The Department of Regulatory Agencies released its report detailing the past years activity regarding homeowners associations. The Report indicates that the Homeowners Association Information Office received 478 unique complaints through December 15, 2011 (although complaints for 2012 are expected to rise as more people become aware of the ability to make complaints).
The four largest areas of complaints related to associations were:
- Failure to produce records with 78 complaints or 17.4% of all complaints;
- Transparency generally with 76 or 16.67% of the complaints;
- Not following the governing documents with 64 complaints equaling 14.04% of all complaints;
- Failing to listen to owner concerns having 57 complaints or 12.5% of all complaints.
All of these topics were addressed in 2005 when CCIOA was amended by SB 100, the “Homeowners Bill of Rights”. As you know these additions, require each association to adopt “good governance policies” which set forth how the association will permit owners to access records, permit owners to attend meetings of the Board of Directors and how the Association conducts its business in covenant enforcement, collecting assessments and adopting rules.
Has your association adopted these policies? If you have them, are the currently being used on a regular basis? By routinely following these policies, an association should largely be able to avoid the types of complaints noted in the DORA report. Given the number of complaints in this area, we can expect this topic to be revisited in the future by the legislature.