Articles pouvant intéresser les bureaux de direction dans les bâtisses ou il y a des foreclosures.

Community association sues delinquent owners

Lawsuit brings cash beyond state foreclosure limits

Daniel Vasquez Sun Sentinel Columnist

6:04 p.m. EDT, May 24, 2011

South Florida condominium and homeowners communities that have foreclosed on delinquent owners have been stymied by a state law limiting what boards can get from a bank for past-due assessments to 12 months or 1 percent of the original mortgage.

But a recent civil lawsuit by the Keys Gate Community Association in Homestead has broken new legal ground by garnisheeing wages and freezing bank accounts to collect what the bank did not cover from an investor owner who first fell in arrears three years ago. The court strategy is similar to those used when a bank forecloses on a home, gets some of its money at the foreclosure sale auction and then pursues the original borrower for the difference of what is owed to the bank under the note.

It also sets a precedent for other communities struggling to deal with financial losses from delinquent owners and investors. The bottom-line reality for associations is that when delinquent owners do not pay their share, boards have to respond by either cutting services or charging a higher assessment to those owners who pay.

"What our firm has done is take a legal strategy that banks have used for years, namely pursuing deficiency judgments against prior owners for unpaid amounts, and apply the same for application to HOAs and condominiums," said Ben Solomon of the South Florida law firm Association Law Group, which represents Keys Gate and hundreds of associations statewide.

• Daniel Vasquez

Note: A la demande, je pourrais faire un court résumé en français.