Maintenance Responsibilities
Q.: I am a member of an HOA and I have submitted a community request form to have the exterior wood trim of my home repaired or replaced. I have a vinyl and brick townhouse, but the exterior trim is all wood and parts are starting to rot. In my request form I have provided pictures of the rotting wood and areas needing repair. Our association is responsible for all exterior maintenance and replacements, including the roof. I am now being told by the Board of Directors that they will only pay $400 to $600 and the rest will have to be paid by me. This boils down to a special assessment. Is this practice legal and if it is, did it have to go before the community for a vote? Can the Board impose this change in policy by themselves?
A.: You pose an interesting question involving the limits of the power of the Board of Directors. The first place to start to determine the propriety of the action of the board is your recorded association Declaration and Amendments to that Declaration.
HOA declarations generally spell out the maintenance responsibilities which are often divided between the association and the homeowners in an HOA. HOAs vary in the manner in which maintenance responsibilities are addressed, especially in townhome style communities. Some communities require that the homeowner handle all of the exterior maintenance, but require that approval be obtained for any changes to color or materials to be applied to the exterior before work can begin. Other communities place the entire responsibility for exterior maintenance, including landscape maintenance, on the association. Others fall somewhere in between these two concepts. In recent years it has become more popular to put the responsibility on the association so as to insure regularity and uniformity of repair work which generally enhances the appearance of the neighborhood and the value of the properties in it.
It is a novel concept in our experience for the association to have the responsibility but put a limit on how much is to be spent on a given home or repair job. Who is responsible for detecting the need for repair? Are the homeowners expected to become maintenance analysts? This approach seems somewhat unfair since the homeowner has little control over the rate of deterioration of exterior wood or other materials which can be accelerated by something as simple as the direction the building faces. Is this approach intended to reward those owners who are vigilant and call for repairs before the problems get too serious and cost over $600?
Your documents may give the authority to the Board of Directors to make the rule you have stated in your question, but if not, and your original recorded Declaration requires all exterior maintenance to be done by the association, then unless there is an amendment to the declaration which has created this limitation, your Association should be paying all the cost. Generally, the Board does not have the authority to change the requirements of the Declaration; rather, the owners must agree to the change by a super majority stated in the Declaration. Perhaps there are not enough funds in the reserves of the Association to deal with all the maintenance requests and the Board is trying to deal with that anticipated shortfall in this creative manner. It may be that the regular assessments need to be increased to create a larger fund from which to draw for these repairs.
Hopefully this has given you some food for thought on this topic and you can read your Declaration and/or go to the next board meeting and get some answers.