This one happened right under my nose here in the Denver area. The Denver vicinity, as some of you know, is home to one of the biggest HOA embezzling cases in the country. A management company stole homeowners blind in a largely minority community. But these homeowners were smart enough to catch this jerk. The bitterness, though, never really goes away.
Now there’s another incident, this one in the same part of town. David W. Martin, PMG Enterprises Inc., has had to surrender his state license to manage Homeowners Associations. He may be the first to do so under Colorado’s new licensing law. The law isn’t perfect. It has very few teeth and some appointed state officials who are really out of their league.
For the record, here’s a link to the story in the Denver Business Journal.
Across the country, more and more major news agencies are either doing, or are planning extensive stories on the HOA mess. It’s more than a mess. It’s a national outrage. It perpetuates the outrageous lie that a Homeowners Association will protect your property values. Not in my experience!
Here’s the link to an excellent story beginning with the victimization of an innocent family.
For you HOA board members who are planning on buying drones to spy on your neighbors, you’ll have to watch out for some new regulations. Your drones will have to be registered in a federal database. Although I generally hate excess federal regulations, this one is kind of cool because your name and address will go into a database which is a public record. We’ll all be able to learn which board members or management companies are using this incredibly invasive technology.
Christmas. What a wonderful holiday. I love it as much as I love Hanukkah and the Seder and all the other religious holidays. In fact, I love any religious person’s special days. It’s just what we do in America.
But why, oh why, are Homeowners Associations coming down so hard on holiday lights? I get it that some light displays are over the top. I get it that gorgeous light displays bring more traffic into a neighborhood. But the greater spirit I see during the holidays satisfies an inner part of my soul. Homeowners Associations, as far as I know, are the only entity in America where expressing your religious beliefs is verboten.
The Illinois Supreme Court has handed down some pretty goofy decisions on behalf of Homeowners Associations. I loved the one last year, the ruling that gave untrained, private HOA security guards police powers, the ability to pull over motorists and hand out tickets.
This latest one is a humdinger. It makes any new buyer of a condo responsible for all unpaid assessments, fines and legal costs run up by the previous owner IF it fails to pay the first monthly assessment on time. Once again, ask yourself what financial organization in its right corporate mind would invest in an HOA? And if you can’t find lenders, what does that do to property values?
