“Dear PoPville,
I’m an owner of a condo unit in a 22-unit building that has been a condo for ~15 years (I have owned for 3.5 years). When I bought, all financial documents seemed okay and my realtor said she thought it looked fine. But after buying, some estimates for future repairs were done and it turned out that we’re very behind on reserves funding. I joined the Board and (with all of the other Board members) voted to increase the HOA fees by inflation + 10% for at least the next 3 years (this is still not enough for fixing our reserve situation, and we will need a special assessment for work needing to be done in the next few years, but it felt like a start).
After serving on the Board for 2 years, I had to leave it, because of a 2-year term limit (I can try to join again next year). But I just found out that current Board members have decided that HOA fees are already higher than they expected when they bought and they don’t want to pay more money, so they voted to only increase the HOA fees by 3% each year and no more (to account for inflation – even though inflation is more than that currently). I’m frustrated by this, because we have a lot of documents on how our reserves are bad and that we need to increase the fees. It also concerns me for if I go to sell in the next couple years, because being behind on reserves will drive down the sales price.
Doesn’t the Board have a “fiduciary duty” to the building’s finances, not to owners finances? Is there any way for owners to force the Board to increase fees to fix our reserves issues before they hurt our unit values too much? I’ve done a lot of online research and reading of our by-laws, but am having a hard time figuring this out because I’m not a legal expert (and being dyslexic, legal English is even more of a nightmare than most things I have to read through).”