Off Their Radar?

Why are Common Interest Developments Not on Party Platforms?

   It's all about politics this year. More to the point, its all about Republicans and Democrats. This is the season of the candidates, the issues, and the Parties. We hear everything about illegal immigration, the economy, and the war. The two political parties and their nominees for public offices everywhere are consumed with new and old answers to such social and economic issues as universal health care, housing, and interest rates. This is business as usual in an election year.

 

            However, if you listen to all of the speeches, read all of the political flyers, hear all of the endorsements, you will still hear nary a word about common interest developments, homes for millions of Americans. "Who cares?" you say, "Elections are about important national and state issues, not about something as mundane as my homeowners association." That's probably true at the national level where the debate about our country's future rages over problems that are often close to insoluble. But what about at the state and local levels? What about the candidates for city council, the state legislature, or governor?

 

            At the state level, housing and real estate law and land use should carry a great deal of weight with politicians, and common interest developments are all about those issues. Where should we build new ones? How do we make them green? How do we govern those that already exist? How do we make them affordable? What do we do with the projects that have reached the end of their useful lives? These are issues which can and will have an enormous impact on any state's housing stock, its economy, and its future...

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We're on the Radio!

Listen to community association talk show host Shu Bartholomew interview your blogger Tyler Berding on her radio show, "On the Commons." We discuss the past and the future of common interest developments--some of it fanciful, but most of it is the real deal. Shu says: "Some of his observations about today's projects are dead on and some of his visions would take American homeowners in yet another direction.   Please join us On The Commons.  We'll talk about lessons learned and hear some of his thoughts on where we may be headed with this experiment in communal living.  Will it be a brave new world or a scary place to be?  Tune in and you decide."

Click on the title link above to read her summary and listen to the show!

The Decline of Suburbia?

We have written many times in this blog about the benefits and perhaps, the inevitability, of reversing the trend to suburbia that started half a century ago. Conserving resources, shrinking commute times, re-developing old community associations and finding social benefits to living in higher density communities are all becoming increasingly obvious strategies as this century gets started. Ben Tracy, writing for CBS News, has not only captured a sample of this trend, but he also predicts that this could portend the decline of suburbia.  

To read Tracy's report, click the title link above.

Hidden Housing Opportunities--It Happened in Houston

Earlier this year we wrote about re-developing older community associations into new, higher density housing located in or near newly expanding urban cores (see February post: "Back to the Housing Future".) And now, we have a real instance of that happening--in Houston. 108 condo units have been consolidated for sale to a developer who will build a high-rise on that 5 acre parcel. 

To read more, click the title link above.

The Condo Conversion Budget

How do you Learn the Truth?

We have written on these pages before about the economic crisis that can befall the buyers of condominiums converted from old apartment buildings.[1] Buyers wake up to find that the home they thought could be owned and maintained with an attractively low monthly assessment turns out to be a nightmare of hidden expense. Understandably, they want to know the truth, and the truth is that a 25-30 year-old building just cannot be evaluated with the same criteria that you would use for a new one, and the financial plan used to maintain it also cannot be the same as one used for new construction...

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Predicting the Future of Community Associations

An Outline for the Next 50 Years

Co-operative, private maintenance of commonly owned land and structures in small villages and towns has been around for thousands of years. But in California, “common area,” and the community associations that maintain it, have only been regulated by statute for a few decades. The California Condominium Act was enacted in 1963. The Davis-Stirling Act, in use today, was enacted in 1985. We began seeing condominiums massed produced for California consumers in the early Sixties when the McKuen Corporation started building their ubiquitous fourplex buildings throughout California...

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A Reader Reports Back

Here is a letter I received from one of our readers:

Tyler,

The pen is mightier than the sword. I have seen it work on our association that was far less than noble.I took the advice of the association's attorney given to me several years back; and that was to embarrass the bad members of the board. I published several letters called the HOA Observer and only recorded the facts, and the facts where the board was not meeting the law.

Eventually the management company became more compliant in obeying the law and refused to do illegal activities as they once did with the board. My letters generated interest by other good people in the association that had no idea what the board was doing. I campaigned for them in my monthly letters and two were elected by the membership and the membership discarded the bad director(s).We now have a board that will walk "the straight and narrow", and will obey all of the state statutes, or CC&R's and the bylaws.

This victory was accomplished with only honesty and the good old fashioned way of American democracy. We did it without litigation or other legal enforcement; without intimidation, coercion or any corrupt or with legal council.We now will conduct all of the board's business at the board's regular meetings in an orderly manner, and the exceptions will be handled by legal means. We are living in a democracy; all we need to do is to use the democratic laws we already have; they actually work; they really do!We have never foreclosed on anyone's home and won't. The banks have foreclosed on homes but we have not.

We have only put liens on back monthly dies which is paid when the property is sold; to be fair to the rest on the membership.I do not see that our situation is unique and this would work with countless other associations with similar problems.I have attached the reserve irregularities report I made to the board and distributed to the membership along with the campaign newsletter.I have also included a chart of the regression analysis of the last eight years on our operating expenses. It shows that inflation is killing us. I excluded the earthquake premium which was canceled two years ago that would have skewed the data. The professional accountant and I will work on and make the least painful way to improve the reserve account funding.

The accountant has your book.I owe a lot to you and your book on "The Uncertain Future of Homeowners Association." That book may have saved us from an uncertain future.