eAlerts

More owners are interested in installing swim spas — basically a miniature pool they can use to swim in place against a current. “When I talk to colleagues around the country, these swim spas are really turning into an absolute phenomenon,” says Paul Grucza, principal with PDG and Associates, consultants for the association management industry.…

A Connecticut condo association board tried to force the removal of a dog after holding multiple hearings and concluding it was vicious (Copper Square Ass’n, Inc. v. Bonell). But a court found the board dropped the ball and denied to order removal. The case involved a dog named Bo, who lived with a tenant in…

Many community associations today have Baby Boomer owners who are opting to stay in their homes, rather than move out to senior communities, nursing homes, or family homes. Managers and boards need to recognize and prepare for the impact this is going to have on their communities. For starters, it can be difficult in general…

An HOA in North Carolina recently learned a tough — and expensive — lesson about the potential pitfalls of noncompliance with statutory requirements for foreclosure. As the result of a misstep not even truly of the association’s own making, the foreclosure was reversed, and the association wound up on the hook for the owners’ attorneys’…

Are your association clients struggling to enforce against tenant violations in their communities? With residential rents skyrocketing across the country, more owners are looking to get into the rental game — and, in turn, more associations are seeing a jump in the number of tenant violations. Owners sometimes fail to think about the role of…

Do your association clients have a contingency plan in place to prepare for extreme events? After several years of catastrophic weather, a global pandemic, civil disobedience, and violence, the need for contingency planning in community associations seems obvious — but many associations, and some managers, continue to stick their heads in the sand. “Both the…

In November 2022, a lithium-ion battery that was charging caused a fire in a Manhattan high-rise building, injuring nearly 40 people. The fire was one of almost 200 caused by such batteries in New York City last year, resulting in 10 deaths and more than 200 injuries. Along with other fires across the country, it…

A Kentucky couple claimed that they shouldn’t have to pay assessments on their two lots because, as a result of erosion, one had “ceased to exist as a recognizable land mass.” The state court of appeals disagreed (Thompson v. Lake Cumberland Resort Cmty. Ass’n*). William and Theresa Thompson own two lots in the Lake Cumberland…

Managers usually have a lot of experience with owner requests for reasonable accommodations, but you might be less certain about how to proceed when one of your own employees seeks an accommodation. In the first part of this two-part article, we explained the basics of an employer’s duty to provide employees with reasonable accommodations and…

Most managers agree that dealing with rules violations is the worst part of their jobs. It doesn’t help that the same ones seem to occur again and again. Here are some of the violations that won’t seem to go away and how some associations and managers are tackling them. Associations have implemented a variety of…