Changing Condo fee's in Pennsylvania

What is the name of your state? Pennsylvania

The situation that I have goes as follows:

On September 18, 2004 we had a very horrible flood and it ended up flooding out a river which emerged the sewer man holes and backed up into basements in 4 of the condos in my development. I am the vice president of the board. These unit owners were not covered in anyway because it was a result of a flood and although we have flood insurance on these units 4 units all 4 sides of the basement floor is below grade and fema does not cover very much. Infact like 3 of the 17 items that they cover is all that these unit owners will benifit from. They will loose out on any furniture, carpet, spackling of walls etc.


Then to top it off a 5,000 deductable became 10,000 because it involved sewer. So these owners are really losing out. There is no insurance out there that will ever cover them in the event of this flood in the future. Here the taxes were reflecting there basement as square footage which is not allowed in PA and the county is looking at reassessing these properties for tax purposes and the condo fees are based off of square footage as well. So now for taxes there 1900 sq.ft. condo is going to only reflect 1004 sq.ft.

The board is acknowleding all this and would like to lower these 4 units fees but the management company is saying that a board alone cannot due this. That we need a vote from 70% of the unit owners in a 74 unit condominium development. Has anyone ever been down a road like this or have any knowledge as was might be true or not?

It is weird because on the board we make so many other discions without the other unit owners why now all of a sudden do we need them?

The property management company has really messed up big time in this whole situation and really has no idea what they are talking about the majority of the time but now all of a sudden want to look like they do but cant show clearly where it says this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

[HomeGuru]

Originally Posted by Anthony Schimme

What is the name of your state? Pennsylvania

The situation that I have goes as follows:

On September 18, 2004 we had a very horrible flood and it ended up flooding out a river which emerged the sewer man holes and backed up into basements in 4 of the condos in my development. I am the vice president of the board. These unit owners were not covered in anyway because it was a result of a flood and although we have flood insurance on these units 4 units all 4 sides of the basement floor is below grade and fema does not cover very much. Infact like 3 of the 17 items that they cover is all that these unit owners will benifit from. They will loose out on any furniture, carpet, spackling of walls etc.


Then to top it off a 5,000 deductable became 10,000 because it involved sewer. So these owners are really losing out. There is no insurance out there that will ever cover them in the event of this flood in the future. Here the taxes were reflecting there basement as square footage which is not allowed in PA and the county is looking at reassessing these properties for tax purposes and the condo fees are based off of square footage as well. So now for taxes there 1900 sq.ft. condo is going to only reflect 1004 sq.ft.

The board is acknowleding all this and would like to lower these 4 units fees but the management company is saying that a board alone cannot due this. That we need a vote from 70% of the unit owners in a 74 unit condominium development. Has anyone ever been down a road like this or have any knowledge as was might be true or not?

It is weird because on the board we make so many other discions without the other unit owners why now all of a sudden do we need them?

The property management company has really messed up big time in this whole situation and really has no idea what they are talking about the majority of the time but now all of a sudden want to look like they do but cant show clearly where it says this.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

**A: you need to get a legal opinion from the HOA attorney but I am pretty sure that the mgt. co. is correct.