ARE HOAs REALLY BETTER OFF?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published August 26, 2022
Let’s
make no mistake: Florida’s hi-rise condo buildings just got hit
with a serious financial burden that will force quite a few
owners to sell their homes or face foreclosure. HOAs may seem to
be the better choice in the moment, but it only seems that way.
If you really take a close look you will quickly find out that
HOAs have as well serious downfalls that can make the lives of
families living in a mandatory HOA regulated by FS 720 pretty
miserable.
HOAs need
fully funded reserves as well or will one day face the same
problem condo associations are facing now: SPECIAL
ASSESSMENTS!
HOAs
don’t really need reserves for structural engineers or serious
structural maintenance or repairs. But they have similar
money-pits: Roads and bridges – for example. Maintaining and
fixing them can as well cost an arm and a leg, and a firstborn.
Owners
often forget that developers are allowed to build sub-par roads
– roads that don’t pass county inspections. Many of these roads
deteriorate pretty fast and the bills for trying to fix these
roads can be horrendous.
And while
condos have a – minimum by name – regulatory agency, HOAs have
nothing of this kind and even simple matters – like record
requests – have to go through litigation in court. Make no
mistake: Even if FS 720.311 forces the parties to go to
PRESUIT MEDIATION, that’s just another money pit most
often going nowhere. Mediation only works if both parties
approach mediation in good faith, but this isn’t the case very
often. There are too many association attorneys who are dragging
the mediation out for many hours knowing from starters that they
are not willing to settle the case, not only creating big bills
for themselves but costing the owners lots of money, money they
may desperately need later when the case is litigated in court.
Don’t fall for this trap!
In my
opinion one system is as bad as the other. When neighbors were
just neighbors, life in communities was much more civilized and
disputes were settled mostly with very low cost. Remember the
good old times when neighbors brought neighbors in need chicken
soup and cookies. Nowadays neighbors serve neighbors with liens
and foreclosure notices.
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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
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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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