Delinquent HOA Dues

There are several units in our HOA who are extremely delinquent in their HOA dues. We have placed liens on their units but they have still not paid. Any suggestions? It is at the point where we are unable to pay our water and trash bills.

Denise

Denise,

The BOD should take a close look at their collection policy. Perhaps too much time is being given to the member before legal action is taken to collect delinquencies. Also, if any of these properties are in bank foreclosure the assn may never be able to collect. To account for these uncollectible delinquencies many assn's are including a bad debts line item in the budget. Also, the BOD may just have to raise the assessments if enough delinquencies are uncollectible and the BOD is having difficulty in meeting their obligations. It may not seem fair, but it all boils down to the members who pay on time having to "subsidize" those who don't!

Denise,

I commend you and your board for placing those liens.

Denise,
The part of your question that deals with being unable to pay association bills.

We really need to know what we are talking about. How big is your HOA/condo, what are your assessments, do you have a bank account, how many units, etc, etc, etc.

Try and be complete with the reasons and figures you provide. Use the same rational and post it that made you make the statement in the first post.

Brooke,

Are you saying all the single family homes are on the same water meter? I find this extremely unusual!!

@Denise, yes, it's a very unusual set up. Those of us in the single family homes were very upset about this information not being disclosed to us. You never imagine that being on your list of questions you need to ask. The developer was more concerned about saving money than giving single family homes their own individual meters. From what we've been able to learn it would have been an expense of more than 1M.

@Robert. From what I hear, covenants can be difficult to amend but it seems to be something that Mary may want to look into. As far as why we pressured the developer for control even with so much money being owed in dues.....we had no other choice than to get control of the HOA. She is no longer in business and from what we found out no longer even living in the state. She was never really an active board because she never enforced anything. She sat back and let it happen instead of forcing delinquent homeowners to pay. My subdivision is only 4 years old. There are people that bought in Phase 1 and have never paid dues. She's done nothing about it outside of placing liens, which mean nothing. Those of us that do pay felt hostage to this woman. We've been threatened with water disconnections every month these past few months. It was even turned off for one day and our street lights were turned off for a week because there was no money to pay the bill. After having no water for a day and living in complete darkness for a week, we had to do something. Our our only option was get control of the HOA and take action or face losing water and having to walk away from our homes. Thankfully our covenants are already written to allow us to immediately take action, which we will be doing this week now that a new Board is in place (I sit on the Board). Notices will be mailed this week giving people 10 days to pay or their water will be disconnected. Of the 236 homes in my subdivision, 133 are delinquent in some fashion.

@Judy, trust me, we've done our due diligence. Our attorney fully supports these efforts. The Health Department is more concerned about an entire community being without water than people who do not pay their bills. And that is what we have been faced with. If we had individual meters and the homeowners didn't pay their water bill, the city would turn their water off. So this is no different. The HOA pays the water on their behalf. We've been to city council meetings, we've done everything we know to do. This is our only resort to collect on over 50% of the community that does not pay. Even though there is one meter, you can cut off water to individual homes, and we've purchased tamper resistent locks to prevent them from turning it back on. Again, it's either turn the individuals off or everyone be off. And the latter is not an option, but it's what we face if we don't take action to collect the money.

Our docs don't state anything about a year end deficit. But even if it did, imposing a special assessment is not going to be effective when you have people that already owe thousands. We don't care about adding to a balance of someone who doesn't pay. We need their money right now.

@Grace. We have done our due diligence. Our attorney has given us the green light. We don't even have to give notice, but we are as a courtesy.