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.


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