Hey Maryland Condo's`

You have a new rule about listing every item in the unit for the purpose of insurance

Condominium associations and insurance agents were left scrambling when the Maryland Court of Appeals recently ruled against a long-standing insurance practice for insuring condominiums. Insurance Agents & Brokers of Maryland is working to resolve the issue via an agreement among affected parties.

The court held that the Maryland Condominium Act does not require the condominium association’s master insurance policy to cover damage to an individual unit. Instead, it would be covered by an owner’s individual policy.

What are the Feds gona do?

I just called the main number for FHA and said that I have seen some trends that involve condo's and home owners across America as cited all over this blog. So I left a number and this blog address; So we'll see if anyone actually cares in Washington and I'll post the response here.

So far communities are not getting one ounce of love.

Socializing Associations without worrying about the rest. in VA

In this recent article on the Washington Post website I was taken back by over all lack of understanding of how Common Interest Communities, CIC, work within the local markets. Take this....

"...recently gave rise to a proposal for a targeted rental inspection program. The plan would give county agents unprecedented access inside homes to ensure they are safe and well-maintained. County officials said an inspection program could protect property values by pressuring renters to keep up their dwellings.

Michelle Casciato, chief of the Neighborhood Services Division, recommended that the board consider creating an inspection program after noticing that as owner-occupied rates fell, building maintenance cases and code enforcement calls from residential tenants increased.

"In our experience, when you have higher rates of renter occupancies, community maintenance standards start to slide," Casciato said. "It's fairly well-documented that rental property is not maintained at the same rate."
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State law allows counties to establish residential inspection districts, giving owners 60 days to register all rental property within those boundaries. Once the inventory list is created, agents can inspect homes to ensure they are up to code and safe. Inspectors would have access once every four years, unless a complaint is registered."

Housing Bust Spurs Rental Fears - washingtonpost.com

Funny thing I figured since this and many of the properties that are part of private communities the local government does not have this right since a communities document's would govern this as provided by the VA HOA ACt. unless they have changed the laws in Virginia.

The communities documents all have, or should, provisions for renters.Existing architectural guidelines covenants and bylaws of a community would already provide procedures for dealing with non conforming properties.

What we really have here is the this government's failure to buttress these private communities rights with legislation that would put teeth into roles of boards, overall supervision and collection of delinquent assessments.

So now local government is going to illegally go around the inherent rights of CIC's to government their own private communities and take over one function all the while doing nothing about the other issues like disclosure, assessments, board transparency, and most importantly financial viability all of which most are missing and Virginia is considered a model in CIC's.

Now take the District of Columbia, they have no HOA Act. That is right, surprise, there are no rules about Homeowner Associations. So boards, renters, contractors, the government just does what they want to do. I wonder how long before a responsible public office steps up to the plate to make this happen.

btw. here is a hint about a big problem that this story did not address. Every underwriter of loans that involve a CICs, including Fannie, Freddy, VA, HUD, FHA, all have owner to renter ratio limits. The most important one is that no more then 49 percent of the owners can be renters. It's the 51% Letter. The reality is that those number are really much higher in many cases like 75-85 percent.

So how is your State of Communities?



I guess we'll call it "Socializing Associations" without worrying about the rest.

Guess who ain't getting any FED help

Thats right all you Tens of Millions of residence in Common Interest Communities.

Who is that Condos, Coops, Townhouse and Singe-family Homeowner Community Associations.

The congress, the reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision OPHEA, Fannie, Freddy, and the VA HUD have all been told by me and for years about the problems in your communities.


Well, they all have not done one thing positive for you and with the exception of a a few states and local authorities none one else has either and in some case are detrimental.

Did you known that the so called news show 60 minutes has been faxed again and again and not one producer thinks the 80 million homeowners are Sh*t out of luck.

So to all the banks, investors, and governmental agencies that own so many of these homes now I believe everyone of you are in for a RICO charge the first one of these in a CIC that you own and sell and do not disclose the state of the communities, budget, documents, and board actions.

If you are not paying your communities assessment while you own one of these because of foreclosure then you are now undermining the very community your property is in and in some cases has forced seniors to have to move out because of habitability of the premise.

No one pays the bills,

the insurance, lights, heat, water, security, upkeep and repairs do not get done. The community goes to HELL.

Who is responsible besides the owners. Everyone that is doing nothing to change it.

Condos, Coops, Townhouse, Singe-family, Homeowner, Community Associations, congress, the reserve, the Office of Thrift Supervision OPHEA, Fannie, Freddy, VA, HUD

Now even HUD knows that there are BIG problems in Communities.

This is a posting IK did about this in 2004. Does anyone want to guess how many regulators or elected officials have even taken notice. Even Mike Wallace at 60 minutes refuses to talk about this issue since i have called faxed and in person asked him too.

Now even HUD knows that there are BIG problems in Communities.
In the recent Federal Register ( 65324 Vol. 69, No. 217/Wednesday, November 10 2004 Proposed Rules ) HUD is proposing a new rule that would amend 24 CFR 203.23(a) to require a provision in the mortgage for the payment of homeowner or condominium association fees among the other payments that the mortgage is required to make under the mortgage. According to HUD, after performing a study on the various state laws they find that there is "great variance amongst the states with the states". Quoting directly "Further, HUD desires to protect the viability of homeowners's and condominium association by providing a method whereby there would be greater assurance of the associations collecting their fees. HUD also wants to protect hose homeowners who do pay their fees from being assessed for maintenance and other expenses that cannot be paid because other homeowners do not pay their fees."
I have a personally been writing to national elected leaders about this issue and others for at least 5-6 years. The fact that HUD when they are in position of a property often their closing contractors refuse to pay community assessment claiming that HUD is not obligated to pay them. In fact on April 8th 2002 Meldoy H. Dennel, Assistant Secretary of HUD responded to my request via Senator Mikulski office about this issues with the following. " The Department feels that modifying the HUD-1 Settlement Statement, as suggested by Mr. Jacobsen, may well ensure that HUD's closing agents are in compliance with State and local laws. A review for implementation of this approach is now underway. That was over 2 years ago.
Well I believe we can all see that from their review that they have discovered that this is a real issue and hence the need for the revisions to the Single Family Mortgage Insurance Program. While I have many felling about this approach I do believe that this is a wake up call and if we do not get the mortgage industry and our elected officials to understand the overall scope of this problem we are just going to create more problems. My desired changes to the HUD-1 were to merely add a place for the name and phone number of the association and management if in place so that communities were at least made part of the process not some after thought as they are still today.
If anyone thinks that by making the mortgage companies responsible for assessment payments this problem will go away has not considered that it is their lack of diligence and correct information on the CondoHoa Certs, i.e. the correct community name, including master or sub associations, the correct number of delinquent accounts, and existence of other financial responsibility this is causing many of the problems that we are experiencing today. I urge those reading this to demand that our national leaders come up with a set of laws that would cover these disclosure.
We must also start to educate ourselves as to what Common Interest Communities are to began with and what is the impact on individuals and society.


Technorati Tags: HUD, FHA, Mortgage, Assessments, Condo. HOA, underwriters

What you are not being told about the housing problems

Pending Home Sales Sink in July - washingtonpost.com

Lawrence Yun, the Realtors trade group's senior economist, called the problems "temporary," and related to jumbo home loans above $417,000 that can't be packaged into securities sold to investors by government-sponsored mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

ONCE AGAIN, if the community you live in has more than 10 percent of the unit owners behind in their assessments then all federal underwriting options are off the table. You cannot refinance the loan because of deliquencies in Associations fees and having too many owner investors will disqualify you as well.

It's all there in the 921 Form and every HUD1 requires one when a Common Interest Community is part of the land convenants.

As a general priciple communities cannot run a deficit budget because bills for services have to be paid and the repair and mantainance of the falicities are impacted. This more ofen than not results in a special assessments to be paid by members of the community.

Once you have increasing debit and declining assets or this case clubhouses, sidewalks lights and other amenities that are not repaired and maintained and the dues keep going up and the special assessments pile on who is going to be left holding the bag.

Having talked to every major figure on the Hill about the impact of non payement of assessments and then have done nothing about this and in some case have proposed laws that make the matters worse I can tell you they all get a failing grade on support for those Tens of Millions of owners in a Community Associations.

We well be naming names as the election year approaches becuase they too need to be held accountable might have to do a voting index on this subject. HUMMMMMMMMMM.




Technorati Tags: Housing, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, HUD, FHA, Housing bubble, Credit, Condominium, Cooperative, Homeowner, association, HOA, CONDO, COOP, Community, Congress, FED,

Bail-Out Deadlines and what they forgot to print in the Post.

Bail-Out Deadlines by E-Mail - washingtonpost.com

Bail-Out Deadlines by E-Mail

By Elizabeth Razzi
Sunday, July 15, 2007; Page F05

Buying a condominium? A house in a neighborhood run by a homeowners association? You had better stay on top of your e-mail.

A very large and extremely important document could be coming your way. Its arrival starts the clock ticking on a short period during which you can cancel the deal, should you desire to back out of your purchase contract.
New laws that took effect in Virginia on July 1 change the process for distributing the extensive disclosure packages that must be given to anyone buying a home that is part of a condo or homeowners association. While the law directly affects Virginians, buyers in the District and Maryland, where the disclosure requirements are not as detailed as they are in the Old Dominion, may find the effects spilling over as management companies that do business in all three jurisdictions adopt new practices.

If your in the District of Columbia and you happen to live in a Townhouse or Singe Family Homeowner Association you can stop reading this article here.

Why?

Because the leaders of the District have failed for years now at mine and others prodding to establish an HOA Act which is what is the triggering mechanism in this need to disclose. As the District does not have such an Act there is no specific law as is the case in MD or VA to disclose anything about rules and regulations.

Whats more in Maryland the HOA Act does not require that financial information about the community be provided to the buyer. So the budget, pending litigations or special assessments are made available to the new homeowners after they move in. Seem pretty fair to me and you too I bet. Having heard one of the principle in this ruse brag about how they fought to keep this from becoming part of the law. I have to wonder of the community and homeowners share this excitement with them. What I was told is that it would be too hard to provide this information at closing time.

So is there any wonder in what area of the housing market the last foot will fall. If you have been reading this blog you know that I know that HOA and Condo fees are not being paid and thus these communities are running negative budgets. But since the District and Maryland don't disclose this information before settlement those perspective homeowners that are buying may not and have no idea what the status of the communities financial health is or will be in the future until rules, regulations and financial information are fully disclosed.



So I have an idea for Elizabeth why not do a story on why the District has failed to enact such a law or why Maryland does not require the Financial s to be included.

Technorati Tags: Homeowners Associations, Disclosure Laws, HOA Documnets, Rules & regulations