Proxy Voting Regulations

We have a development where half of the units are rentals with owners who live all over the country. Those investment owners care only about receiving the income from their units. Some of them have told us they don't even open mail from us. We're required to have a 2/3 majority on certain issues and can't get it if owners never respond, so when we are required to have a vote and send out a proxy letter, we add a disclaimer that states "a non response will be considered a vote in the affirmative" because the investment owners never respond. Does any other association have this issue, how do you handle non responses? We're waiting for further clarification from our attorney, but this statement has been used for 4 years and only recently questioned.

If the association has made every reasonable effort to secure a quorum and has failed, ask your attorney about the advisability of seeking a declaratory judgment from the court of jurisdiction that since the stated quorum cannot be achieved, then a majority vote of owners is sufficient.

Given the difficulty in achieving a supermajority for covenant amendments in homeowners associations, were I drafting covenants I might consider including a provision that enables a board to vote on the amendments and requires only a majority of owners to endorse the action.

For example, an amendment to the covenants could be adopted if (1) passed in two separate votes of the board of directors separated by an election of board members and (2) ratified by a simple majority of owners.

That sounds like something we can investigate. We normally have 1/3 of our owners respond to any vote, and our covenants require 2/3. Without that disclaimer, we can't pass any special assessments or amend the covenants. I'll forward this idea to our attorney tomorrow.

George offers an interesting and doable solution. So does Susan, prior to the OR.

If the non-engaged Members tend to be investors, fear of losing both income and equity are probably high on their lists.

Perhaps a registered, signature-required letter to them stating the situation, and that the BOD will be "forced" to hand over the whole operation to a judge and/or receiver unless remedied UNLESS they sign proxies re: their votes, to be returned in an enclosed SASE, might get their attention? Even if that doesn't do the trick, at least it would provide ammo to be used in George's proposal.