What Condominium Owners Don’t Know Can Hurt Them and Drive Everyone Else Crazy

Shhhhh…

Sev­eral weeks ago, I went to the Prop­erty Man­age­ment Office of my con­do­minium to make a for­mal com­plaint against chil­dren play­ing in the com­mon areas of our build­ing. I wanted a clar­i­fi­ca­tion on whether they are allowed to play in the area near my unit, since there are two beau­ti­ful play­grounds just out­side our build­ing. I com­plained that they were destroy­ing the plants in the com­mon area and that twice, a ball bounced on my windows.

The kids have stopped play­ing in the area ever since. And every­time they see me, they scam­per. (evil laugh…) Kid­ding aside, I think the point of my com­plaint is the fact that peo­ple who live in con­do­mini­ums shouldn’t act as if only they own the com­mon areas. Con­do­mini­ums shouldn’t be treated the way you live if you have a house and lot all to your own. There are rules to fol­low to keep order and so that life is eas­ier for everyone.

This arti­cle is by Janet Aron­son on the impli­ca­tions of condo living.

By Janet Oulou­sian Aronson

Can we talk? I’m ask­ing you, the con­do­minium owner who thinks your com­mon area fees are too high and so is refus­ing to pay them. And you, too, the unit owner over in the cor­ner with the Dal­ma­tians you assumed some­how weren’t included in the “no pets” pro­vi­sion of your condominium’s bylaws.

I get calls about you and own­ers like you all the time, from the con­do­minium board mem­bers and prop­erty man­agers you are suing, or who are suing you. But per­haps if we can spend a few min­utes talk­ing calmly, with­out shout­ing and with­out fil­ing legal briefs, maybe I can explain some of the details of con­do­minium liv­ing that you, and many of your neigh­bors, don’t entirely understand.

Com­mon Charges Aren’t Optional

Com­mon area fees and spe­cial assess­ments are a good place to start. The law in this area is about as clear as the law can be. You have to pay your share of the com­mon area expenses every month and you’re obliged to pay a spe­cial assess­ment if the board levies one. If you think the fees are too high or ques­tion the need for an assess­ment, by all means request an expla­na­tion and insist on review­ing the doc­u­men­ta­tion. But even if you want to ques­tion the assess­ment, you can­not legally refuse to pay it. Com­mon fees and assess­ments are like your taxes; you have the right to chal­lenge them, but you have to pay them first. If you don’t, the con­do­minium asso­ci­a­tion can assess late fees and inter­est; and if the board has to hire an attor­ney to col­lect, you are going to be respon­si­ble for pay­ing the association’s legal expenses and court costs as well.

Although all of this is spelled out in the con­do­minium doc­u­ments you reviewed (you did review them didn’t you?) before you pur­chased your unit, you still don’t accept these require­ments or don’t believe they apply. Even worse, although you wouldn’t go to a foot doc­tor for an ear­ache, you hire attor­neys spe­cial­iz­ing in areas other than con­do­mini­ums, who really don’t under­stand the con­do­minium frame­work, and who file futile suits on your behalf. The end result is always the same – you amass whop­ping legal bills (your own and the association’s) plus inter­est and penal­ties on top of the back con­do­minium fee or assess­ment, which at day’s end, you still have to pay.

The Asso­ci­a­tion Is You

Unit own­ers often act more like apart­ment ten­ants, assum­ing that they have the same right to with­hold con­do­minium fees from the asso­ci­a­tion that ten­ants have to with­hold rent from the land­lord. The thing is, you’re not a ten­ant and the con­do­minium asso­ci­a­tion isn’t your land­lord; it’s a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of all the unit own­ers, includ­ing you. If you with­hold your com­mon area expense pay­ment from the asso­ci­a­tion, you are really with­hold­ing it, at least partly, from your­self. With­out the com­mon expense pay­ments the asso­ci­a­tion can­not oper­ate or pro­vide the services.

This us against them men­tal­ity doesn’t make much sense. The board mem­bers aren’t the evil empire; they are own­ers, just like you. They have to pay com­mon area expenses and if they approve a spe­cial assess­ment to finance an unan­tic­i­pated and un-budgeted expense, they have to pay that, too.

Talk about hav­ing your cake and eat­ing it, too! Every­one seems to like the idea that the con­do­minium asso­ci­a­tion, or the man­age­ment com­pany it hires, will han­dle all the admin­is­tra­tive details, pay the bills, coor­di­nate main­te­nance and repairs, and gen­er­ally make sure every­thing runs smoothly. But hardly any­one likes the notion that the board mem­bers can make deci­sions that affect them. Unfor­tu­nately (or for­tu­nately), that is the essence of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive gov­ern­ment, which is what a con­do­minium is. And the fail­ure to grasp that cen­tral point is respon­si­ble for a lot of unnec­es­sary con­flict in many con­do­minium communities.

What Rules?

Rules and reg­u­la­tions also rank high among the sources of con­do­minium con­flicts. Unit own­ers sim­ply don’t like the idea of con­do­minium rules, or don’t think the rules should apply to them. How else to explain the num­ber of own­ers who pro­fess to be shocked to dis­cover that they can’t oper­ate a home-based auto­mo­bile repair shop from the con­do­minium park­ing lot, or stunned to learn that their pet boa con­stric­tor falls under the cat­e­gory of pets that are not allowed? The fail­ure to review the rules and reg­u­la­tions before buy­ing, or the refusal to believe or accept them, also explains why so many new own­ers arrive with three cars in tow, even though the doc­u­ments state clearly that each owner is allowed only one park­ing space. Do they assume no one will notice the extra vehi­cles, or object when they occupy spots belong­ing to some­one else?

Although the ten­ant men­tal­ity sur­faces when it comes to repairs (some­one else should make them) and com­mon area fees (you shouldn’t have to pay them), when it comes to rules that gov­ern what you can and can’t do to your unit, the own­er­ship men­tal­ity takes over and the “home is my cas­tle” debate begins. You can do pretty much any­thing you want inside your con­do­minium unit cas­tle, but if you want to change the exte­rior, even a lit­tle, you prob­a­bly will have to get prior per­mis­sion from the board. And if the board doesn’t like the idea of a mural depict­ing the Bat­tle of Get­tys­burg, you won’t be able to paint it on the out­side of your garage door. You may own the door, but the asso­ci­a­tion con­trols what goes on it. Under­stand­ing and accept­ing this real­ity can elim­i­nate the dispute.

The Noise Next Door

Noise is another prob­lem that bedev­ils con­do­minium own­ers and the gov­ern­ing boards that often find them­selves in the mid­dle of noise com­plaints. If you are shar­ing walls with your neigh­bors, odds are you are going to hear some­thing of what goes on in their units. Even the best sound­proof­ing won’t block every sound. But a strange phe­nom­e­non afflicts many con­do­minium own­ers; they become acutely and some­times irra­tionally sen­si­tive to noise.

Noise com­plaints often reflect, in fairly equal mea­sure, a lack of tol­er­ance on one side and a lack of con­sid­er­a­tion on the other. But some­times noise lev­els really are exces­sive. In those cases, it helps if the affected owner can get some inde­pen­dent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the prob­lem – ide­ally, another owner who will con­firm that the sounds com­ing from above or below are not just notice­able but unbear­able. Although con­do­minium boards usu­ally try to stay out of these neighbor-vs.-neighbor dis­putes, some­times they can medi­ate effec­tively and where nec­es­sary, they can inter­vene offi­cially – impos­ing fines, for exam­ple, if noisy own­ers refuse to reform.

In one recent sit­u­a­tion, an owner insisted on using her tram­po­line every night, start­ing around 10 p.m., much to the dis­may of her down­stairs neigh­bor, who did not appre­ci­ate the sound effects. When polite requests, medi­a­tion, and fines all failed, the asso­ci­a­tion got a court order requir­ing the owner to stop using her tram­po­line inside.
That is an extreme exam­ple. In most noise com­plaints, the prob­lem is not too much noise but too lit­tle tol­er­ance. You can rea­son­ably insist that a neigh­bor not play rock music at full blast at mid­night or that an insom­niac refrain from vac­u­um­ing or saw­ing wood at 2 a.m. But it is not rea­son­able to com­plain if some­one who works the night shift show­ers reg­u­larly before dawn. There is a dif­fer­ence between exces­sive noise and the sounds of daily liv­ing – an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion that too many own­ers fail to make.

Hope for the Future?

I had thought that noise dis­putes along with the other prob­lems I’ve men­tioned would dis­ap­pear, or at least lessen over time, as peo­ple became more famil­iar with con­do­mini­ums. But I con­tinue to see the same issues, the same mis­un­der­stand­ings, and the same com­plaints in each new gen­er­a­tion of con­do­minium buy­ers, and I see them in all kinds of devel­op­ments and among all kinds of own­ers. The issues I’m describ­ing are uni­ver­sal and seem­ingly intractable in the con­do­minium world.

I don’t think the sit­u­a­tion is hope­less, how­ever. Progress is cer­tainly pos­si­ble, but it requires good com­mu­ni­ca­tion and a will­ing­ness to appre­ci­ate the com­mu­nity asso­ci­a­tion con­cept. That means under­stand­ing and accept­ing the require­ments out­lined in the asso­ci­a­tion doc­u­ments, the applic­a­ble law, and the role and respon­si­bil­i­ties of the board. They say see­ing is believ­ing, so maybe the best solu­tion is to require every unit owner to serve at least one term as a mem­ber of the board!