photo by Jeff Vincent
“Dear PoPville,
I’m on a condo board. Recently in a property management switchover,we discovered that one resident has thousands upon thousands upon thousands of dollars ( i.e. YEARS) worth of unpaid HOA dues.
Our new management company has documented more than 75 emails about this, a little more than 30 phone calls (the resident answered once and promised to pay “soon”) and multiple certified letters. The resident completely refuses to acknowledge any of this, has made no efforts to reply back to us with a payment plan, etc.
We totally get people come across hard times, but the lack of response is telling. The Board has voted unanimously to begin foreclosure proceedings on the resident’s unit to recoup the money, as it is very much needed for major projects this year to keep the building maintained. We are going through the proper channels with our attorney and with the help of the property management company, and are aware that there is a freeze on foreclosures until June, due to COVID.
My question is this – Has anyone gone through this either from a Board perspective or a resident-being-foreclosed-on perspective? Is it successful? Does it take forever? We are hoping that the process triggers his/her mortgage company to pay his/her fees and legal fees and then deals with the resident to recoup payment. If only the resident acknowledged the deficiency and made even the feeblest of attempt at catching up with a payment plan, etc., we probably wouldn’t go after”