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HOW
DIFFICULT CAN IT BE TO REGISTER AN HOA?
By
Jan Bergemann
Published
December 13, 2013
Honestly,
when I first saw the form the DBPR developed to register HOAs as
required by FS720.303(13)
I thought it would be real easy to follow the instructions. But
it seems that many folks who are managing our HOAs are unable to
follow simple instructions written in clear English. It’s just
amazing that these folks – some of them making big bucks --
can’t read and answer simple questions.
Looking
at the List
of Registered HOAs published by the DBPR – the
list is being updated every few days – you‘ll not only find
master associations and their subdivisions registered twice, but
you find as well quite a few voluntary associations that
registered as mandatory associations, because some boards just
don’t want to accept that their association is only voluntary,
meaning they don’t have dictatorial powers over their
neighbors they so crave! They obviously seem to think that
registering their “social club” as a mandatory HOA with the
DBPR makes a mandatory HOA out of their community.
Others
just didn’t register at all – even if they were required –
for various reasons. Some boards just don’t know – the main
media hasn’t been very forthcoming with publishing articles
about this new important requirement, others just ignore the
requirement on purpose: “They
just don’t have the power to force us to register anyway!”
I
guess we are all used to that kind of attitude. Many board
members and service providers plainly count on the fact that
there maybe laws in place, but no easy tool to enforce these
laws – creating the attitude: “Why
should we care about laws nobody can really enforce?”
Hopefully
that will change soon. Even if this list of registered HOAs
isn’t perfect it gives us a very good idea how many HOAs we
have in
Florida
and how many parcels are located within these HOAs. And that
should be, according to statements made by Florida legislators
during the last legislative session, sufficient to have the
numbers needed to make the decision to put mandatory HOAs
(regulated by FS 720) as well under the jurisdiction of the Division
of Florida Condominiums, Timeshares, and Mobile Homes.
I can assure you that we will do anything in our power to
convince
Florida
’s legislature that it is time to enact our HOA
REFORM BILL PART II
and finally protect the owners living in
Florida's HOAs against abuses.
CONSUMER
PROTECTION is the MAGIC
WORD!
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