile, and you don't want to end up in the hospital or morgue, followed by the 11 pm news.

However you and your colleagues need to understand this isn't do much about getting the money, but getting this homeowner out so the house can be sold to someone who will pay. Here are just a few things you need to consider before the board makes a decision:

Does this house have a mortgage? If so, the bank must be paid off before anything else happens. The bank may also be doing its own foreclosure- if so, it'll be best to keep your luenbahd nit spend tge money to do the bank's job. You can still take legal action against the homeowner, as 8n a lawsuit and get a judgment. Of course, you'll have to figure out how to collect it

Are there other liens against it? If so, who filed first? Are there tax liens -those must be paid first and the rest of you will have to get what's left, if anything is left.

Has the homeowner filed bankruptcy? If not, this may trigger that and then ALL collections stop until the court sorts it out.

If there is a pending bankruptcy, is it chapter 7 or 13 ? Can you still file a proof of claim?

Foreclosure is expensive and doesn't happen- and after all that, you may still need to write off the debt. Your attorney can research the home's status and then tell you what your options are and how much all of this will cost. If you proceed, ask for every dime owed, plus attorney fees, court costs and whatever else the association spent in pursuing tge debt. If the homeowner finally decides to take this seriously, you can start negotiating from there.

I would also require some type of payment now, say 25%, which kets me know he or she is serious about saving tge home. When I was board treasurer and dealing with thus stuff a lot, I'd also ask for automatic monthly payments that included the current assessment. If the automatic deduction doesn't go through, we could file a complaint with the prosecutor's office for wire fraud. Yes, it is gangster, but that demonstrates how serious we had to get.

Fortunately, that wasn't necessary, although we still wrote off far more accounts than I wanted. A lot of that happened during the 2008 housing crises.

However this ends, it may be time for you to review you collection policy and tweak it. Your attorney can help with that. Send a copy of the updated policy to the homeowners so they know what to expect going forward. This doesn't mean you can't negotiate a payment plan, especially if people have had financial hardship and can document it. However they need to take the first step and let the board know what's going on. The sooner you can start collections, the better 6iu4 chances of keeping the debt 7nder control. Good luck!

We would initiate foreclosure.

First step in a foreclosure lawsuit is to serve paperwork on the homeowners. We have had two that have avoided being served. Our courts allow for serving by certified mail (even if returned as undeliverable) with court approval, and we have successfully been repaid on one account and will be repaid on the second account.

whoops, S&W (Smith & Wesson) 9mm semi-auto--not S&M

In our state, the party that loses a house on the courthouse steps has 8-12 months afterwards to reclaim the property by paying back the purchaser for the purchaser price.

I agree there needs to be equity. The house we are foreclosing on now appears to have $300,000 equity if you subtract today's value from purchase price. I have no clue why they haven't listed the house for sale, even a fire sale price would be better than foreclosure.

We have initiated 5 foreclosure lawsuits or so in the last 3 years. People have paid up every time and we never had to actually have a sheriffs sale. This house (with $300,000 equity) will be the first time they are going to a sheriffs sale if they fail to pay up before the date of the sale.

Curious . . . how much money overall is owed in past due (and near future) assessments as well as amount owed on legal fees?