(HOA) Continuing Saga
So, we of the board of directors had a little meeting today to discuss things. Whee. I guess I feel like we have forward momentum, but it's still a headache...
So at the meeting I missed a couple weeks ago, the contractor was officially let go. His stopping work and threatening to put us off 'til fall unless paid by the end of the week didn't go over well. I thought we were past that as recently as a month ago, but apparently not. Doing a little work, then stopping and asking for more money seemed to be his method of operation. There's been very brief, informal talk about lawsuit options, but I doubt he or we shall pursue that, and it looks like a net loss to us from where I sit. Oh well.
We have one bid from someone else, and another is supposedly coming soon. We need to get some references with these people and meet with them on-site to go over what's included in the bids just because technical terms are hard to put to practical ones. It will cost more than what we had "left" with our previous contractor, but... hopefully it'll actually get done.
References and, when we get down to it, a real, formal contract are things we're pushing for this time.
We've discussed the association getting a loan and increasing dues to pay for that in order to fund the project this time rather than a lump special assessment. The anti-debt mindset hammered into me clashes with this idea, but it's probably too practical for me to actually argue against.
We have some ranty owners refusing to pay their dues and bitching via email. Strangely, those messages seem to have missed me, even though I've been in our mass-mailings before. It makes me wonder what was said, exactly, but I suspect the complaints are vague "feeling cheated/robbed" or something.
We're still tossing around the idea of small claims litigation against one or two of these people. It's in the association rules that are agreed to upon purchase that you are obligated to pay your dues, so I think legally there's no question. I hate for it to come to that, though, and I'm not sure how much it'll matter. From what I've read, a small claims judgement is likely to be akin to the courts saying "yep, you owe this." They still have some ridiculous window to actually pay, with little or no defined punishment if they still refuse. At the most, the court could garnish a person's wages, but the impression I've gotten is that's actually unusual. Plus one of our deliberate holdouts lives in California, further complicating things.
So hopefully we'll be meeting with some contractors in the next week or two to discuss the remaining job. From there, we can look at references and pick who we feel might actually do the job. Then we can try to have a general homeowners meeting and present that, with bid options as to how we want the work done and how we're going to pay.
Gee, stated like that, it seems like we could have this whole thing wrapped up in a couple months. Unfortunately, moving at the speed of bureaucracy, I doubt it'll be that fast.
And one of the owners raised another concern of late, saying he's been trying to sell but now lendors are refusing to make loans for the place. This seems to stem from some Federal Housing Administration guidelines that went into effect late last year saying the FHA won't do loans for condo complexes where more than 10% of the units are owned by a single entity. We have 23 units, and 4 owned by a single person (which he's owned for a couple decades, I think).
Joy. It's not like that's any reason he should "give away" two units. Oy.
So at the meeting I missed a couple weeks ago, the contractor was officially let go. His stopping work and threatening to put us off 'til fall unless paid by the end of the week didn't go over well. I thought we were past that as recently as a month ago, but apparently not. Doing a little work, then stopping and asking for more money seemed to be his method of operation. There's been very brief, informal talk about lawsuit options, but I doubt he or we shall pursue that, and it looks like a net loss to us from where I sit. Oh well.
We have one bid from someone else, and another is supposedly coming soon. We need to get some references with these people and meet with them on-site to go over what's included in the bids just because technical terms are hard to put to practical ones. It will cost more than what we had "left" with our previous contractor, but... hopefully it'll actually get done.
References and, when we get down to it, a real, formal contract are things we're pushing for this time.
We've discussed the association getting a loan and increasing dues to pay for that in order to fund the project this time rather than a lump special assessment. The anti-debt mindset hammered into me clashes with this idea, but it's probably too practical for me to actually argue against.
We have some ranty owners refusing to pay their dues and bitching via email. Strangely, those messages seem to have missed me, even though I've been in our mass-mailings before. It makes me wonder what was said, exactly, but I suspect the complaints are vague "feeling cheated/robbed" or something.
We're still tossing around the idea of small claims litigation against one or two of these people. It's in the association rules that are agreed to upon purchase that you are obligated to pay your dues, so I think legally there's no question. I hate for it to come to that, though, and I'm not sure how much it'll matter. From what I've read, a small claims judgement is likely to be akin to the courts saying "yep, you owe this." They still have some ridiculous window to actually pay, with little or no defined punishment if they still refuse. At the most, the court could garnish a person's wages, but the impression I've gotten is that's actually unusual. Plus one of our deliberate holdouts lives in California, further complicating things.
So hopefully we'll be meeting with some contractors in the next week or two to discuss the remaining job. From there, we can look at references and pick who we feel might actually do the job. Then we can try to have a general homeowners meeting and present that, with bid options as to how we want the work done and how we're going to pay.
Gee, stated like that, it seems like we could have this whole thing wrapped up in a couple months. Unfortunately, moving at the speed of bureaucracy, I doubt it'll be that fast.
And one of the owners raised another concern of late, saying he's been trying to sell but now lendors are refusing to make loans for the place. This seems to stem from some Federal Housing Administration guidelines that went into effect late last year saying the FHA won't do loans for condo complexes where more than 10% of the units are owned by a single entity. We have 23 units, and 4 owned by a single person (which he's owned for a couple decades, I think).
Joy. It's not like that's any reason he should "give away" two units. Oy.
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