GREED SURPASSES KNOWLEDGE!

By Jan Bergemann  

Published April 24, 2015

     

Some service providers – attorneys and CAMs – are going crazy over a bill that is working its way through the Florida legislature.  S 736 (Sen. Kelli Stargel) and companion bill H 611 (Rep. John Wood) just put a time-limit on the issuance of an estoppel certificate and limit the amount of fees to be charged for issuing such certificate. The fee allowed by the bill is $250 plus $100 under certain circumstances. In my opinion: $ 100 is more than enough for such certificate. Make no mistake: Laws already require associations and lawyers to keep an up-to-date account of all properties.

   
Take the example for an HOA (FS 720.303 -- Official records):
FS 720.303(4)(j) states:
2. A current account and a periodic statement of the account for each member, designating the name and current address of each member who is obligated to pay assessments, the due date and amount of each assessment or other charge against the member, the date and amount of each payment on the account, and the balance due.

 

The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) requires the lawyer (or debt-collector) to keep an accurate detailed account of the debt owed by the unit/home.

 

With other word: Laws already require that the folks dealing with issuing such an estoppel letter have to have the necessary numbers ready to roll!
  

Only if they don’t follow the law it may take a while to issue such certificate. But should these service providers be rewarded for not following the laws by being allowed to charge outrageous fees for their incompetence?
  
I don’t think so! Anything more than $100 is overpaying for a task that could be handled by an office clerk within no more than 10 minutes.

   

But these greedy service providers are scaring boards with threatening that the association will have to pay the difference between the money they charge and the fees allowed to be charged by law if this bill gets enacted. That’s plain nonsense -- but some board members obviously believe them.
  
Every board that deals with a service provider that charges more than allowed by law should quickly fire this service provider and hire somebody willing to follow the laws.

  

And it gets even more ridiculous if the owner of a big management company tells an experienced association attorney that he “shows serious lack of understanding about what it really takes to prepare an estopple for a community association”, but doesn’t even know how to spell the word “ESTOPPEL.”

   

I always wonder why some people think that incompetence needs to be rewarded.


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Jan Bergemann Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice, Florida 's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group. CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in community  

associations. He moved to Florida in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues for his own purposes. End of retirement!

 

CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in Tallahassee - finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.

 

The organization has two websites to inform interested Florida homeowners and condo owners:

News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.

Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.

   
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all service providers surely have a different interest! We are trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking in Florida !


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