Page 10 - New England Condominium February 2021

10 NEW ENGLAND CONDOMINIUM -FEBRUARY 2021 NEWENGLANDCONDO.COM Flynn Law Group 185 Devonshire St., Suite 401 • Boston, MA 02110 617-988-0633 “Quality Representation at Reasonable Rates - $150/Hr.” Contact Attorney Frank Flynn Frank@flynnlaw-ne.com www.flynnlaw-ne.com ATTORNEYS See Our Display Ad on Page 9 Condominium and Real Estate Law Phone: (781) 817-4900 Direct: (781) 817-4603 Fax: (781) 817-4910 We may be dressed up, but we aren’t afraid to get our hands dirty. www.lawmtm.com See Our Display Ad on Back Cover Merrill & McGeary 100 State Street, Suite 200 Boston, MA 02109 617-523-1760 • Fax 617-523-4893 Contact: Mike Merrill, Esq. mmerrill@merrillmcgeary.com ACCOUNTANTS Please submit Pulse items to Pat Gale at patgale@yrinc.com Accounting • Auditing • Taxes • Consulting Worcester 67 Millbrook Street 508-797-5200 Grafton 80 Worcester Street 508-839-0020 Holden 795 Main Street 508-829-5544 M Love Associates, & LLC Certified Public Accountants Serving Condominium Associations mlove 2.25 x 2.5 condo association color 9.19.2017.indd 1 9/19/17 12:59 PM See Our Display Ad on Page 7 We’ve known of vendors walking off the job because of interference from owners. It’s a real problem in many communities.” In the final analysis, both condo unit own- ers and co-op shareholders are well advised to learn how their communities work. Home- ownership may be the American Dream, but it’s best not to turn it into your own personal nightmare through a lack of understanding of how your community works and how it af- fects you. n A J Sidransky is a staff writer/reporter for New England Condominium, and a pub- lished novelist. it isn’t required by law. Typically, the doc- uments can be found at the local registrar of deeds. Attorneys should include these documents in a purchase and sale agree- ment that the seller will provide to the buyer. If they’re not in the purchase and sale agreement, the seller has no obliga- tion to do so in Massachusetts.” Shapiro adds that “more often than not, buyers don’t review these documents. They don’t understand the importance of them. They often don’t want to pay their attorney to review the documents for them either— but that’s a big mistake. A good example of why that is is when a purchaser has a dog, but the community has a no pets policy and the new unit owner didn’t know that until after moving in. “You can’t legislate or mandate taking a class to learn about documents,” Shap- iro notes. “It would be unenforceable. It’s a question of human behavior and mindset. People don’t want to be told what they can and can’t do in their home. Owners not in compliance will often say, ‘I wish someone had told me this—I’d never have bought a condominium.’ If you’re not willing to pay your lawyer to read and explain the docu- ments, they aren’t doing extra work for free”—and consequently, you may wind up with some unpleasant surprises if you transgress rules and protocols you opted out of learning about. You Can’t Always Get What You Want Committing to living in a multifamily community means ceding some control over your home to the common good. Many shareholders and unit owners react negatively to interference in their deci- sions and choices, but this is a fact of life, especially in co-ops, where boards have approval rights over almost everything— particularly if it involves any kind of alter- ation work. In a single-family home, you can add a whole floor if you want to; in a co-op, it’s not so easy. “Unit owners and shareholders should want their buildings to have procedures for alterations,” says Schechter, “because a failure to carefully review proposed plans for an intended renovation can have dan- gerous consequences. In addition to an alteration application or agreement, the shareholder or unit owner should also submit a description of the proposed al- teration and architectural plan, if neces- sary. These plans should then be approved by the building’s architect or engineer be- fore the work is allowed to commence.” Shapiro concurs with Schechter’s ob- servations. “It happens all the time,” she says, “the ‘rules don’t apply to me’ attitude. It happens in particular when unit owners interact with managers; ‘You can’t tell me what to do, I pay your salary.’ Unit owners may even go outside and try to intervene with vendors like gardeners, pavers, etc. A LOOK AT... continued from page 9 that has spilled over into the late fall season. The continued uptick in activity is largely due to the delayed start in the spring, a short- age of inventory, and extremely low interest rates,” 2020 MAR President Kurt Thompson, broker at Keller Williams Realty North Cen- tral in Leominster, said in a press release. “We anticipate COVID spread could tamp down activity in early 2021, but expect a return to a very robust and energized market by mid- to late spring.” According to MAR, there were 1,894 closed condominium sales in November 2020, compared to 1,686 in 2019. The me- dian prices for condos and single-family homes were up 7.8% to $415,000, and 18.5% to $480,000, respectively, compared to the previous year. The report noted that “inventory remains constrained in most market segments” with the month’s supply of inventory down 60.7% for single-family homes and 12% for condos. Tight Market Predicted in NH This Year New Hampshire Realtors are anticipating a continued seller’s market of tight inventory and rising prices in 2021. The 2021 presidents of the Seacoast Board of Realtors and the Strafford County Board of Realtors — Ted Mantos and Lee Ann Parks — said that all signs point to a continued seller’s market of tight inventory and rising prices. Both work for the Bean Group, based in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “Presently, it is a seller’s market, as inven- tory is low, rates are low, and there are a lot of buyers vying for the same properties, caus- ing the sale price to escalate over the asking price,” said Parks. “I do not see this changing in 2021. With rates as low as they are, I do not anticipate the market changing to a buyer’s market anytime soon.” Mass. Sale Prices Boom, While Rents Drop Condominium and single-family home sale prices in Massachusetts have continued to surge despite the coronavirus pandemic, according to a new report from The Warren Group. The median price of a single-family home in the state jumped 11.4% to $445,500 — and PULSE continued from page 4 condo prices shot up 9.2% to $415,000, the largest single-year increases in over a decade, the reported said. “The acceleration and momentum for price increases seem to be the stand-out fea- ture of last year to me,” Tim Warren, CEO of The Warren Group, told the Boston Herald. The most expensive place to buy a home or condo? Nantucket, where the median sale price for a single-family home is just over $2 million — a 34.2% jump over the prior year, the largest of any county, Warren Group data show. Prefer a condominium? The median price for a condo in Nantucket in 2020 was $824,000 — 4.4% more than in 2019. Berk- shire County, in western Massachusetts, saw the biggest year-over-year jump in me- dian price for a condo, rising almost 60% to $285,000 in 2020. The surging home sales market, the War- ren Report noted, is in stark contrast to the rental markets around the state, where prices have plummeted since the onset of the pan- demic. Law & Legislation Mass. Judge Says Condo Board Can’t Force Removal of Sign A state Superior Court judge has told a western Massachusetts condominium associ- ation that it cannot order residents to remove a “Black Lives Matter” sign at their unit. According to the Daily Hampshire Ga- zette, Judge Richard Carey cited the free speech provision of the Massachusetts Con- stitution when he ruled that Margery Jess, a resident of Summer Hill Estates development in Belchertown, could not be forced to re- move the sign or pay daily fines. The judge said that condominium owners or their ten- ants are allowed to post non-commercial, constitutionally protected signs at or near their condominiums without prior permis- sion from the association’s board of trustees. The case was filed on behalf of the resident by the Northampton law firm Sasson Turn- bull Ryan & Hoose and the American Civil Liberties Union. The ruling was agreed to by all parties and will not be appealed, the news- paper reported. The judge had previously issued a prelimi- nary injunction allowing Jess to keep her sign in place while the case was being litigated. Carey’s ruling permanently enjoins the con- dominium’s trustees from interfering with Jess’ rights to post non-commercial, constitu- tionally protected signs. Luke Ryan, one of the attorneys who worked on the case, called it a landmark deci- sion, the Gazette reported. “I think it clarifies the free speech rights of condominium own- ers,” said Bill Newman, director of the ACLU of Massachusetts’ Western Regional Law Of- fice. n