THERE ARE LOTS OF TRAPS!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published February 5, 2021
When buying into community
associations you seem to buy as well a lot of hidden traps. It’s
just amazing what kind of downfalls some of the governing
documents really have.
So, you buy a condo-unit, but the land
your unit is built upon is just leased? What happens if the
lease-holder doesn’t renew the lease? You can’t just move your
unit to a different location, like you can with mobile home.
Remember the condos that leased the
pool for 99 years? Most owners living in these associations
didn’t even know that the pool was just leased and the cost of
the lease was taken out of their maintenance fees. When the
condo-owners finally found out and added up the numbers they
realized that they might end up paying millions of dollars for a
pool that may have been worth $ 50,000 when built.
And that in associations that were
promoted with the slogan “EASY LIVING?”
You can’t be careful enough when
buying into these community associations. The contract and
governing documents are normally full of traps!
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Jan Bergemann is president of Cyber Citizens For Justice,
Florida
's largest state-wide property owners' advocacy group.
CCFJ works on legislation to help owners living in
community
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associations. He moved to
Florida
in 1995 - hoping to retire. He moved into a HOA, where the
developer cheated the homeowners and used the association dues
for his own purposes. End of retirement!
CCFJ was born in the year 2000, when some owners met in
Tallahassee
- finding out that power is only in numbers. Bergemann was a
member of Governor Jeb Bush's HOA Task force in 2003/2004.
The organization has two websites to inform interested
Florida
homeowners and condo owners:
News Website: http://www.ccfj.net/.
Educational Website: http://www.ccfjfoundation.net/.
We think that only owners can really represent owners, since all
service providers surely have a different interest! We are
trying to create owner-friendly laws, but the best laws are
useless without enforcement. And enforcement is totally lacking
in
Florida
!
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