Q. We live in a small condominium association, and like everyone these days, we’re concerned about rising costs, including our condo assessments. We believe that a couple of owners are delinquent, and that those non-payments will result i…
Q. I have a question about what constitutes a legal vote by the board. What I am seeing at meetings is that a member makes a motion, it is seconded, and then the president declares it passed. Shouldn’t there be an actual vote with a recor…
Q. Can a husband and wife serve at the same time on a condo board, or is it a conflict of interest? There are three board members in our 12-unit condo complex. The husband is the president, and the wife is the treasurer. Is this allowed?…
If you live in a condominium, cooperative or HOA, guess what? You’re part of a participatory mini-democracy run by an elected group of volunteers. As such, it’s to your benefit to get involved in how your community is governed in order to p…
Residents in condo and HOA communities are frequently quite busy. Boards generally consist of elected volunteers who nearly always have other jobs and lives outside their duties as trustees. So while a professional management company can ha…
One of the unique aspects of life in an HOA, condo, or co-op is that in many ways, a building or association is a microcosm of the larger world outside it. It can suffer from the same factionalism and partisan bickering as any political ent…
The words communication and community share a common root. It comes as no surprise, then, that the success of communities depends on effective communication between board members, managers, and residents. In multifamily residential communit…
If you live in a condo or a co-op, you most likely have heard the term fiduciary duty, usually in reference to the responsibilities and obligations of board members and management. But what is a fiduciary duty? In essence, it’s a legal rela…
Members of condominium and co-op boards are often faced with conflicting interests and messages relating to matters of transparency and discretion. As a matter of good governance, transparency is always the preferred policy, whether you’re …
Q. I was a condominium board member of a 60-unit condominium association for four years. During that time, I kept copies of everything regarding incidents, meeting minutes, emails, anything that I submitted, contracts that I worked on, …