Buying Condo Not Like Owning a Private Home

Re: “Condo Association Abuses Are on the Upswing” by Bradley Inman, Nov. 5: The reality of condo living is not difficult to comprehend. We, the owners, are all business partners in a California corporation. Each person who buys a condo must receive and acknowledge all rules and regulations as well as governing documents (called CC&Rs;) as part of escrow. Most folks do not read these covenants before they purchase. They think they are buying a “private home” but are actually signing on to be business partners with all the other owners. And as such, they agree to abide by all the rules of the corporation.

Yes, there are conflicts, many of them. Unfortunately the rules were created to deal with a lack of personal responsibility and care for the rights of others, often by a self-interested individual pursuing his own agenda. If we could all just get along together, such rules might not be necessary.

Finally, let’s stop bashing the volunteers who fill these board slots. They are simply friends and neighbors who give up their time with their families, often with no training or prior background, to do some public service. They are forbidden by law to be paid for this job. In return these folks often bear the brunt of the anger and frustration of people who bought a condo in a community but really thought they were buying a private home.

Once again the simple truth comes through: Read what you sign, know what you buy.

ARTHUR ROSENBERG, President, Encino Oaks Homeowners Assn.

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I feel I understand something about a lawyer’s philosophy about homeowner association boards. The board hires [lawyers] and they are committed to do the board’s bidding. They protect the board from its membership. Anyone asking to review the records is often accused of witch hunting.

The membership has nowhere to turn for sympathy. The power structure of an association is stacked against them. We don’t have a chance against the resources of the board.

When I joined the Community Assns. Institute, I got more advertising from lawyers than from plumbers or roofers. It should be the other way around. At institute seminars, lawyers expound brilliantly on ethics and the law. Why is it that they so often fail to practice what they preach or take pity on the helpless resident?

MARTIN BURTON, Rancho Palos Verdes

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Having served on the board of a medium-sized homeowners’ association for many years, I have found that the increase in claims about homeowners’ perceived abuses stem from two major sources.

(1) Often a new owner moves into the condo with a batch of legal documents handed him or her through escrow, but unread and misunderstood. Real estate agents and their brokers fail to adequately alert potential buyers to the differences in owning a stand-alone house, owning a shared-living unit and living as a tenant in an apartment house.

(2) Most owners of the shared-living units are ignorant of the rules and regulations until the association is forced to remind them. They then shout abuse without even knowing there are legal procedures to help.

JERRY ADLER, Encino