Posted on 06/21/2018 6:33:41 PM PDT by TermLimits4All
I'm hoping someone may have a way of finding an attorney that I can hire to sue my HOA and management company for damages.
I have more than one family that will be seeking damages for non enforcement of the covenants in our subdivision.
I have been trying to sell my home and have received feedback from multiple buyers about conditions in the development that I had previously reported. The board decided to waive fines on one particular party that had 108 violations. New board members are friends with this family.
Secondly they are not responding to additional submittal. The management company said we have to take it up with the board. Why are we paying the management company then? Finally the board members decided to take over a neighbors Facebook page, even removing her as an administrator, deleting any of the neighborhoods supposed negative comments. They are now stifling free speech on this neighborhood site.
Thanks in advance for any helpful info. All I can find online are the lawyers.com sites and they try to get you into a monthly pool system. Not sure these are legitimate.
The board rules, by covenant.
They decide what will, and will not be enforced as they are the expression of the majority of the HOA.
The chances of recovery from a poorly run HOA are minimal. Expect to pay a lot of money hourly to an attorney to try and go after them and anticipate very little return.
Big mistake the last time I hired an atty. The Lawyer was worse than the party I was suing. Ran up a big fee then abandoned me!!
“LegalAid”
What is that?
Talk to local realtors. Ones who know your subdivision. It could very well be that realtors know of those problems and are reluctant to send potential buyers there. Perhaps those Realtors also know of local real estate attorneys you might talk to.
Sorry. Meant Legal Shield.
I’m not an attorney but I suggest you mention the general area you live so attornies in the vicinity know.
Don’t hire any lawyer that doesn’t tell you up front that it’s going to cost you a fortune (perhaps more than your property is worth), that you will be helping pay the other side’s lawyer in addition to your own, and you will likely lose. If that sounds attractive to you, look for a lawyer that is an expert on the issues - perhaps at one of the better law schools in your state.
A better strategy is to try to get together a group to take over the board seats as elections are held. You have to beat them at their own game. Or find someone socially undesirable to sell to and take your losses.
You need an attorney that specializes in real estate litigation. If you are in North Carolina, I can recommend one to you. If not, ask the closing attorney that handled your purchase transaction of the name of the best real estate litigation attorney they know. That will be the one you want.
If I may ask, what are the conditions that are scaring away the buyers that the HOA is turning a blind eye to?
Also - what kind of HOA are we talking about here? Age-restricted development, condo/PUD, or something else?
(I work in a real estate related business that occasionally involves homes in various types of HOAs and I am genuinely curious).
Please put your state flag on your profile.
And let us know what city, state you are in.
I did forget to mention I’m in GA. Thank you.
I live in what is/was a 500k community in N. Georgia 40 minutes from Atlanta.
Main violations are neighbor specific. Trash, construction materials laying around from projects that they’ve abandoned and built other structures.
A commercial vehicle, food trailer that is constantly parked on the street. In fact he cleans the grease in the front of the house letting it run into the sewer system.
The other issues are HOA specific and item promised when we built our home. Landscaping at retention ponds is the major concern.
Buyers have complained about the truck, debris, and the retention pond issue.
We have 5 parties interested in taking this on with us. In fact the HOA President has for all intent been silenced from these new members on the board. He suggested I get a coalition together to fight this at this point.
Have you sold the house for less than assessed value? Do you have certified appraisals and a home sale for less than these values? If not, you have no loss to seek remedy over. You have potential losses.
And honestly, a very very long road with little chance of recovering the legal fees, much less recovering your loss. Turn your issue into a boon - you have a home subject to HOA that obviously doesn’t much care to enforce the rules, so new buyers won’t have to worry much about issues from the HOA.
Start breaking your HOA agreement in as blatant and as many ways as you can until you get their attention.
Then you’ll have their attention. Have a plan for that.
Four things:
The most important thing is to read your H OA agreement, in which case you may very well find that your single option to legally attack the HOA may very well be limited to arbitration, also known as binding arbitration, which means to say that that is your only option.
Second, I believe it would be very difficult to quantify your damages, which means to say that your possibilities of recovering said damages become rather weak.
Third, most HOAs are rather underfunded, and that means there is a fixed pot of money, and that means that if you actually do go to a lawyer the lawyer for the HOA will figure out a way to charge enough hours to take all the money out of the HOA fund to the extent that there will be essentially nothing left for you.
Lastly from the tone of your question I’m going to go ahead and make the assumption that you have not launched lawsuits against people or entities. What I’m going to say is, that there is almost nothing that you can do other than having open heart surgery, that is so expensive, so frustrating and will so consume your resources than such a lawsuit. I speak from personal experience. Courtrooms are for losers. Most cases settle because the parties to the lawsuit simply can no longer stand putting out so much money to continue the litigation. And any lawyer will tell you exactly the same thing. You might just as well sit down at a table take out a stack of $100 bills and set them on fire. On the other hand, returning to the topic of arbitration, I would instead consider Consulting with a professional arbitrator to see if he or she might be amenable to working with you. That might cost 2500 to $3,500. To get an actual lawyer interested in your case who is of any competence will cost you $20,000 just to start.
“The other issues are HOA specific and item promised when we built our home. Landscaping at retention ponds is the major concern.”
Is the developer still in charge of the HOA? Many will retain control until a certain percent of the lots are sold.
If so your beef would be with him.
If not and maintenance isn’t be performed I’d suspect some financial shenanigans with the treasurer.
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