Category Archives: Uncategorized
TEXAS – Disabled vet concerned HOA fees dispute will lead to foreclosure
KENS5.COM: Disabled vet concerned HOA fees dispute will lead to foreclosure
By Dillon Collier
March 14, 2016
SAN ANTONIO — A disabled Air Force veteran who lost nearly all his hearing after going through treatment to remove a tumor said he is concerned he will now lose his home over a two-year-old dispute with his homeowners association regarding back dues.
“I have my problems, but I have to try to help myself,” said Northington Butler, Jr., who was sued by the Westover Crossing Homeowner’s Association in March 2014.
Butler and the HOA entered into a settlement agreement last July that required Butler to pay $100 a month to cover more than $2,300 in back dues, interest and attorney’s fees.
Certified money order records provided by Butler show he has made the monthly payment each month.
However, Butler said he stopped receiving invoices for his regular HOA dues.
When Butler wrote the HOA’s attorney about the invoices last month, he received a letter back accusing him of not fully complying with the settlement agreement because he had not signed the paperwork.
The law firm threatened to take Butler back to court if he did not comply with their instructions. Read more:
NATIONAL – KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid)
Many will recognize the acronym KISS. It stands for Keep It Simple Stupid.
The question is asked: “How do we wake up the legislators so they will understand the extent of the abuse and destruction the modern day HOAs are inflicting on homeowners? Sending a KISS message such as the following is concise and a summary of the horrible HOA truth. As I see it, there will be a powerful message and a great deal of education in these paragraphs if they read like this:
Dear Legislator,
Let’s talk HOAs…
Did you know when someone buys into an HOA (Homeowners Association) they are signing away their Constitutional Rights? Did you know they were becoming business partners with all of their new neighbors in a non-profit corporation? Did you know they are becoming the guarantor for payment on all debts, loans, lawsuits, settlements, liabilities, construction defects, and disaster rebuilds for the HOA?
Guess what? The buyers do not know it either until it’s gotten to the point they have lost their money, health, happiness, and often times their homes to foreclosure. Read more:
FLORIDA – Quail Hollow golf course in central Pasco targeted for 400 homes
Article Courtesy of The Tampa Bay Times
By C.T.Bowen
Published March 11, 2016
WESLEY CHAPEL — Central Pasco is poised to lose another public golf course.
The owner of Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club has proposed turning his property into a gated community of 400 homes.
The rezoning request, filed last month with Pasco County, seeks permission for a master planned unit development that would convert the nearly 175-acre site into 400 detached homes and townhouses. Additionally, 5.5 acres would be set aside for a day care center and a 30,000-square-foot office building.
“This is just to get the rezoning to proceed. It could be awhile” for development to occur, said the project’s land-use attorney, Barbara Wilhite.
Jim O’Brien of Coastal Brokerage & Investments LLC in Land O’Lakes is listed as the developer. Nine months ago, O’Brien said there were no immediate plans to turn the golf course into a residential community.
However, the rezoning request is the first step toward that happening. Wilhite said the rezoning process usually takes about six months to complete. The land, in a rural density district, already is entitled to hold up to 287 homes. The zoning application seeks to increase that total.
The golf course is at 6225 Old Pasco Road, about a mile north of Wesley Chapel Boulevard (County Road 54). Its owner is Andre Carollo’s Pasco Office Park LLC, which purchased the property for $1.7 million in 2010, two years after the course closed. It reopened in 2011 after both the course and clubhouse were refurbished substantially. Read more:
South Carolina – Dozens of Lowcountry homeowner associations sue property manager
abcnews4: Dozens of Lowcountry homeowner associations sue property manager
CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCIV) — More than 50 homeowners associations from Seabrook to Summerville filed a lawsuit this week alleging that a property manager billed at least some of them for services that weren’t provided.
The nearly five dozen plaintiffs filed the lawsuit Monday in Charleston County Circuit Court alleging that Marshland Communities and its owner, Karen Colie, misappropriated funds from at least some of them.
Colie did not return calls seeking comment Wednesday and Thursday. The Marshland Communities office did not return calls for comment Thursday.
The lawsuit includes affidavits from both current and former employees of Marshland who allege properties were charged for services that weren’t rendered.
Meredith Millender, an employee since 2016, filed an affidavit said Colie admitted to her that she billed some of the properties for services that weren’t provided. “She stated, “I made some terrible mistakes in an effort to stay afloat and it has caught up with me. I tried hard to fix everything but it was too much,'” Millender wrote in the affidavit. “She further stated, ‘I can’t even begin to describe the sorry, regret, shame and fear … I’m very aware of what my actions have done to people’s lives.” Read more:
National – Servicers: Stop HOA Liens From Interfering With Investor Profits
DSNEWS.com: Servicers: Stop HOA Liens From Interfering With Investor Profits
“Homeowner associations are very important to the housing industry as a whole, which is why it is extremely important for servicers to have a good understanding of the risks to be mitigated and the requirements for doing so,” said Roger Beane, LRES founder and CEO. Read more:
FLORIDA – Stoopid HOA Buyers
I have enormous sympathy for people who buy into an HOA. Heck, I was dumb enough to do the same thing. Three times! But in retrospect, I was STOOPID! I was a lamb among the wolves. Never had a clue.
The biggest unreported financial crime in America is embezzlement from an HOA. The following story isn’t even extraordinary, it happens in city after city, day after day. But homeowners (like me) are just too witless to ‘get it.’ The HOA scam is beyond any reasonable explanation. If you’ve bought an HOA property you’ve just donated your life savings to a massive national criminal enterprise that the government will never investigate, expose, or end. Kiss your life savings, ‘Goodbye.’ Read more:
ILLINOIS – New Illinois Condominium & HOA Report Reveals 50,000 Associations
The state of Illinois currently has more than 50,000 active condominium and homeowner associations containing nearly 600,000 residential units, new comprehensive research by Association Evaluation, LLC has revealed.
The Community Associations Institute, a respected national organization, lists a total of 18,250 condominium and HOAs in Illinois as of 2015.
“Our research team was surprised to learn that thousands of condominium and HOA associations were uncounted in Illinois,” said Sara Benson, president of Association Evaluation, LLC, a Chicago-based real estate data-analysis firm.
“Apparently, thousands of smaller condo associations and HOAs are not registered with the state of Illinois simply because they are self-managed by untrained volunteer owners,” said Benson, who estimated that up to 80 percent of existing units are self-managed or controlled by developers.
The new comprehensive directory-the 2016 Association Evaluation Report on Illinois Condominiums and Homeowner Associations (HOAs)-found that the city of Chicago currently has 12,235 active condominium and homeowner associations containing approximately 305,000 residential units-half of Illinois’ total.
“Our team of research experts scoured hundreds of sources to pinpoint and profile every condo and homeowner association throughout Illinois, both large and small,” said Benson. Read more:
FLORIDA – Missing a simple HOA fee could lead to losing your home
abc ACTION NEWS: Missing a simple HOA fee could lead to losing your home
Legally little can be done
By Sarina Fazan
March 2, 2016
Oleg Stepanov is a husband and father to a 9-year-old boy and 2-year-old girl. About a year ago, he received a letter that put him in a state of panic. “It was scary because I opened a letter and [it] says they would foreclose on my house if I did not pay $750,” Stepanov said. Stepanov was not only panicked but confused. He moved to the Panther Trace subdivision from Canada nearly a year ago but never got his HOA bill. “In Canada I got mail forwarding here for a year. But I did not get that mail, and I still did not receive those bills,” Stepanov said.
He said he tried to pay his $75 fee only to be told the HOA already handed it over to a lawyer. By that point, a legal fee had been added to what he owed, increasing his bill to $750. Reluctantly, Stepanov settled. He said he had no choice under threat of foreclosure. He said that he even had to borrow money from neighbors to pay the bill. Read more:
FLORIDA – Condos turning into animal farms over abuse of law
myPalmBeachPost: Condos turning into animal farms over abuse of law
Question: My 55-plus condo community of 220-plus units has a “no dog” policy. Within the last two years people with service animals are using disability statutes to preempt this policy that has been in place for years.
Pushback is happening now — not just here but in many places — by most of the population that sees blatant abuse of the statutes that give this disability group cover to live anywhere they want with the flimsiest of service animal disability certification.
Included here is a copy of a “disclosure” HOA letter that is being utilized by an HOA to discourage this trend.
My question is, what recent developments and laws or statutes are being implemented to deal with this growing abuse of property rights and the very real long-term diminution of legitimate disability efforts? — A.J.
Answer: I am guessing that the “service animal disclosure requirements” letter that you forwarded was drafted by an armchair lawyer who does not understand the law as it applies to condominiums and HOAs. Particularly, it references provisions that relate to service animals (trained dogs governed by the ADA) and not animals that are proscribed by a physician as a medically necessary treatment for a disability, pursuant to the Fair Housing Act.
Further, the conclusion it expressly reaches, that the law implies that, by definition, the owner of a service animal may be a danger to himself or others due to his or her condition, is flawed and unsupportable. And to that end, this HOA’s requirement that every person seeking a pet exemption provide a written statement from a doctor certifying that the individual’s behavior “doesn’t present a danger as regards destructive behavior” is certainly not enforceable under the law. Read more:
FLORIDA – Downtown West Palm condo owners: Proposed hotel will block our view
Article Courtesy of The Palm Beach Post
By Tony Doris
Published February 21, 2016
They bought luxury condos in downtown West Palm, a city aspiring to livability, walkability, urban vitality — all the benefits of close-in living.
Now, residents are fuming. Read more:
HOA Reform Coalition 