Article
Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel
By Christopher
Sherman
Published
December 10, 2007
An
entire southeast Orange County neighborhood is threatened with foreclosure in
a dispute between two homeowners associations.
The larger master homeowners association filed suit to foreclose on 74
homeowners in the smaller neighborhood because, for a decade, their homeowners
association has failed to pay an annual $5,500 for upkeep of common areas.
All parties involved are pointing fingers, but although a resolution short of
foreclosure seems likely, the 74 homeowners of Stonebridge Landings I, off
Goldenrod Road, could be hit with an unexpected special assessment approaching
$1,000.
Some blame the developer who originally wrote into the project's covenants
that Stonebridge Landings would pay $5,500 every year to the master
community's Stonebridge Village Homeowners Association for upkeep of common
areas such as entry sign, wall and median landscaping.
The flat number is unusual and seems to be at the root of the problem.
Sentry Management, the company hired to manage assessments for Stonebridge
Landings, has been aware of the fee since day one, said Sentry president Jim
Hart.
But successive Stonebridge Landings Homeowners Association boards have
disputed the figure and demanded to see invoices from Stonebridge Village.
Since the figure is in the covenants, Stonebridge Village does not have to
justify it, so the Stonebridge Landings association simply refused to assess
residents to pay it, Hart said.
Homeowner Malone Drakes, who joined the Landings homeowners board last month,
lays the blame with Sentry because it knew about the $5,500 fee.
"We would've paid what we owed if we only knew," Drakes said.
But Hart said that without board approval, Sentry was powerless to assess the
fee.
If the $5,500 had been spread evenly, it would have amounted to $74 per year
per homeowner.
Drakes' annual assessment for the first six years he lived there was $108. In
2007, it rose to $178, but it never included his share of the $5,500 the
Landings should have been paying to Stonebridge Village.
Now the Village association is hoping for a settlement that would recover
about 60 percent of the back payments, interest and attorney's fees that in
May totaled more than $84,000, said Stonebridge Village attorney James Olsen.
Olsen said he had not served any of the homeowners with the foreclosure suit
because he is optimistic it can be resolved.
He proposed a $945 special assessment that would cover some of the debt and
next year's payment.
Homeowners would have another five or six months to pay it, he said.
A few homeowners have already paid about $1,200, or their share of the full
debt, because they wanted to sell or refinance their homes, Olsen said.
If a settlement is reached at the lower figure, they would be reimbursed the
difference, he said.
Drakes has requested a meeting of the Stonebridge Landing Homeowners
Association board for Tuesday to discuss the issue.
Entire
Neighborhood Faces Foreclosure Over Association Fees
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