Does your condominium or homeowners association (HOA) have owners who don’t pay their assessments? Owners are finding more excuses to avoid paying their assessments. Filing multiple bankruptcies, submitting payments with conditional language, NSF payments, claiming they don’t owe since they don’t use the common elements. . . The list goes on and on. So how […]
Dealing with Sophisticated Debtors Read More »
Summary If smoking is otherwise allowed in your association, you do not need to ban it as a reasonable accommodation for a person with asthma. The Facts Phyllis Davis suffers from asthma but lives in a condominium complex that allows residents to smoke in their units. Davis claimed that the smoke from a neighboring unit
Must Your Association Ban Smoking as a Reasonable Accommodation? NO Read More »
Do you know for a FACT that your condominium association or HOA has all of the insurance the law requires you to have? Learn about the insurance coverage your condo or HOA should get in less than a minute. Want to learn more about Wisconsin condominium and HOA law from experienced condo and HOA attorneys?
Condo Association & HOA Insurance Coverage in Less Than 1 Minute Read More »
From years of experience, unit owners and board members can justify anything. Board members who take compensation for serving on the board or who make sure that their building is always first in line for repairs can find relatively legitimate reasons for everything they do – e.g. they are saving the association money by doing
Elections from Hell Read More »
I have written before on the subject of associations’ continuing struggle to convince enough unit owners to attend owner meetings in order to meet quorum requirements, and otherwise to simply get business done. Recognizing that not every condominium association may be ready to take the step to convert to “E-voting,” another way to ease the
IMPRESSION: A recent Minnesota Court of Appeals ruling served as a stiff reminder to investor-purchasers of condominium units: request of association resale disclosure certificates should be undertaken as a matter of course (in Wisconsin this is essentially the Section 703.165(4) Wis. Stat. statement of the amount of unpaid assessments). DETAILS: In Bridge Investments, LLC v.
Request Resale Certificates Rather than Roll the Dice Read More »
Picture this: an urban condominium complex and neighboring apartment building, built by the same developer, with one parking garage between the two. The condominium owners were led to believe that the garage belonged to them as a common element; however, just before turning over control to the unit owners, the developer/declarant secretly recorded an easement
Turnover From Developer—Unfair Easement Read More »
Holding: The Supreme Court of Vermont held that a homeowners association, as assignee from the developer, could charge lot owners for its reasonable costs to maintain the subdivision private roads and water system, including litigation and other overhead costs. The Facts: A 92 lot subdivision in Vermont was developed in the 1960s. The subdivision contained
Owner Responsible for Share of Costs to Maintain Subdivision Facilities Read More »
Governing Documents for Condominium and Homeowner Associations don’t age well. They are not like a fine wine. They are more like cheap cheese. Remember, they were likely written by a developer who really only cared about them until it had sold all of its units or lots (assume 10 years or less). So if your
Our Governing Documents Have Aged Nicely Read More »
A Wisconsin condominium association had a unit owner who was habitually delinquent in the payment of assessments. Neither the association or the property manager had ever spoken to the unit owner. The association hired an attorney who filed one small claims action after another against the unit owner every time she became delinquent. The association
Why Foreclosure and Money Judgment at the Same Time? Read More »
