Florida ROC : Florida Mobile Home & RV Lawyer & Attorney : Scott Gordon : Lutz Bobo Telfair Eastman Gabel & Lee Law Firm : FL Condo & Homeowners Associations

I spent last Thursday and Friday in Fort Lauderdale attending the Thirty-Fifth Institute on Condominium and Cluster Developments presented by the University of Miami School of Law.  I'll be posting future blog entries about several of the topics covered at the Institute but wanted to draw your attention to two items that I think you'll find interesting:

• Last week, I received an email from the Community Associations Institute that introduced me to a new term-- "HOA Syndrome" and a web site advertising a seminar in a suburb of  Las Vegas (no surprise there!) on how residents can recover monetary damages for the injuries inflicted upon them by community association boards.  You'll also find on that website a link to a paper by a Professor Gary Solomon that refers to this "HOA Syndrome" as "A Two-Tailed Psychiatric Disorder".  Let's just say that I was less than impressed with that paper but I'll look forward to your comments after you've taken a look at what Professor Solomon has to say and the HOA Syndrome site.
• One of my colleagues, Ira Leesfield,wrote an article that appeared in the October 18th edition of the Miami Herald.   There are some very important issues raised in this article and I highly recommend that every ROC manager and board member strongly consider Mr. Leesfield's suggestion that community associations adopt and implement written policies that prohibit employees using cell phones or other mobile devices for work-related purposes while driving.

The first annual Dowd Whittaker Community Association Festival was lots of fun and a great success and I look forward to speaking at that event next year.  It was very nice to see all of the familiar faces and I hope the board members and managers of the ROCs we work with enjoyed the Festival as much as I did.   Thanks to everyone who attended and participated!

We're finalizing the dates and locations of our first set of this season's seminars and I hope to have that information on the blog by the week's end. 

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I just wanted to post a quick link to the DBPR's website with the times and locations of the DBPR seminars in Sarasota on the evening of October 18 and in Clearwater on the evening of October 19.

You'll note that the seminar in Sarasota can be accessed online.

Also, don't forget the Community Association Festival in Venice on the mornings of October 19 and October 20.

We'll be posting the dates, times and locations of our first set of this season's ROC seminars within the next two weeks.

Enjoy this great weather--looks like autumn has arrived in Florida!

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Here's a wild situation that apparently occurred in a ROC in Florida as reported by one of my community association law colleagues:

Every director on the board of condominium association resigned rather than respond to a unit owner's request to inspect the association's official records.   I'm sure we're all wondering what these directors were trying to hide but the question that was raised was what could be done to keep the association itself from collapsing in the absence of board members and officers?

There is a provision in the Florida Statutes that can be used to help a condominium association in this situation.  F.S. Section 718.1124 provides that, if an association fails to fill vacancies on the board sufficient to constitute a quorum in accordance with its bylaws, any unit owner may give notice of his or her intent to apply to the local circuit court for the appointment of a receiver to manage the affairs of the association.   The form of the notice is set forth in F.S. Section 718.1124(1) and the manner of notifying the membership is set forth in F.S. Section 718.1124(2).

Once the notice is properly posted and mailed or delivered, the association has 30 days to fill the vacancies.  If this is not done, the unit owner may proceed with the petition.

If the unit owner's petition is granted, a receiver will be appointed and will have all powers and duties of "a duly constituted board of administration".   The receive will serve in that capacity until the association fills enough board vacancies to constitute a quorum and the court relieves the receiver of the appointment.

Of course, the association will be responsible to pay the receiver's salary and the court costs and attorney's fees involved in the petition to appoint the receiver.

Provisions for the appointment of a receiver in similar situations in cooperative associations and mandatory homeowners' associations can be found in F.S.Sections 719.1124 and 720.3053 respectively.

Sounds like a costly situation and one that should be avoided if at all possible.   Since the governing documents of many associations provide that board vacancies can be filled by the members that remain on the board, even if those remaining members constitute less than a quorum, perhaps the best thing to do when the entire board wants to " jump ship" is for the members to convince one of those board members to remain on the board at least until that remaining member can appoint enough new board members so that a quorum of board members is in place.

Better yet, let's all hope that our communities can avoid this nightmare.

I'll look forward to seeing some of you at next week's Community Association Festival on October 19 or 20 at the Venice Community Center! 

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It's always a pleasure to welcome a new member into the family of resident owned communities.

On September 15, the resident purchase and conversion of the communities of Country Lakes I and II in Manatee County was completed. 

The proud owner of this 471 site community is Country Lakes Co-op, Inc.  Kudos to the residents that participated in the purchase effort and especially to Marty Pozgay and his Florida Community Services Group for helping the residents realize their dreams of ownership.

The HOA officers received the 45 day notice from the owner of Country Lakes I and II on June 28, 2010.  At that time, about seventy per cent of the homeowners had left those communities for their summer residences and Marty and the remaining thirty per cent were faced with the daunting task of raising six million dollars for an earnest money deposit (to be applied to the total purchase price of 32.2 million dollars) in a very short period of time.  

The blanket loan was provided byBank of America and individual share loans were provided by Patriot Bank andWhitney Bank.

Congratulations to the residents at Country Lakes and to everyone that helped Country Lake Co-op, Inc. become the newest ROC in Florida!

Those of you in the Sarasota, Manatee, and De Soto County area, please don't forget to rsyp for the upcoming Dowd Whittaker Community Association Festival on either October 19 or October 20.   John Dowd promises a morning of education and fun for all and I'll be one of the speakers--plus you'll get to see me in one of my flashiest Hawaiian shirts.

See you there!

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