If you want to stop a homeowners association from collecting assessments or enforcing restrictions, often the best tactic is to smear the HOA.
Here’s how the smear works. Read the rest of this entry
Tag Archives: subdivsions
Wish list for the Ozarks economy
Congress is going to do something. The House has approved a stimulus package, full of all kinds of goodies–only a few months after “earmarks” was a dirty, dirty word. And the Senate will put a few more pork cutlets into the package.
IRONY ALERT: THIS BLOG POST IS NOT ENTIRELY SERIOUS! PARTS OF IT ARE! WATCH FOR HINTS.
But what do we need in the Ozarks?
Whatever we don’t get here will go somewhere else. No matter how ineffective cash infusions are when injected elsewhere, we’d like it to have it go to waste in the Ozarks, where we know how to spend wisely because we’re not liberals mostly.
We might as well make a list Read the rest of this entry
Defunct HOAs: what to do?
Outside of incorporated cities in the Ozarks, the homeowner association (HOA) is often the government for homes in subdivisions and condominiums. The clean water rules enforced by the Missouri Department of Natural Resources include HOAs as eligible “continuing authorities” to own and operate drinking water or sewer facilities, or both, in subdivisions not served by public utility companies regulated by the Public Service Commission or by governmental providers. In addition, the HOAs often have the responsibility of maintaining subdivision streets unless and until the county commission adopts an ordinance to maintain the streets.
HOAs are ordinarily established by the subdivision developer, in order to obtain permits for sewer or water facilities and to create an entity for road maintenance. An HOA’s power to collect assessments from lot owners (or unit owners, in the case of condominiums) is established by the recording of subdivision covenants (usually called CCRs or a declaration). The HOA is almost always set up as a non-profit corporation, with the developer and the developer’s associates making up the initial board of directors.
Even under the best of circumstances, the developer fails to file annual reports for the HOA with the Missouri Secretary of State, and the HOA, as a corporation, is administratively dissolved. When few lots are sold, that also happens. And there are worse omissions and consequences: Read the rest of this entry
What 2009 holds for Ozarks real estate
My law firm clients are asking me what I expect. They know that I represent a variety of real estate developers active in the area around Branson and Table Rock Lake, where the pace of sales of single-family homes and condo units seemed to slow in early 2008 then nearly stop altogther by mid-2008. My name has shown up in newspapers and public records in relation to my representation of creditors of several large, distressed projects.
When my clients ask me about the future, my first reactions are how would I know and am I really being asked if my other clients are hurting, too? Many of them are hurting, badly.
Here are my ideas about the prospects for 2009: Read the rest of this entry
Ozarks Law & Economy 