Never-paid homeowners fee threatens foreclosure of 74 Orlando-area homes in Stonebridge Landings
                             

Article Courtesy of The Orlando Sentinel

By 

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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