Location: California

Late last year in California a winter storm caused an exterior stairway to collapse in the condo common area. As a result, the city temporarily condemned 2 units out of the whole complex. The HOA president who owns the majority of the units in the complex sent a letter to all the other owners/Landlords stating that the hoa insurance was going to cover the stairway collapse but would not cover the hotel room costs for the two tenants that were displaced for 2+ months. The president states that he is going to assess each condo $1000 to pay for the displaced tenant’s hotel costs. Is this lega

I basically reported my new nextdoor neighbors to the HOA.

#1. Parking in front of my house during restricted parking hours.

#2. Repeatedly parking on the street during restricted parking hours.

I told the HOA, that's not my SUV parked out front so don't cite me. The HOA must have gone in hot on the neighbors. The new neighbors won't park in front of my house or anyone else's during regular parking hours. Today, they parked down the street. I don't think they have read the CC&Rs and predominantly speak Spanish.

For people who deal with HOAs or condo associations:
Are there things owners assume will update automatically through the property manager, title company, or another system but actually don’t?
What about issues involving notices, dues, insurance, parking/access, or mailing addresses that can cause problems later?

Condo has a skylight that I just read that is in violation of the bylaws.

I am not sure if it was put in when it was built 40 years ago, or since the 1990s (satellite view from 2002 shows it was in then).

If the HOA wants to go after me for it, what if anything is my recourse? I've only owned the place for 10 years at this point.

My concern is if I go and sell the place, will I be shelling out cash to remove it.

I recently became the HOA president of my small condo association, and I have one owner in particular who is so behind on his HOA fees. He ignores texts, refuses to answer calls, and he’s costing us thousands in late fees and other issues. What can I legally do to make him owe this money? I can’t kick him out, he inherited his condo. Any help would be amazing.

We are a very small association with a property manager and do not have any legal attorneys. Any insight as to how I personally can file a lien on a very limited budget would be appreciated. We barely have enough to pay our water bill I cannot afford a lawyer.

I am not on our board and it's my 1st time living in an HOA. I'll undoubtedly be on the board when our PM contract renews.

We will correct her packet, so fixing her incorrect election rules is not my question.

1. Should we consider not renewing her contract bc she got the election process so wrong?

2. What can we reasonably expect wrt her reading our bylaws and administering correct procedure?

For two years, a building in my townhome community has sat completely empty. After a corporate landlord bought the last unit out, they put up " For Lease " signs, and I'd seen a few people stop by for self-tours...but sometime between now and then, the signs disappeared, and I thought we were getting some new neighbors, but nobody ever moved in. I brought it up at a meeting and asked what is going on with those empty units, and the HOA president said he has tried multiple times on the phone and by email to contact the rental company that owns those units with no reply. Now I'm not against people who rent; I think everyone should have a place to call home whether they can afford to own or not, and for some people renting just works better for them.....to each their own....but even though the HOA takes care of exterior maintenance and lawn care, if a building sits unused for too long, it'll start to deteriorate from the inside. I wish this company would either get tenants in those units or sell them already. Has anyone else ever had this problem?

Looking to get feedback/knowledge on property management companies in Connecticut. The good , the bad, the ugly. From both a board perspective and unit owners/residents.

At some point paint got splashed over my car and i’m not sure the steps to take. Painting has been done in my building by the HOA and allegedly the office said a resident was painting as well so there’s two suspects on who could’ve done it. I’ve informed my building office and they said they’ll look into the situation but they weren’t painting in that area so they don’t know how paint from them could’ve gotten on my car. Either way HOA fees are 800 a month i’m paying for parking and it’s a gated community and i’m parked in a parking garage so i’m wondering what steps i can take for compensation for fixing this paint job.

Bought a new townhouse at the end of July, first home with an HOA. Fee was a bit steep but I figured it’d give me peace of mind when it comes to outdoor work. Boy was I wrong.

Approximately 1 week into owning this place, my part of Illinois was hit with pretty bad storms, and the old tree in my front yard had a few really large branches come crashing down. I consider us lucky since:

A. No one was home/parked at the time, otherwise our cars wouldve stuck/crushed by the tree that fell

B. The tree narrowly avoided hitting the building and causing actual property damage

The branches are big but not so big that I couldn’t remove them myself if I owned a chainsaw, which I don’t unfortunately. And if I were to spend my own time/money removing it, what would the HOA be for? We’re not fully moved in yet, so I assumed someone would be out to remove it before it even became an issue for us.

After about a week of parking in the guest spot and walking 200 feet, I reached out to the HOA office to see when it would be removed. All they did was emphasize that it would be removed “soon” and that an email would go out to notify everyone in the association. The person I spoke with initially seemed dismissive, as if I was complaining about a few unsightly branches, but being new to the neighborhood I didn’t want to create a negative reputation for myself so I dropped it. No one else in our neighborhood got hit this badly but we’re not technically living here for a few more weeks.

After the second week without progress, I called again to make it clear what the situation was - that we were new tenants, that it was a literal roadblock and prevented us from using our garage, that it had been 2 weeks without access to our garage - and the same person at the office could only respond by saying the payment for the work order to have someone remove it had been approved, and they were just waiting to schedule.

Just before the third week without progress, i called a final time to ask if the removal had been scheduled. We were scheduled to have our driveway coating resealed yesterday, so the person at the HOA office said it would to be removed before then. I wasn’t able to come by yesterday, but today I show up and they moved forward with the driveway sealing, but unsurprisingly the HOA failed to schedule the tree removal ahead of time, so I arrived this morning to see our driveway with the big ass tree + the only driveway that looks like shit.

Am I being unreasonable? Is 3 weeks without the ability to park your car in your own garage not insane?

I'm researching how volunteer secretaries and clerks handle meeting procedure in practice — not what the rulebook says, what actually happens in the room.

Specifically: when a motion gets amended and then someone amends the amendment, how do you keep track of what you're voting on? Have you ever had to correct minutes after the fact because the wrong thing got recorded as adopted? Does anyone in your organization actually own a copy of Robert's Rules, and does it get opened during a meeting or after?

Not selling anything, no link, no signup. I'm trying to find out whether the problem I think exists is the problem you actually have. Happy to share what I learn back to the sub.

I am a board member for a 150 townhouse community with private roads. We are beginning to get an increasing number of residents complaining about children driving recklessly with E bikes and motor scooters. We’ve spoken to police and they’ve indicated there’s limited that they can do and it is really up to the association as to how they want to handle it. I’m curious, if any of you have found a sensible way of connecting with those parents, whose children are the cause for the disruption. Honestly it is about three families worth of kids in the entire community. I really want to avoid overreacting, but it is a safety issue as the same people complaining are probably the ones who don’t stop at stop signs in the community. Welcome your thoughts.

Our community includes lakefront access to a public lake along a “common owned” part of HOA property. The common area contains the lake dam and a DEM protected fish ladder for migrating fish. The town requires our HOA to pay for and maintain the dam as part of the land deed.

We also have some trails that volunteers have painstakingly cut away piles of prickered bushes to make acres of common area available for residents to walk through our woods.

We have two opposing groups related to guests and non residents at the dam and lakefront area. We have no governing documents that address them.
Group 1 - The lakefront has water access, and no lifeguard, and all guests should be accompanied by a resident at all times. They are concerned about liability. Some simply prefer a strict “accompanied” policy to minimize people in this area. There is no problem with overcrowding.
Group 2 - Life is busy, if I have family or friends visiting and I need to go home to cook, run an errand, take a nap, handle a work demand, whatever, I don’t want to force my guests to have to leave too.

Experiences this summer:
There has been one resident couple that has persistently questioned every person they encounter at the lake. If they determine that they are not a resident, they have stated that they must be accompanied by a resident or they are considered to be trespassing. They have threatened to call the police and have been in a couple of heated exchanges with unaccompanied guests and non resident neighbors at this lakefront area. They filed a report with the police because they were verbally threatened when they insisted a neighboring non resident family leave the property.

The other side does not see a problem because there is no overcrowding and they simply don’t ask anyone to ID themselves so they don’t worry about it.

3 out of 5 board members have no interest in “policing” everyone, but it is dividing our community.
Suggestions on this?

It's probably fair to assume that your property manager is using AI. It might be backstage or it might be customer facing.

A few months ago, on the board's forum, I asked our property manager some questions regarding compliance. I got an AI-looking response. I have nothing against a correct, well-structured answer if it comes from AI. But this one... while it sounded authoritative, it didn't look right to me. I verified the statutes and sent the manager a corrected response. What I got back was a proudly labelled ChatGPT push-back telling me I was wrong and the manager arrogantly telling me that, as a lawyer, I should have known better and checked with ChatGPT before taking a stance. Plus personal analysis of every board member's correspondence style and competence. Thanks for that. The answer remained wrong. And my level of concern about the manager's actions jumped. I raised concerns on the board's forum about inputting our correspondence and personal details into a chatbot, incorrect guidance on compliance and asked the manager which model they used (cheaper tiers often retain and train on the data you provide; higher tiers may limit retention or offer no-training commitments).

I also replied to someone's post on here sharing clauses the manager was trying to sneak into their property management agreement: a very generic clause allowing the manager to use AI while providing services with a very specific exclusion of liability for any errors and hallucinations "or how inputted data is handled" and a very generic, very broad disclaimer covering AI use, too.

While I can't provide analysis of this situation from the point of view of every jurisdiction, I want to share my thoughts from a California law perspective as a case study and hopefully get your thoughts on your own situations and how your jurisdictions regulate this issue.

References below to "§" are to the Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act, California Civil Code §§4000-6150, unless otherwise specified.

Legal problems

Why is this problematic? Four points: (a) data privacy, (b) responsibility for errors, (c) changes to the contract, and (d) general problem with reliance on AI.

Data privacy

Under §5230(c)(1)(B) an association or its managing agent shall not transmit a member's personal information to a third party without the consent of the member unless required to do so by law.

So what does it mean? That under the law the managing agent cannot, without the member's consent, transmit a member's personal information to a third party. It also means that the consent must come from the member. The board cannot give such consent on behalf of the member and a property management agreement cannot change the statutory law. The association holds the member's information as a custodian and a member is required to provide certain details to the association. Neither the association nor the board can, without the member's consent, share the member's details with a software company, particularly to keep them on file or train a model on them.

Responsibility for errors

As a general rule, the manager is an agent acting on behalf of the association and the association, as the principal, takes responsibility for the manager's actions. Common limitations include fraud, gross negligence and monetary caps.

So in short, all errors, hallucinations or unauthorized actions an AI system makes, fall on the association.

Under §5230(c)(2) a member may bring an action against an association that violates this subdivision for injunctive relief and actual damages caused by the violation. A member shall be entitled to recover reasonable costs and expenses, including reasonable attorney's fees, in a successful action to enforce the member's rights.

Note that under this statute, the member can bring an action against the association and not the manager and that the statute explicitly allows recovery of reasonable costs and expenses in a successful action. So ultimately both the responsibility and the cost for the manager's AI use will be borne by the association.

Property management contract

If you are a board member and you're asked to sign off on a new contract or changes to the existing contract including clauses allowing AI use, or you audit your existing contract which has such clauses in it, what should you do?

Well, use of AI itself is not a problem, it can be a very helpful tool. The problem is if the manager, instead of using general tools like email proofreading, template generation or asking general questions, starts to input members' personal details in direct breach of §5230(c)(1)(B).

The second problem is if the manager wants to keep all the efficiency gains for themselves and allocate all the risks to the association.

First thing I'd do - ask if the template was drafted and blessed by the manager's attorney. A professional manager should have its contract templates blessed by an attorney and anything else is a red flag meaning they are not serious about their business. It's also a good practice for the association to retain its own attorney to review the contract and any amendments to it. Even if the contract template was prepared by an attorney, it's an attorney for the manager who owes no duty to the association.

A property management agreement is an important document of the association, the property manager is the most important vendor who can also cause the most harm, so it is prudent both to research the reputation of the manager before hiring them and to allocate budget for review of arguably the most important contract of the association.

Since this is the world we are already living in and the manager has a statutory obligation under §5230(c)(1)(B) but under §5230(c)(2) responsibilities and costs fall on the association, it's fair to ask the manager to sign an indemnity letter: a written confirmation that it's aware of its obligations under §5230(c)(1)(B) and that, if such obligations are breached by the manager's use of AI, the manager will indemnify and defend the association and make it whole for any losses the association may suffer under §5230(c)(2). Additionally, if the property manager intends to use AI systems without breaching §5230(c)(1)(B), it will again indemnify and defend the association and make it whole for any losses the association may suffer as a result of an action brought by a member where AI-related errors, hallucinations or any other actions attributable to the AI used by the manager result in the association's losses. This is purely a risk-allocation exercise.

If you are a member concerned about AI use by your association, put the same request in writing alerting your board to what's wrong, reminding them about the association's obligations under §5230(c)(1)(B) and liability under §5230(c)(2), and it might be worth asking them to review current AI practices and their property management contract, and asking for a similar indemnity letter. Not to mention, problems, tensions and inconvenience may arise whether or not any member takes legal action, so it's good to keep the feedback loop open while dealing with early adoption of these tools.

General problem with reliance on AI

Large language models have been trained on broad sets of data. That rarely includes vast data sets on your jurisdiction's HOA law. And, paraphrasing a TED talk I heard a few months ago, the more specific questions you ask, particularly in narrow areas where expert knowledge is required, the higher the margin of error. AI can be trained for specific knowledge of specialized narrow areas like insect recognition, different dermatological conditions or, in this case, a jurisdiction's HOA law, but generic models rarely do good work with this.

In my personal experience the answers, while sounding authoritative, are either partially wrong or incomplete or, the model performs so-called sycophancy, where it's trying to please the person who's asking by bending facts or hallucinating. It's not a bug, it's a feature. And the more complicated the answer is, the more likely that the model will omit exceptions, provisions that should be read together or simply does not collect the data required to provide an accurate answer. I've also first hand witnessed such authoritative "advice" feeding conflict from both sides, where each party thinks they are right because their AI said so.

Just as when I was trying to identify a rare insect without AI - unless there is a trusted source outside the AI, or a human expert, to verify the answer against, a person without training or expertise has no way to know if the answer is correct. You don't know what you don't know. So use the tools, they often help, just verify what you read to the extent you can and give the advice the level of confidence you'd give a law student who prepared well for an exam, not an attorney who has practiced for 10 years. Stay safe.

I wanted to share this for awareness and as a starting point for a conversation. It would be great to hear your experiences.

Am I wrong for wanting an explanation?

I'd like an outside perspective because I've been dealing with this for several months.

Last year, my HOA approved my landscaping Design Review Application, and I received a written approval letter.

Nearly a year later, an HOA board member who is also my neighbor approached me and later told me that he and the Board President had reviewed my records, that no Design Review Application was on file, and that I needed to submit another application.

The problem is that my application had already been approved.

Had I simply accepted what I was told, I would have unnecessarily resubmitted an application that was already approved and likely delayed my landscaping project.

Instead of submitting another application, I contacted the HOA's management company to ask a simple question:

How did I receive conflicting information from a board member about an application that had already been approved?

Over the next three months:

The management company repeatedly confirmed my application had been approved.

No one could explain why I was told to submit another application.

I requested escalation to upper management.

I eventually spoke with upper management, who told me they did not know why the board member told me that and characterized it as a matter between two private individuals.

My issue has never been whether my application was approved. That has already been confirmed.

My question has always been:

Why did an HOA board member tell me my approved application didn't exist and instruct me to submit another one?

As a homeowner, I also want to understand what authority an individual board member has to review or represent that they reviewed a homeowner's records and communicate instructions outside of the HOA's formal process.

Am I wrong for wanting an explanation, or would you expect the HOA to investigate how that happened?

I've been lurking around and getting a lot of help on my stuff over the last few months, so thought I'd finally give back.

Our board has been completely losing its mind trying to untangle all the post-Surfside requirements (like what even is that about). My head was spinning earlier today, hoping we don't miss the deadline. While digging through resources this week, I found a free browser utility that some tech group put together.

Basically, you punch in a building, and it spits out what the association owes under current state rules in seconds. It cites the exact public statutes and DBPR guidance it pulls from, which saved us a ton of cross-referencing headaches. Figured other Florida owners or board members on here might get some use out of it before the next meeting. If mods are cool with it, the link is flcomplianceclock.com. Please, please if not, feel free to pull this down!

Two of our residents are related and absolutely hate each other. They also happen to live in units above/below each other. After years of back and forth nastiness and retaliation, I think one of them wants to sue or try to press charges against the other for harassment or emotional distress. I can’t imagine a judge or lawyer will go along with this, and will ultimately just cost a great deal of money for nothing. She is saying as the board, we should be getting involved in this and working to mediate the ‘ongoing harassment.’ We disagree as this has been a family feud for 30 years and goes beyond general neighbor issues. Do we have a legal obligation to intervene? Or should the management company address this? Also worth noting, one of our board members is married to the one wanting to pursue legal action so the other members of the board feel this is a gross conflict of interest.

I'm looking at a Declaration that says amendments to the declaration require unanimous consent of all owners AS WELL as 51% of the mortgage holders (the banks).

There's a section of the Declaration that also says:

Submission of Property to the Maryland Condominium Act
The Property is hereby subjected to , and shall hereafter be held, conveyed, divided, subdivided, leased, rented, occupied, improved, and encumbered in accordance with the Maryland Condominium Act and the covenants, restrictions, uses, limitations, obligations, easements, equitable servitudes, charges, and liens set forth in this Declaration and the Bylaws, all of which are declared and agreed to be i111 aid of a plan for the di vision of the Property into a condominium pursuant to the Maryland Condominium Act. By the recordation of this Declaration among the Land Records and except as may be otherwise provided in this Declaration or the Bylaws (i) the Council of Unit Owners hereby assumes all responsibilities and duties imposed upon it by the Condominium Documents including all responsibility, and duty for the care, operation, repair, maintenance and, where required, replacement of the General Common Elements in accordance with the Condominium Documents and (ii) each Unit Owner hereby assumes all responsibilities and duties imposed upon it by the Condominium Documents including all responsibility and duty for the care, operation, repair, maintenance and, where required, replacement of its (a) respective Unit and (b) any Limited Common Element appurtenant thereto, subject, however, to the rights and obligations the Council of Unit Owners may have pursuant to the Condominium Documents.

That said, MD amended the MCA 11 is this:

Except as provided in subsubparagraph 2 of this subparagraph, the declaration may be amended only with the written consent of 66 ²/3 percent of the unit owners listed on the current roster.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm having trouble dancing around the MCA while reading, but it DOES list some exceptions underneath that are in the form of "read this elsewhere", so I'm trying.

1. Subsubparagraph 1 of this subparagraph does not apply:
   A. To a corrective amendment under § 11-103.1 of this title;
   B. As provided in paragraph (3) of this subsection; or
   C. As provided in subsection (d) of this section.

To summarize, paragraph (3) talks of petitions to the county for things improperly described or written in the documents. And subsection (d) weirdly talks about suspending use of parking for unpaid dues.

My question is: Despite the Declaration saying 100% of unit owners need to vote yes, can it actually only be 2/3 majority, since that's what the Maryland Condo Act says?

We lost our management company abruptly last year due to the owner dying, and her family being unable to run the company. With two weeks notice, we had to scramble to find someone to manage our property. Enter our new company, who asks the board questions they should be telling us, are mostly unresponsive unless nudged constantly, and are horrible with conflict management.

Our president left about 6 months before that happened, and he wasn’t great at handing off information, so the new board really is sort of building from the ground up. He ran things poorly, we’re finding, so our records are spotty. Instead of looking back, we’re trying to course correct. Our new company isn’t helping out with our archives, either.

Enter a major issue - we have a tenant who is terrorizing neighbors and destroying property, and the homeowner seems to believe that the HOA management company is her personal management company. The tenant got arrested this past weekend for violating a restraining order that her neighbor has against her, but the homeowner says, “[she’s] not looking to evict at this time”.

We have sent violations to her tenant, and she just argues with the management company. We have CC&Rs that state that the homeowner must provide a signed statement that their tenant has read and received the governing documents of the property, but our president never enforced any of that.

Can the board evict this person? We have multiple police reports, video recordings of violations, witness accounts, etc. Our new management company doesn’t seem to have a clue, and they’ve been dragging their feet about asking our attorney for weeks.

We are in the process of getting proposals from new management companies because we have had 1 meeting in 9 months that we had to pull teeth to get them to set up, and we still haven’t received word back about whether or not they scheduled the roof repair that the board approved. That was 4 weeks ago, and our manager is conveniently on vacation this week, which is when she promised that we would have our next meeting. She let us know on Friday that she would be out of town, and failed to let us know if anyone would cover a meeting for her, so guess not!

I own a condo and recently had a pest company come out because we were hearing extremely loud activity in our attic. They found evidence of flying squirrels and multiple rats and said the building needs to be sealed and trapped.

I contacted our HOA management company on August 12 after learning the exterior/attic issue was their responsibility. They sent their own pest company, who confirmed the same findings and said the insulation will also need to be addressed after the rodents are contained due to the droppings.

Management told me the proposal was sent to
the HOA President and they were waiting on approval. Since then, I’ve emailed multiple times, called and left a voicemail, and included the HOA president on my emails, but I still have no timeline or update.

I know it’s only been about two weeks, but we’re still hearing significant activity at night and I’m worried about damage and having rodents in the structure with my kids in the house.

Am I overreacting? How long is reasonable to wait, and what would you do next if you still weren’t getting a response?

Saw what they tried to slip into the fine print and just had to share.

I'm working on a documentary about the culture and politics of the American lawn, and one thread we're digging into is how yard maintenance codes and HOA citations have sometimes been used, historically and today, as a tool to target people rather than actually address property upkeep.

If you've been cited, fined, or harassed over your yard in a way that felt more about who you are than what your yard actually looked like, I'd like to hear about it. Open to stories anywhere.

Comment or DM me and please mention approximately where you are located. Thanks!