Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Shannon
Thanks I am in the process of trying to find an HOA attorney in the Charlotte NC area.
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Be very wary of HOA "professionals" affiliated with Community Associations Institute. This is a vendor trade group that actively lobbies for anti-homeowner laws. The vendors frequently tout their affiliation or "credentials" from the trade group.
Currently there is legislative effort in your state to rein in the abuses by HOA corporations and their vendors. The bill is HB 165.
Here is a link to an HOA management company's points of opposition to HB 165:
NC
As you can see by their opposition to HB 165, this CAI management company:
• opposes open meetings of boards
• wants boards to have the power to impose special assessments without approval by owners
• does not want notice of meetings to be provided to owners
• does not want materials made available to board members to be similarly made available to homeowners
• opposes a 90 day minimum time frame for initiating foreclosure
• opposes disclosure to prospective purchasers
• opposes legislation that would end the priority of payment scam
To understand the anti-disclosure position, you have to understand that the seller can only obtain the required disclosure information from the HOA corporation - this means the management company. The management companies know full well that they are in a position to demand additional concessions from a seller by jeopardizing the sale of the house by withholding the disclosure documents. It's appalling that the management companies engaged in the practice to begin with. It's should be embarrassing that they are lobbying to ensure such practices could continue unabated.
The priority of payment scam is a well-known unscrupulous practice by HOA management companies. In short, they seek to misapply your assessment payments to "fines" and junk fees of their creation through accounting trickery so as to purportedly leave you in arrears on assessments - even when you have paid assessments in full. The primary purpose of this scam is to extort money from homeowners for the benefit of the management company by using the HOA's foreclosure powers through this re-characterization scheme. The misapplication also automatically generates "late fees" payable to the management company. By misapplying your assessment payments, the management company diverts money paid to the HOA to its own coffers, generates additional "late fees" payable to itself, reports the homeowners as a "deadbeat" to the HOA board, and then uses the HOA's power of foreclosure for failure to pay assessments in order to collect the junk fees, collection fees, late fees, etc. trumped up and payable to the management company. You'll find the HOA vendors engaged in this practice all over the country and that other states have had to adopt similar legislation to protect homeowners from these unscrupulous organizations.
You might want to contact your legislator, these vendor groups are actively lobbying against you.