To disclose or not to disclose? That is the question community association boards wrestle with on a regular basis. If homeowners want to see the association’s financial records, should the books be open to them? What about a list of owne…

For board members, the time spent serving their association and fellow residents can be among the most strenuous yet rewarding periods in their lives. For years, they make decisions that affect their community in the present and may co…

For most people, “foaming at the mouth” is just an expression. Attorney Ellen Hirsch de Haan has encountered the real thing – and not at an animal shelter, but at a condominium owners’ meeting. A former president who recently h…

Q Do you have any information on what to do about a neighbor who admittedly has a problem with cockroaches and occasionally mice? I moved into a new unit about a month ago. I had an exterminator before I even moved in, and after a month…

 When people mention “suburbs,” it’s not uncommon to think of quiet towns – bedroom communities – lacking the vibrancy of the nearby city that residents head off to each  morning. Malden, Massachusetts, however, though only a 12-minute tra…

 Usually, life in a condo goes on uneventfully on a day-to-day basis, with  routine maintenance, elections, gardening, move-ins, move-outs and the like  taking up most of its attention. Every once in a while, however, something  comes up t…

A lot of people buy condominiums because they never want to have to mow a lawn or shovel snow again. But eight owners of University Park Lofts in Worcester, Massachusetts, had no choice after the developer at the mostly-vacant 37-unit …

 In today’s difficult economy, more and more homeowner associations are facing the  prospect of dealing with some form of distress. Whether it’s physical distress from lack of funding for repairs or financial distress from  foreclosures an…

Self-managed condominiums are a puzzle to many, especially considering that one major driving force for purchasing a condominium is to offload countless common home ownership responsibilities to someone else. A community that assumes the s…

At the vast majority of condominiums, a management company’s duties can be fairly straightforward – maintain the common areas, advise the trustees about operations, and keep financial documents and other records. But in the rarified atmo…