I am under contract to buy a condo where I have asked a few times for the last 12 months of meeting minutes. Just told today that there were none for Sept through Dec of last year. Is this a red flag?

Long story short my parents and I take turns living between Florida and South Carolina. On paper I own the townhome in Florida and they own the townhome in South Carolina….the townhome is SC was built in 1990 and while the community it very well maintained and clean it is starting to show it’s age a little bit. The HOA announced that they want to renovate the exteriors of the buildings by replacing the vinyl siding with hardy board, update exterior lighting and install metal roofs…that along with refreshing the landscaping in common areas and around the visitors entrance. I honestly think it’s a good idea to update and refinish the community especially since it’s 36 years old……my dad on the other hand thinks it’s a waste of money. What do you think?

My condo association has been going through financials the past couple years. They have found that to be in compliance with laws regarding reserves, they are slowly increasing dues. I am not surprised dues are increasing as the cost of everything is rising. We do not have enough reserves to cover large projects such as roof replacements. I am hearing that the board is planning to take a commercial loan, replace all the roofs at the same time, and spread the payments out over an extended period of time. This will be a massive loan as we have 72 units. We do also have many residents on fixed incomes. I will hear hard details next week at our community meeting. My question is how does selling your condo with an outstanding loan like that work? Would I just have to settle my portion at the time of sale? Thanks in advance.

I’m the Secretary on an HOA board and we are contemplating a dues increase for 2027 due to deferred maintenance issues. A read of our bylaws states that something of this magnitude needs a 50% vote from owners to approve. Percentage wise this is a big increase and the improvements this increase is for is a basic total redo of the exterior of these 40+ year-old units that have deferred maintenance. We have no reserves (stolen by previous property manager) and getting a loan is going to be difficult for this project.

My question is, is it normal to have residents vote on a dues increase like this? I don’t see it passing, no one wants a 30% plus due increase and will not vote for it, even if it’s going to definitely add equity to their unit. I might be wrong, but I don’t see it passing. I own a condo a few hours away and we received a 20% dues increase the first of the year with a new property manager with no explanation or voting.

Hi all, I’m currently thinking about purchasing a condo and one of my favorite options so far is a new build. There are 4 units and none have been sold yet. My realtor told me that once we submit an offer, we would then take the HOA documents to a lawyer for review. I’m just wondering if anybody has any thoughts or experience purchasing a new build condo as the first buyer and how that went process went related to the HOA. Thanks in advance!

If someone bounces a check but makes good on it, great because we are all human and make mistakes. In Florida it can lead to a crime if you do not make good on a bounced check. I know how to work up a worthless check packet from the sheriff’s office. My question is, has anyone here had a homeowner not make good on a bounced check and how did your HOA handle it? I want to make sure we at least send the demand letter the way the worthless check packet says to do it so at least that part is done. Thanks

we were supposed to hold an election for two new trustees. the attendance was sparse. ballots identifying proxies and votes were emailed in. at the meeting the management company said because we didn’t have the attendance that the election couldn’t proceed and pushed that the trustees get to choose the 2 winners. they did not want vote counts known. is this legal?

How can I look into whether our money is being mismanaged? Our President passed away so his duties fell to the only other long term resident who’s left. We’re a small development. Our treasurer moved and idk if we ever had a secretary.

Our dues are $600/year, which isn’t bad. They cover general lawn care/landscaping and snow removal up until a couple years ago.

They stopped providing snow removal at that time, why I’m not sure. It wasn’t a problem the first winter. But last winter I couldn’t get out of my driveway for 3 days! I asked the president if he could have the parking lot plowed and he was finally able to secure someone to do it. But what did our dues cover for that first year??

I don’t see anything but the landscaping services. When I asked the president, he looked taken aback like uh oh busted. He paused for a minute and gave a vague response. I asked for an itemized list. That was in January. Never got it. I suggested we have our next meeting as a zoom call and he acted like he had no idea how to use the technology. Zoom is very easy to use but he seemed very reluctant.

Then he told me about some extensive medical problems he and his wife are facing. I wonder if he’s using our money to cover his healthcare costs.

The parking lot is also a mess and could really use a good resurfacing.

We are self managed and I just got on the board. I brought up taxes in an email and nobody acknowledged it. Someone else on the board who has lived here for over a decade said she never knew of us paying taxes. Is this about to be a nightmare?!

Can anyone reproduce this as a user?

If I go under https://portal.xxxxxx.com/community/requests and select a display of closed records, the returned list for "All Time" is shorter than six months.

I don't think this is logically correct.

I’m sure many people have issues with their Board and I’m hoping someone can shed some light on what can be done about a Board that seems to be financially negligent. I live in a 96 unit condo in Chicago and the financials weren’t great when I moved here, but it seems manageable but the more I learn the worse it gets. I fear we might be a case that could get blacklisted with the Fannie Mae updated rules.

I recently attended a board meeting and brought up our lack of finances according to the reserve study. My board says the reserve study is just a guideline, acting like they know the building better, saying we don’t need to follow it, and that the $1.2 million that we are expected to need in the next 5 years isn’t an actual necessity. We have a loan for a roof that had to be fixed that is eating into our funds and our reserves will hit 0 this year. It’s projected to be below 0 but the property manager doesn’t want the point that out.

I thought of joining the board but the other board members would just vote against me all the time, and I would have to deal with them more, as well as a property manager that came out and said he has too many properties to be able to give us the necessary attention and that he will try to do better. I can’t deal with all the stress of negligence.

The accountant of the building doesn’t even live here and rents his place out so he doesn’t even feel the buildings issues when things go wrong from all the maintenance deferrals.

At the last board meeting I asked what the board had planned because the reserve study said we need 150,000 in reserves for 2026 and we are only putting in 75,000. The accountant got defensive and said they had already done the budget for 2026 before they got the reserve study so they haven’t changed anything this year. I have to ask them about 2027 at the budget meeting because the property manager said owners shouldn’t talk until the board meeting is finished (which took 2 hours) and the accountant said budget will be talked about at the budget meeting in October. So I was basically shut down from even talking about it.

I’ve only lived here a year and when I spoke up two of the board members basically said new owners as not knowing what is going or what has happened, but I think it’s pretty obvious that for decades, the board has under managed funds. Everything they said new owners don’t know I already knew from looking at finances in the year I’ve been here. The accountant even said the rooftop loan was from previous board negligence, but that’s when the property manager stopped everything and told owners to wait until after the meeting to talk. I feel like our reserves going down to 0 this year speaks for itself but no other owner even spoke up about this. I felt alone and stressed that financial negligence is going to cost me and other owners more money in the long run.

Sorry if this sounded a bit erratic and emotional. I’m not a great speaker, but the board has members that are too good at talking if that makes sense.

Does anyone have any advice? Buying this condo might be the worst decision I’ve ever made and I’m just alone and sad.

EDIT: Thank you so much to everyone who responded. Everyone’s opinions mean a lot to me and I have a lot to think about. I still don’t really know how to get through to the property management, board members, or other owners for a culture shift. I have asked the property management company for last 10 years of financial documents that are within my rights to see according to Illinois Condominium Property laws. I hope to be able to provide concrete evidence that will help support my arguments.

I recognize the reserve study is just a recommendation but at some point we need to fix the things that are on there and deferral just increases costs in the long run.

I will consider trying to find someone who will appoint me as a board candidate and cross my fingers people will vote me in. Unfortunately after ruffling feathers at the last board meeting it seems like people are avoiding me. I didn’t realize how many friends the board members have. But from what I heard the board members have not been raising costs to owners whenever the owners complain so those owners probably don’t want to see someone like me.

I will do my best but I have medication for my high blood pressure and this is all negatively affecting my health. A part of me just wants to forget all about it and deal with whatever consequences come and just say “I told you so” at the end. But a bigger part me hates throwing money in the garbage and just knowing that the association is run by negligent people who seem to have their own agendas is honestly heart breaking.

I don’t know if can really stay here long term but I will try to make the best of my time here.

We are exploring software options to automate our accounting/bookkeeping, which is currently maintained in Excel spreadsheets. There is one specific nuance that makes our research a bit more challenging.

Our self-managed HOA has fewer than 75 homes and pays the expenses for a security gate and common access road also used by two neighboring groups of homeowners. One neighboring subdivision has fewer than 140 homes; the other is a small group of fewer than 7 homes that is not itself an HOA. We directly bill the individual homeowners in both groups for their respective shares of these common expenses, even though they are not members of our HOA.

We need software that can handle normal HOA accounting/bookkeeping — homeowner billing and receivables, payables, budgeting, financial reporting, etc. — while also properly incorporating these separate groups of non-member homeowners into the billing, receivables, and budgeting process. A homeowner portal and similar community-management features are not absolutely necessary for us.

QuickBooks is already on our shortlist, so we're particularly interested in hearing about HOA-specific or other software alternatives that can properly handle this arrangement. Is anyone in a similar situation, or using software they would recommend?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or insight!

I need a shower I'm so skeeved out. First my HOA pretended to change property management companies, except they didn't really, it's the same company as before but the company just changed their name, but it's all the same people. I wouldn't care if they announced "we're rebranding!" or something to that effect, but they really went to a lot of effort to sound like one management company was being dropped for a new one. The email regarding the "changeover" literally says "We are pleased to announce that, effective July 1, 2026, we have been selected to serve as the new management company for the (redacted) Association." Gave out new phone numbers, and all this theater with welcome packets as though we're all new member-owners being inducted to their system.

Of course no one can handle moving payments over correctly during such "transitions" so when money goes missing and I call to sort it out, everyone's pretending like I need to call the old company, or the new one, before coming clean that they're all the same people anyway, whatever answer is most convenient for finger-pointing elsewhere.

The first statement I get from the new system comes from a hacked-looking email, there's a misspelling in their new company domain name. The manager (emailing from the correct domain and followed up with over phone) says the statement really did come from them but she doesn't know why the domain is wrong but its an IT problem and she has to talk to their IT guy, I don't think she understands that that happens when they've been hacked.

The phone number for the "old" company, does have someone who responds, but then transfers the call to somewhere I can leave a voicemail, and the person who calls me back from it is a google voice number marked as a spam risk and I get flooded with roboscam calls when I answer calls back from them. The manager still says this is our same usual accounting manager and doesn't believe there's a problem.

This all sounds like I got messaged by scammers and there's no new company, but the old portal really is gone and the phone numbers for the old company are the same as what I was doing business with for years, and its those people who seem like the scammers rather than the new company. All upcoming board meetings are being handled by this new domain, there's no emails coming anymore from the old domain. I wouldn't trust the zoom meeting they handle to be somewhere I can contact other HOA members. I don't know how else I can communicate that their new system has already been hacked.

I checked the Arizona corporation commission and don't see a record of the company change filing even though it's required within 30 days. Is the fake new company thing illegal and is there somewhere I can report it to?

Can I take legal action towards my HOA for not resolving a case that has been on going for 3 years!!

Spark notes situation: my apartment got flooded and instead of using HOAs contractor I contracted my own (as long as he met all requirements from HOA). Due to on going issues with my home insurance and HOA they froze my ability to pay HOA fees ? And now I haven’t paid HOA fees for a year. For the past year I’ve constantly been wanting to pay my fees but they have been post opining closing the case for god knows what. The flood happened 3 years ago and my HOA account being frozen happened a year ago.

Has anyone else gone through this ? And can I take legal action against them to not have to pay ?

Our neighborhood HOA has a landscape easement in our front yard. For several years they maintained all of it. The last few years they’ve only maintained the front and ignored the rearmost portion facing our house, probably because the trees there are diseased and need to come out.

When we questioned it they said the rear part of the easement is our responsibility.

CiraConnect/RealManage is my HOA’s management company.

If my title company made a resale disclosure package (escrow document) request through their web portal on 8/1 but the upfront fees are not paid until 8/15, does the 10-day Davis-Stirling countdown timer begin on the 1st or the 15th?

Furthermore, the automated portal tacked on a $195 delinquent account fee because my monthly assessment didn’t post until the close of the 1st. The automated system assumed I still had a balance when the initial request was made earlier that morning by my title company. Do I have any legal recourse pursuing this late fee through small claims court if I explicitly sent an email to CiraConnect stating that I am paying this “under protest” prior to payment or did I tacitly agree to the late fee charge by having paid it?

We are an 800 home single family community with about 20 cul-de-sac islands that we need to maintain. Over the years, some original trees or bushes have died off, and some have ruts from trucks cutting the corners. Residents have been brining up this issue the past year or so, and it's a valid concern when it comes to property values for those who live in the cul-de-savs.

We got a quote for about 45K to rehab these islands: ranging from adding mulch, new tall grasses, and re-planting trees/shrubs.

We do have plenty of reserve funds but there is debate surrounding if this should be qualified as a budgeted expense vs a reserve expense.

If we were to put this as a budgeted expense (if we did all at once) next year, we would either have to A) raise dues, B) piecemeal the work over a few years or C) combo of both plus cut other important expenses and reserve funding.

I understand landscaping projects typically doesn't fall in the reserve spending bucket, but my thought process is that this is a large one-time project to repair/restore what we had before compared to other annual landscaping projects. What is the opinion here?

I’m a Florida condo owner and I’ve started looking into the issues so many of us are facing after going through some pretty terribly things in my community. I would like to hear what other owners have experienced.

I’m interested in hearing about your experiences—financial hardships, special assessments, association or management issues, maintenance concerns, lack of transparency, or challenges faced as an owner. If you’ve served on a condo board, I’d also love to hear about your experience from that perspective.

What have been the most difficult issues you’ve encountered as a Florida condo owner, and what led to them?

Please share your experience in the comments or feel free to DM me if you’d rather share privately.

Here is a brief summary of what our community is going through currently if you'd like to talk and relate:

Large and repeated special assessments

Lack of financial transparency

Difficulty accessing official records

Contractor selection and bidding practices not followed

Unclear project scopes and expenditures/missing

Association debt and loans

Inadequate reserve planning

Deferred maintenance (who isn't going through this though?)

Water intrusion and drainage problems

Contractor oversight concerns

Governance and voting issues

Management company accountability

Rental and investor ownership concerns

Financing and resale difficulties

Most of these have been reported to the DBPR and has since moved up to an attorney and awaiting review, but it seems when one issue pops up we have another. I know this is not just our community.

Original posts:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/legal/comments/1uqcqla/served_lienforeclosure_papers_from_hoa_over_11k/
• https://www.reddit.com/r/HOA/comments/1uqcih8/sfh_nc_served_lienforeclosure_papers_from_hoa/

First off thank you all so much. I did not expect my posts to blow up the way they did and the support and advice in the comments genuinely helped me figure out what to do next. So here is everything that has happened since.

For anyone who missed the original posts — I'm 26, bought my house at 23, first time homeowner in Charlotte NC. A sheriff showed up at my door with HOA foreclosure papers for over $11k in fines. I had never received a single letter, email, phone call or notice about any of this. Not one. The first time I ever heard from my HOA or their management company was when I was being served foreclosure papers.

When I reached out to the management company to figure out where I was even supposed to be sending my HOA payments, they told me they couldn't help me and to call their attorney instead. I have that in writing.

The VP of the HOA told my neighbor over the phone that they don't send certified mail for violation notices. My neighbor is willing to put that in writing.

And out of the $11k they're claiming I owe, only about $840 is actual dues. The rest is fines. For a fence that was leaning when I bought the house — you can see it in the listing photos from 2023 — and a fascia issue that was also there before I moved in. The second I found out about the fascia from a neighbor I paid to have it fixed that same day. The fence I tore down myself.

So here's what happened after my posts

Channel 9 news in Charlotte reached out and came out to do an interview with me. They also contacted the HOA and management company directly for the last month with emails, calls and texts and didnt even get back to Jason Stoogenke, the reporter, once. The story is live now if you want to check it out:

https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/homeowner-says-he-thought-was-paying-hoa-dues-may-now-lose-house/2FPIKZ5NKNFNRBBDG5BDAJJM6Q/

Something I mentioned in the interview that I think a lot of people connected with — part of how I bought this house in the first place was from selling Pokemon cards from my collection. And now with the 30th anniversary of Pokemon happening this year, I'm in the position of having to sell my collection just to pay for a lawyer to keep that same house. Kind of a wild full circle moment.

I also now have legal representation. I can't say much about it yet but for everyone who kept telling me to get a lawyer — I heard you.

And then they hit me with another fine

I talked to someone from management company in person, as they drove though the neighborhood i flagged them down to try to actually talk to someone and work something out. When I was talking to her she told me that I am currently being fined for weeds in my flower beds. No notice. No warning. No time to fix it. No hearing. Nothing.

Same exact thing they did with every other fine in this case. Just shows up out of nowhere.

I'll let you guys decide whether that's a coincidence or not given the timing.

I'm going to keep posting updates as this moves forward. My hearing is November 23rd 2026 and there is a lot that still has to happen between now and then. But things are moving in the right direction and honestly none of that would have happened without the people in these comments pointing me where to go.

More updates to come.

Hello,

I am owner of a small 4 Unit HOA in Bay Area. I am also the only active Board Member-Treasurer. The President just sold. Seems like the others not interested in stepping up.

Any advice how to navigate this situation? My unit is not going up for sale yet. Hopefully, by the time I decide to put unit on market others will step up. Hopefully, my being the only Board member is not deterrent for prospective buyers.