Woman Tries to Get Back Condo Lost in Fee Dispute

On the cold nights when she has to sleep in the front seat of her Datsun 280Z, Alyce Vrba often thinks back to her condominium in Rancho Palos Verdes.

The 42-year-old businesswoman lived for 10 years at Ridgegate, a guarded complex of 350 units, four pools and two tennis courts that sprawls across 35 acres near the summit of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

From the time she arrived in 1978, Vrba said, she used her training as an interior designer to make over her home: A walk-in closet became an Art Deco bar. An entire bedroom wall was painted with a Rousseau jungle scene. Five Burmese cats added warmth.

“It was my own little fortress, in a way,” Vrba said. “There was a feeling of security.”

That was before Vrba stopped paying her maintenance dues to the Ridgegate Homeowners Assn. Vrba said that in 1987, she began withholding fees of about $165 a month because, she said, the maintenance firm hired by the association wasn’t caring for common areas near her unit.

Condominium Sold

A year and a half later, she has been evicted. Her home, which is worth about $300,000, has been sold by the Ridgegate Homeowners Assn. to pay $1,900 in maintenance fees that the association said she owed.

Vrba’s lawyer, Francis Pizzulli, said foreclosure was an extreme remedy for a $1,900 bill. “It’s amazing,” Pizzulli said. “You hear these stories about homeless people, and you think it’s drugs or alcohol. But something like this is kind of shocking.”

Vrba, who said she has been living with friends and sometimes in her car, has filed two lawsuits seeking to recover her property. Both are pending in Los Angeles Superior Court, although several preliminary rulings have gone against Vrba. On Tuesday, Superior Court Judge David Yaffe removed legal attachments that had prevented the buyer of her condominium from selling it.

Vrba’s complaints center on what she said was the homeowner association’s failure to warn her that she could lose her home. A day before her condo was sold, Vrba’s lawsuits claim, she was assured that the sale would be postponed to let her pay the overdue balance. If she had been properly warned, Vrba said, she never would have let her maintenance fees lapse.

But a lawyer for the new owner of the unit said all residents at Ridgegate, and most other condominiums in California, should realize that they lose their homes if they do not pay their dues. Vrba received several notices that she had to pay, according to affidavits signed by the new owners of her unit. Condominium associations have few other options to get members to comply with the rules, said Jerry Rappaport, a lawyer for the buyers of the condominium.

Vrba said she and her husband discovered Ridgegate in 1978. He was a transportation planner, and she was an interior designer. The couple had lived in Los Feliz and moved to Ridgegate with the expectation of eventually owning a house on the peninsula.

Then she suffered two serious car accidents, Vrba said, which put a strain on the marriage. It ended in divorce in 1983. Vrba said she received the condominium in a settlement with her husband.

“The house was very important to me,” she said recently. “It was the only thing that remained stable through all that.”

She said she gave up her work as a designer and began her own business consulting firm, advising other companies how to reorganize. Despite having a master’s degree in business administration from USC, Vrba said, she sometimes found it hard to find enough clients.

Maintenance Dispute

Still, she said, she paid her bills until a dispute with the Ridgegate Homeowners Assn. over maintenance around her unit. Vrba said gardening went unfinished, a door was not varnished and the roof leaked. By July, 1987, Vrba said, she was fed up and began withholding her fees, which are used by the condominium association to keep up common areas.

A spokeswoman for Bali Management declined to comment on the maintenance question or the foreclosure, and the company’s lawyer, who also represents the association, did not return repeated phone calls.

To collect overdue fees, Bali Management Inc. of Torrance, the property manager, placed a lien on Vrba’s condominium.

All owners at Ridgegate, and many other condominium complexes, sign contracts that permit foreclosure on their property if they fail to pay dues. State law permits that these foreclosures, unlike most, may be conducted outside the supervision of a court. In such nonjudicial foreclosures, owners do not have one important right that they have in other foreclosures: the right to pay the sales price themselves to buy back their properties.

In August, 1987, Condominium Trustee Service of Hermosa Beach notified the county that the firm had been authorized to sell the property to collect on Vrba’s overdue account. Milton Katz, president of the business, said this week that Vrba also received a notice by certified mail. He said the firm has proof that the letter was delivered, but Vrba denies signing any receipt.

The letter is one of several that the homeowners association, management company and Katz said they sent to Vrba.

Notice on Door

She said she received no warning and knew nothing of a foreclosure until last March 9, when she returned home to find a notice tacked to her door: A trustee’s auction of her condominium would be held March 31.

She recalled: “I looked at it and I said, ‘This is unbelievable.’ ”

Vrba said she made repeated phone calls to Bali Management and Katz in an attempt to stop the sale. On March 30, Vrba said, Katz assured her that the sale would be postponed and that she would have time to work out her differences with the homeowners association.

The property was auctioned the next day. Real estate investors Peter Baer and I. W. Abramson bought the property for $13,200 and assumed the mortgage, which has a balance of about $140,000.

Katz denied that he spoke to Vrba on March 30 or any other time.

In a declaration filed with one of her lawsuits, Vrba claims that the sale was fraudulent because it brought a price so far below the unit’s market value of $280,000.

The new owners have said it is unfair to judge the sale solely on the auction price. Abramson said in a sworn statement that the partners had to make $32,000 in overdue payments.

Another $9,000 in past property taxes must still be paid, as well as about $140,000 still owed on the mortgage, said Abramson and his lawyer, Rappaport.

Vrba said she was not late on her mortgage payments and that the buyers had grossly overstated their investment.

Despite her legal challenges, a South Bay Municipal Court judge agreed to a request to evict Vrba from her condominium.

Out of Money

Vrba said she was soon out of money and couldn’t work because her home had also been her office. She stayed with friends for a time, but they soon grew tired of her continual legal battles.

“People don’t like to have you around when you have problems,” Vrba said.

She said she recently received food stamps and general assistance of $200 from the county. Vrba’s said her struggle to regain the condominium has worn her down. She drinks lots of coffee and calls frequently to a telephone a message service that has become her best link to the outside world.

Vrba declined to have her picture taken.

“You are literally thrown into the street,” she said. “It gets to your pride.”

She brought her complaints to the state Department of Insurance and attorney general’s office and to the county district attorney’s office. But all three agencies told her that the dispute is a civil matter.

Several attorneys who have represented Vrba said her problems are magnified because she does not have money to properly investigate her claims. She has been left to act as her own investigator, and at times, as her own lawyer.

Vrba said she will press on, but concedes: “I am consumed by it. There is no question about it.”