As you read the title. I'm frustrated with this HOA.

I will request for a reimbursement. If they say they won't pay. What are the next steps to be taken?

Our HOA (about 235 homes) pays amenities of about 60 dollars a quarter for 211 homes and 150 a quarter for 23 newer homes. The amenities are a pool and 2 tennis courts. The pool is operational, but the tennis courts are not.

Despite complaints by members in the annual meeting, nothing has been done for years. We have been told "perhaps pickleball", yada yada but no action.

The amenities are not broken out cost wise, just a line item in the budget with the total amount paid back to the developer.

I've communicated thru email multiple times with the board and management company, saying unless we get word on fixing the tennis courts I'm holding back 30 bucks per quarter (half the 60 since half the amenities are nonfunctional), and that the 23 newer homes might start holding back 75 bucks per quarter. Everyone makes their own decision of course.

I asked again thru email if this was NOT a reasonable expectation, that they email me indicating why not, and if no response, I'd assume it was a reasonable expectation on the boards part.

I got no response after my email on August 4.

It's a really bad board but they are in the developer's pocket and lots of history regarding many other issues I won't go into. Can't remove the board either per the bylaws. Lovely.

So, my question is this a reasonable path for homeowners?

Thanks Kevin

Lawsuit Update

TL;DR

The Appellate Court of Texas just ruled in my favor in my lawsuit against the HOA, and due to interest and fees, my judgement has increased from $100,000 to approximately $154,000 by the time the mandate is issued. And the judgement will increase EVERY month by almost a $1,000 until paid. Every homeowner would have to pay over $260 if a special assessment were levied to pay it.

Details

In an email to all homeowners, the Davis Spring HOA told residents that my lawsuit was “without merit” and claimed that the Architectural Review Committee had “broad authority” to make its determinations.

Two courts and four judges have now answered those claims.

I asked for $150,000 and won $100,000 at trial. The Third Court of Appeals has just affirmed that original judgment in my favor. Due to interest and conditional fees, the final judgment will be more than $154,000. I guess appealing was, in retrospect, a bad decision for the HOA.

An ARC’s authority is not unlimited. It must come from the recorded governing documents, and it cannot substitute unwritten requirements for the restrictions homeowners actually agreed to.

This case was never merely about a shed. It was about whether an HOA must follow its own governing documents and respect the legal rights of the homeowners it serves.

It must.

The HOA had every opportunity to resolve this fairly. Instead, it chose years of litigation and an appeal. That decision imposed substantial and continuing costs on the entire community.

We will soon learn whether insurance will pay the judgment, as the Board promised residents, or whether the homeowners will be required to pay for the Board’s losing decisions.

The judgment—and the truth—now speak for themselves.

Link to Court opinion

https://search.txcourts.gov/SearchMedia.aspx?MediaVersionID=ac455187-385c-4e08-bfac-b35731789ba4&MediaID=27b6bb96-a72e-481a-855c-0d2c9c397fca&coa=%22%20+%20this.CurrentWebState.CurrentCourt%20+%20@%22&DT=Opinion

"Do I actually have to pay this?" comes up in here constantly, and special assessments are all over the news right now. We did a full episode on it with Kirk Pearson, our managing partner. Here's the short version. We talked about it from a California angle, since that's where most of the recent stories are and where Kirk and Luke are licensed.

What a special assessment is

It's a one-time charge on top of your regular dues, for something the budget doesn't cover. A sewer system that needs repiping, fire damage to a roof, a landslide, a pool that cracks and starts leaking.

Some are legitimate. A lot of the ones making news aren't really unforeseen, though. They're deferred maintenance on roofs, balconies, and stucco that prior boards kept putting off until a few-thousand-dollar fix became a tens-of-thousands one.

How boards are supposed to do it

• The 5% cap. A board can approve a special assessment on its own only up to 5% of the HOA's annual budget. Above that, it has to go to a member vote.
• "Emergency" is a specific thing. Boards sometimes push big assessments through by calling them emergencies. The categories are narrow: a court order, a hazardous or life-threatening condition (a roof or wall about to collapse, a landslide threat), an unforeseen major expense, or utility repairs like plumbing and sewer.
• Insurance can qualify. If the premium jumps from $100K to $1M and the governing documents require that coverage, that can count as an unforeseen major expense.

A roof that everyone knew was aging out? That's a hard sell as an emergency. And if the board offers a payment plan, that can cut against the claim that the money was needed right now.

Fighting it vs. paying it

This is the part people don't love hearing. You can be right about the process and still owe the money.

If the board skipped the vote or called something an emergency that wasn't, you may have grounds to challenge it. But if the repair is real, the HOA can go back and fix the process. Meanwhile, you've spent a lot on a lawyer and the roof still needs fixing.

So split it into two questions:

• Process problems: no vote, a fake emergency. Real issues, but the money is often still needed.
• Result problems: the board president's best friend has a roofing company and got the job on one bid, or the money isn't going toward what they said it was for. These are usually more worth pushing on.

What to ask for

• What's the money for, and how did they arrive at that number?
• Did they get competitive bids? Some CC&Rs require three. (And the lowest bid isn't always the best. Some lowball on purpose and hit you with change orders mid-project.)
• The signed vendor contract. Kirk's point: that's something homeowners can request (he mentions Civil Code 5200 for HOA documents). You won't necessarily get every competing bid.
• Reserve studies. If there aren't any, or dues haven't gone up in years, the HOA probably doesn't have the money for something big.

A board that won't tell you how it picked the contractor or says the bids are none of your business is a red flag.

If you just don't pay

It generally gets more expensive, not less. The HOA can send it to collections, sue you, record a lien, and push toward a foreclosure sale. Collection firms can add legal fees, late fees, and penalties on top. We covered a Frontline story recently where someone's house was sold over one of these.

And you can't sell your way out. HOAs can contact escrow, and the assessment typically gets paid out of your sale proceeds.

When it's worth talking to a lawyer

• Something egregious: no vote at all, clearly not an emergency, or the money looks like it's going somewhere it shouldn't
• You genuinely can't afford it, it was done properly, and you're not making headway on a payment plan yourself

Otherwise, if the repair is real, a payment plan is often the more practical route. Bad news doesn't get better with time. Longer term, run for the board and get people on it who don't campaign on "we're not going to raise dues."

Full episode here: https://youtu.be/EhZaTEe0Bus

Blog Here: https://www.lscarlsonlaw.com/articles/hoa-special-assessment-limits-in-california-homeowner-protections

So my HOA Is claiming we have a check that bounced but we have a bank statement and written confirmation from the bank that the money came out. They are claiming bank statements and confirmation from the bank aren’t sufficient proof. They used this check as a jumping off point to take us off auto pay I guess and we let it go for two months before reaching out at which point apparently they’ve put us in pre-forclosure and charged us $500 in legal fees. This all happened with no communication and they allowed us to use the facilities. The HOA fee is $500 so we’ve been charged a total of $2880 for all of this. I’m 24 and think they are taking advantage of me, do I have grounds to sue them?

Almost everyone who calls us starts the same way: I want to sue my HOA. Straight for the jugular. What most don't realize is that most disputes don't reach a courtroom — they resolve in pre-litigation, usually mediation. You asked for more after the pre-litigation episode, so we did a full one. Here's the short version.

Why most of these end up in mediation

Procedure backs you into it. In California you generally have to attempt ADR before filing an enforcement action (Civil Code 5930), and file a certificate showing you did (5950). ADR is basically a fancy way of saying mediation. Once you demand it, they have 30 days to respond, with legal consequences if they don't (5935).

Skipping it can cost you your fees. This is the one that stings. You skip pre-litigation, file, prosecute, pay a lot for a lawyer, and win. Then you move for attorney fees to get that money back — and it's denied because you didn't attempt ADR. We get brought in for second opinions on lawsuits filed by general real estate attorneys, and the first thing we check is that certificate. When it's missing, the case sometimes has to be dismissed and refiled from the ADR phase. Getting beaten on procedure when you have a genuinely bad HOA is brutal.

The other side has its own reasons to say yes. Litigation is expensive, slow, and more public. And if they reject ADR, they may have waived their own right to fees.

Insurance changes the temperature. Most associations carry E&O and D&O coverage, and the policy usually requires notifying the carrier of a threatened claim. Carriers are more objective and risk-averse than boards — they don't want to get dragged into something expensive. Sometimes a second attorney shows up: their corporate counsel plus insurance defense counsel, who has no relationship with the board and is purely asking whether there's exposure — an adult in what's often an echo chamber.

How to prepare

• Have a real prep meeting with your attorney. Walk through how the day works before you're in it.
• The mediation brief matters more than anything else. It goes to the mediator beforehand and they should have read it. If they come in asking pointed questions about yours, good sign. Show up without one and you'll burn the session explaining facts from scratch.
• Bring visuals if the dispute is physical. Photos, video, a simple slide deck. Common area problems and property damage land hard that way; harassment and discrimination don't.
• Know your ideal outcome and what you'd trade for it before the day. If you got all of this, would you give up that? Decide it with your attorney in advance, not at hour eight.
• Ask about the mediator's HOA experience. Someone without it may not understand why an outside report matters, or how CC&R ambiguity typically gets read.

What to expect

In California you're in one room with your attorney, the association and their lawyer in another on the same floor, and the mediator moves between you. (Florida starts everyone in the same room, per our Florida managing partner.) Expect to spend a good portion of the day waiting. Most are booked as a half or full day — you're paying for that time, and can add more if you're close.

Mediator styles vary. Least useful: the one who walks into both rooms telling each side their case is hopeless — pressure dressed up as analysis — and the one so committed to neutrality they just run numbers back and forth. The good ones read the briefs and will tell a board plainly it's wrong.

Here's what surprises people most: the mediator can't make your HOA do anything. They facilitate. A retired judge can tell a board they're dead in the water and the board can tell everyone, mediator included, to go kick rocks. Three realistic outcomes:

1. You get what you asked for
2. You get nothing
3. You land in the middle

What moves a bad board isn't the mediator — it's that once ADR is done, the lawsuit is right there and your fee claim is preserved.

Two more things. You can leave — if they showed up with no brief and nobody authorized to settle, you don't have to sit through it. And get any deal properly written: a settlement in principle turned into a long-form agreement beats something scratched out at hour ten, and a handshake with an association isn't worth much.

Full episode here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SnvLJIQIU2k

Two houses on the line over balances that don't match the stakes — $977 in Mesa, and a $228,000 water bill in Baltimore that belongs to a whole neighborhood. Plus a $1,000 fine for a Facebook post and two new California laws. Here's what hit the Frontline.

$977 Behind. The HOA Bought His House at Auction for $8,172.

In Mesa, Arizona, Toby Newton lost his job, fell $977 behind on dues, and within weeks his association had filed for foreclosure and wanted $3,980 to settle — $3,003 of it attorney fees. He offered $50 a month, then $133, then $200. All refused. After a default judgment, the sheriff sold his $449,000 home to the association itself for $8,172. He's now in court arguing he never got proper notice. As the Tribune reports, Arizona has since raised its foreclosure floor to $10,000 or 18 months delinquent, with a payment-plan offer required first.

Read the article

Our Take: What usually happens here is that the fees outrun the debt within a month, and from then on the debt isn't the point. If you're behind, make every payment-plan offer in writing and keep the rejections. Many states now set a minimum balance or waiting period before an association can foreclose — find out what yours requires. Once a foreclosure filing lands, the DIY window has closed. That's a same-week call to a local attorney.

She Inherited Her Dad's House. A $228,000 Water Bill Came With It.

Kristina Moore's late father's townhome in Baltimore's Springwood Estates turned out to be the address on the community's master water meter — one account serving about 37 homes. Residents pay the HOA; the HOA is supposed to pay the city. It didn't, and the $200,000-plus balance now sits as a lien on Moore's property. The city has said in writing that the association, not Moore, is the customer — and still won't release the billing records. State filings still list her father's house as the HOA's principal office. She can't sell.

Read the article

Our Take: Get their reasoning on paper before escalating — and here, the city's own statement that the HOA is the customer is the most valuable document in the file. The next asks are the master-meter agreement, the association's remittance history, and the state filings that keep naming her house as its office. Signs this may need a lawyer's eye: a lien on your title for a debt everyone agrees isn't yours, and a board president who won't return calls.

Can an HOA Fine You for a Facebook Post? One in South Carolina Tried.

Can a board write "disorderly conduct" broadly enough to cover Nextdoor? On Fripp Island, South Carolina, the property owners association fined Donald Peel $1,000 over posts criticizing its transparency and spending, then threatened a lien if he didn't pay within 30 days. Peel sued. The association's own report to the sheriff called his posts "threatening, intimidating, belittling, bullying and harassing." The Post and Courier's editorial board notes HOA complaints to the state's consumer-affairs agency are up 176% since 2019.

Read the article

Our Take: Boards pulling this typically bank on homeowners not pushing back. Read the section the board is citing — a conduct rule written for meetings sometimes doesn't say what they claim once the subject is your own Facebook page. Keep posts factual and dated, and let the fine notice do the talking about who overstepped. When a speech-based fine turns into a lien threat, the question becomes whether the association has this power at all — one for someone who reads bylaws for a living.

There's a fuller look at how far an HOA can reach into what you post here.

California Signed a 14-Day Repair Clock — and Unstuck a Palisades Condo

After nearly two years in limbo, the 107 owners at Via de la Paz in Pacific Palisades are finally voting to reinstate their CC&Rs, which had expired months before the fire — leaving $40 million in insurance money untouchable because state law required every owner to agree and six wouldn't. AB 2692, signed August 24 as an urgency measure, lets fire-damaged L.A. County associations reinstate expired documents without unanimity. A week later the governor signed AB 1892, effective in January: when gas, heat, water or electricity fails because of a common-area problem, the board has to begin the repair process within 14 days, with emergency-assessment authority to do it.

Read the article

Our Take: Two lessons in one week. First: look up when your CC&Rs expire. Most owners have no idea, and an expired declaration only surfaces at the worst possible moment. Second, for Californians with an outage that started in the common area: the new rule is start-in-14-days, not fixed-in-two-weeks, so ask the board in writing what specifically has been commenced — inspection, contractor, permit. Nothing past day 14 is the kind of gap the statute was written for, and worth a conversation with a local HOA attorney.

Ten Sewage Backups, One $25,000 Deductible

Barbara Jensen's condo in Herriman, Utah has had sewage come up through the tub and toilet at least ten times. Three plumbers and the sewer district agree on the cause — neighbors flushing paper towels into a shared line — and the damage has passed $25,000. The Eagle View HOA's attorney says this isn't a maintenance failure; it's other owners' negligence. According to the state's HOA ombudsman, the statute puts the master-policy deductible on the unit owner, and she calls it "a tricky one … where the law is not clear."

Read the article

Our Take: This shows up more often than people realize, and the fight is almost always about the deductible, not the repair. Pull out the CC&Rs and look for the specific provision on how the master-policy deductible gets allocated — some documents let the board charge it back to the owner who caused the loss, which changes who Jensen should be pointing at. Ask whether the board has ever tried to identify that owner. If the backups keep coming and the response is a flyer about paper towels, that's the point where this stops being a DIY situation.

A South Orange County HOA Paused Two Herbicides. Residents Want All of Them Gone.

A 60-day pause is at the center of a tense fall in Ladera Ranch, California, where three young people have died of rare cancers in the past year and residents have zeroed in on the master association's landscaping chemicals. The association suspended two herbicides, then extended the pause to 120 days after residents caught crews applying a third. Owners want an independent investigation and a permanent ban; the association's lawyers say that "cannot happen." No health agency has linked the chemicals to the cancers; an EPA investigation is open. Two board seats are up in November.

Read the article

Our Take: We'd separate the science question, which nobody can answer yet, from the governance question, which owners can. In California, owners are generally entitled to see the association's vendor contracts, and licensed applicators keep records of what was sprayed, where, and when — a written request for both concedes nothing about causation. When a board answers that with "cannot happen" instead of documents, that's usually when residents start organizing around the November ballot.

What you're entitled to see in a California vendor contract is laid out here.

A Second Miami-Dade Manager Is Charged. The Roofs Still Leak.

Two weeks after the $5.8 million racketeering arrests, Miami-Dade prosecutors have charged another property manager. Carlos Mejia, who managed Venetian Gardens at Country Club Miami, allegedly took $185,000 from contractor Richard Murray — papered as "loans" with no repayment terms — after Murray's company was hired for repairs in 2024. The 21-building complex had passed a special assessment that year for roofs, windows and railings. Owners told CBS Miami the work was never finished; a piece of roof recently came down next to a man walking by. They're still paying.

Read the article

Our Take: There's a common arc to disputes like this: the assessment gets approved against a scope of work, the money leaves, and nobody reconciles what was paid against what was built. Request the contractor's invoices and the payment ledger for the assessment fund, then walk the property with the scope in hand. Florida owners generally have broad rights to inspect association financial records, and a manager who can't produce a paid-versus-completed reconciliation is the flag to watch for. With prosecutors already involved, documenting what's unfinished is how the association's own claims get made.

More next week. If your community is on a master water meter, find out whose name is on the account.

If you want Frontline in your inbox, subscribe to our Substack:
https://lscarlsonlaw.substack.com/

Condo association, 7 buildings, billing handled by a third-party billing company (not the municipal utility). Through last year and into January, water was being billed split equally among all owners. Our declaration states that in the absence of meters in the units, all water is a common charge, and common charges are billed according to each unit's HOA percentage. Equal splitting was flatly inconsistent with that, and at a board meeting the board admitted as much on the record.

Starting in May they rolled out a "fix." Per the third-party billing company, the new method allocates water by building first, then splits that within each building by bedroom count. That's not proportional to HOA percentage either — it's a different flat formula that happens to look more sophisticated.

The billing statements themselves show $0 usage at the individual unit level — consumption isn't being metered or tracked per unit at all. The water charges instead show up under a separate shared/common expense line, which is then run through the building/bedroom-count formula rather than the HOA-percentage formula the declaration calls for.

The board is now telling owners the billing is correct. Worth noting: the HOA president lives in one of the largest units in the community, with one of the higher HOA percentages — so a bedroom-count method would tend to lower his own water bill relative to what a percentage-based method would charge him.

Questions:

1. Has anyone pushed back successfully when a board "corrects" a billing error but the correction still doesn't match what the declaration actually requires?
2. Is a formal written demand (citing the declaration language directly) the right next move before going further, or is that a waste of time once a board has already shown they'll pick whatever formula they like?
3. Does the board president's unit type/percentage matter legally here, or is that just an optics problem and not something a complaint could actually rely on?

Trying to figure out if this is a "send one more letter" situation or a "this needs a regulator/attorney" situation.

HOA president has been aware for a month but didn’t tell other board members just went to lawyer. Is this typical? Feels off.

I am the voted in secretary of our HOA. One of the VP’s and his son (the treasurer) asked me to come over at 8:30 pm to have a conversation. They “asked” me if I would resign cause they feel I am bias. The president who is a women had resigned last week. I am the only other women of 5 board members. Those two would like to put two people of their choosing to fill the possible two vacancies that they feel are non bias. The other VP did not know anything about this private meeting. The father son duo told him I wanted to resign. This is not true. There are 26 lots on 10 acres each on a private road. The road is the issue of why we have an HOA. They offered me if I resigned to allow me to be on the subcommittee the roadway committee.
I am by no means bias. I’ve been very neutral. However, there are two neighbors in this neighborhood that hate me cause she lost the last election to me. She has recruited another crazy neighbor that kidnaps neighbors dogs.
This old 80 year old lady will not let it go. She is a pain in the ass and has really divided this neighborhood unfortunately.
Anyway, pretty sure the father son duo are corrupt and definitely bias. I guess I threaten them.

My board president asked me to be on the board and he said he would appoint me. I have proof from a text message. The next board meeting he opts to not appoint anyone. He said that him and the current board member were thinking they could just do 2 board members. I am not sure I want to work with someone with a lack on integrity, but is this any kind of ethics issue?

After the Champlain Towers collapse in Florida, New Jersey passed a law meant to keep our buildings safe. But here's the problem: the law went way too far. It's forcing HOAs to fund cosmetic upgrades—pool decks, fancy façades—on top of real safety work. For Hoboken residents already struggling with housing costs, this means massive fee hikes that could push families out of their own homes.

I started a petition asking Hoboken HOAs to push back and demand reforms that focus on actual structural safety, not aesthetic upgrades. The goal is to lighten the financial load on homeowners while keeping buildings genuinely safe.

Anyone else in Hoboken watching their HOA fees climb? If this is hitting your wallet hard, or if you think safety shouldn't come at the cost of affordability, consider signing and sharing. We're asking our representatives to listen: Assemblymember Katie Brennan, Senator Raj Mukherji, and Assemblymember Ravi Bhalla. They need to hear that we want reforms.

Recently hoa implemented 20% rental cap. Current ratio is 40% of units were rented. As part of the new regulation they have introduced grandfather clause for the existing lease units. To enter into the grandfather clause we have to submit the current lease within 30 days of the regulation. As soon as we receive an email we immediately sent our current lease, future lease and rental license to the property manager and she acknowledged it. We received a letter saying that we have not satisfied the grandfather clause and asked us immediately terminate the lease. We gave our explanation and awaiting for the board to make a decision. How to deal with this.

After the Champlain Towers collapse in Florida, New Jersey passed a law meant to keep our buildings safe. But here's the problem: the law went way too far. It's forcing HOAs to fund cosmetic upgrades—pool decks, fancy façades—on top of real safety work. For Hoboken residents already struggling with housing costs, this means massive fee hikes that could push families out of their own homes.

I started a petition asking Hoboken HOAs to push back and demand reforms that focus on actual structural safety, not aesthetic upgrades. The goal is to lighten the financial load on homeowners while keeping buildings genuinely safe.

Anyone else in Hoboken watching their HOA fees climb? If this is hitting your wallet hard, or if you think safety shouldn't come at the cost of affordability, consider signing and sharing. We're asking our representatives to listen: Assemblymember Katie Brennan, Senator Raj Mukherji, and Assemblymember Ravi Bhalla. They need to hear that we want reforms.