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GREED SURPASSES KNOWLEDGE!
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
April 24, 2015
Some
service providers – attorneys and CAMs – are going crazy
over a bill that is working its way through the
Florida
legislature. S
736 (Sen. Kelli Stargel) and companion bill H 611 (Rep.
John Wood) just put a time-limit on the issuance of an estoppel
certificate and limit the amount of fees to be charged for
issuing such certificate. The fee allowed by the bill is $250
plus $100 under certain circumstances. In my opinion: $ 100 is
more than enough for such certificate. Make no mistake: Laws
already require associations and lawyers to keep an up-to-date
account of all properties.
Take the example for an HOA (FS 720.303 -- Official records):
FS 720.303(4)(j) states:
2. A current account and a
periodic statement of the account for each member, designating
the name and current address of each member who is obligated to
pay assessments, the due date and amount of each assessment or
other charge against the member, the date and amount of each
payment on the account, and the balance due.
The
Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA)
requires the lawyer (or debt-collector) to keep an accurate
detailed account of the debt owed by the unit/home.
With
other word: Laws already require that the folks dealing with
issuing such an estoppel letter have to have the necessary
numbers ready to roll!
Only
if they don’t follow the law it may take a while to issue such
certificate. But should these service providers be rewarded for
not following the laws by being allowed to charge outrageous
fees for their incompetence?
I don’t think so! Anything more than $100 is overpaying for a
task that could be handled by an office clerk within no more
than 10 minutes.
But
these greedy service providers are scaring boards with
threatening that the association will have to pay the difference
between the money they charge and the fees allowed to be charged
by law if this bill gets enacted. That’s plain nonsense -- but
some board members obviously believe them.
Every board that deals with a service provider that charges more
than allowed by law should quickly fire this service provider
and hire somebody willing to follow the laws.
And
it gets even more ridiculous if the owner of a big management
company tells an experienced association attorney that he “shows serious lack of understanding
about what it really takes to prepare an estopple for a
community association”, but
doesn’t even know how to spell the word
“ESTOPPEL.”
I
always wonder why some people think that incompetence needs to
be rewarded.
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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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