What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? WA
I bought a condo as a rental unit back in July 2014 in my LLC company. Since my first HOA due weren’t due until September, I completely forgotten to pay the HOA dues and haven’t paid any since then. At first, I had requested all mailings to be sent to where I was living in Kent, then a month later we moved to Bellevue and on 08/29/2014 we emailed the manager to update our address to the new address in Bellevue. Skip to March 2015, a knock came on my door and when I opened the door I was served a lawsuit from the HOA for all of the back HOA dues + $1500+ in attorney's and other filing fees. This was the first ever correspondence I had ever received from the HOA, between buying the condo and got served the lawsuit, I had never gotten a single correspondence from the HOA, no late notices, no minutes and meetings, no nothing at all. But due to the cost of hiring an attorney to help me fight the case ($2K-$5K retainer vs the $1,500+ I am claiming as unjust fees) I felt hopeless going up against this injustice, now the HOA have a default judgment against me. I was basically stuck between a rock and a bigger rock.
During this time between the ends of August to November, I had a tenant in the property and was in constant communication with the HOA manager regarding tenant inquiries, my unit’s parking space, my unit’s mailbox location, reporting kids jumping over fences in the back of my unit and many other things. Through the correspondence I have had with the manager regarding these subjects, the subject line of all of my email between me and the her always has my unit's address, and in those conversations, the manager has also has access to my direct cell phone number, my email, my assistant phone number as well as my tenant email. But I wonder why it had never occurred to the manager or the board to ever tell me anything about my account being behind with my dues and special assessments. Does it ever occur to her or the board that I may not have been receiving the mails they have been sending me? Or to notify me about neither the lien nor the lawsuit that the HOA will be filing against my unit if I don’t pay my dues through other channels of communication other than just sending me physical mails? When I came to inquire the manager about why she had never said brought this up to me through other means beside mailing, her only response was that the HOA did satisfied their obligation to me by repeatedly sending me mails regard this matter, and since I never responded, they took actions.
Since she kept stating that the HOA, and lawyer per the ledger, has repeatedly been sending me physical mails about my unit’s situation, I wanted to make sure that they had my correct address on file. When I inquired what my current address she has on file, on 04/07/2015 she confirmed that it was my Kent address, which is my old address. With that being said, I don’t believe she has ever updated my address to the Bellevue address per my request back in August, which may be the reason why I had never receive any letters from them. Then later she changed her story saying that the address was changed to the Bellevue address, but on 01/25/2015, a letter got returned there, so she went in to change it back to the Kent address, but then again, how come she never brought that up to me via the numerous other methods of communication she has available? And what about from August to January, was there anything else other than 1 letter being sent out to me to my Bellevue address? How come only one came back in 01/25/2015? What had happened to the rest? She also denies the fact that she does not know who I am when every time I questioned her about why she never reaches out to me via email or any other method other than mailing. But when I first came to her right after I got served the lawsuit, the first question in her email was, "are you the XXX LLC?" Which makes me believed that she is aware of my account and knows exactly who I was, not mentioning that my unit's address has always been in the subject line of every single emails correspondence I had with her.
When I first discovered that the attorney that the HOA hired to file lien and lawsuit against my unit had to go through a Private Investigator to search my automobile records to get my updated address in Bellevue, I was very surprised and frustrated as to why the HOA had to resort to this route because all of my info were never hidden but openly disclosed to the manager since the beginning. If there was not a response from the letters sent, isn’t it more reasonable to look for other alternative methods to communicate with me instead of moving so quickly to filing liens and lawsuit? I mean, hypothetically speaking, management didn’t get a response from the mailings and didn’t have any of my other contact info; there is always an option to knock on my unit’s door. If they don’t want to have a potential awkward conversion with the occupant of the unit, there is another option of just posting the notice on the door or mail a notice to the unit itself or turn off the utilities per the HOA’s CC&R. With so many other ways (phone, email, update address, post notice on unit, talk to unit’s occupant, mail to unit, etc.) that this situation could have been avoided and unnecessary monies not being wasted, I am appalled at this whole process and how quickly it has escalated without any additional efforts being put into it to avoid costly legal proceedings. Under reasonable process, wouldn’t management exhaust all form of communications before resorting to taking legal actions as the last possible alternative? I mean, per the lawsuit, the HOA filed a lien when my unit was only 3 months delinquent and the lawsuit came on the 5th month. I would consider that as extremely quick, absurdly harsh, unnecessary and unjustified given the situation. Especially given the fact that I had never proven to show any negative attitude or avoidance to not pay the dues, instead I have always been in communication on a professional level with the HOA management. Just because mails were sent out, that does not mean that the intended recipient received it, and in this situation is proved by the chance of an address change request that was never fulfilled by management.
At the end of the day, I am not denying the fact that I had forgotten to pay my HOA dues, but I don’t believe I was the only one who dropped that ball. And because of that, I don’t believe I should be the only one to hoard this blame and cost wholly. I believe the manager had exercised some form of negligence when dealing with my account, and to prove it again on 03/16/2015 I requested the ledger from her regarding my HOA dues, how much it is, who do I make out the check to and where to send it to for the month of April to avoid any more duress in an already strained, misunderstanding relationship with the HOA. She responded asking another person to send it to me and also had her email CC-ed on the response, giving me the impression that the information I am requesting is coming soon. After not hearing anything back for one full week, I followed up with her again on 03/23/2015 regarding the ledger. I still haven’t heard anything about it and still today 04/07/2015, which marks a full 3 weeks since the original request, I have not yet seen it.
I have tried yesterday to come to the board meeting to appeal my case with the board personally since they have never heard from me, but low and behold, the manager was there as well and she seems to be buddy buddy with all members of the board. At the end of the meeting, the board declined to waive any fee or lower anything at all. Nothing. They came to the manager defense and pretty much denies all accountability or responsibility of the address change issue. Again I felt so hopeless, is there no justice in this world?
I guess my question is:
1. Is there still a way for me to appeal the judgment?
2. If I were to pay off this judgment, can I take the HOA and the management company to small claim for negligence, failed to perform their duties to me, unjust, unethical practices, unreasonable, perhaps even barbaric with their timeline? I mean if my address were changed original as requested, I don’t believe nothing of this lien or lawsuit or lawyer thing would needed to happen. And now because of the judgment file against me and/or my company, it now tainted our financial records and potentially will be the just cause of denial for financing down the road for other properties.
3. If I take them to small claim, what’s my chance of recovering? How would this case look in front of a judge?
4. Can I file complaint against the HOA and the management company? Where?
5. Is there anything else I could do to entice them to lower the judgment or negotiate or reimburse me for the whole or part of the $1,500+ unreasonable fee? I am for sure paying the dues, I just don’t believe that I was fully responsible for the lien filing and lawyer fee.
6. The lawyer said that I am also responsible for $75 because he sent me a Post Judgment letter, is this true?
7. And if I paid the balance in full, I will have to also pay for the recording of the lien release, is this true? I mean, they filed a lien and got a judgment which I pay off, aren’t they are responsible to release the lien and any cost associate with it?
I bought a condo as a rental unit back in July 2014 in my LLC company. Since my first HOA due weren’t due until September, I completely forgotten to pay the HOA dues and haven’t paid any since then. At first, I had requested all mailings to be sent to where I was living in Kent, then a month later we moved to Bellevue and on 08/29/2014 we emailed the manager to update our address to the new address in Bellevue. Skip to March 2015, a knock came on my door and when I opened the door I was served a lawsuit from the HOA for all of the back HOA dues + $1500+ in attorney's and other filing fees. This was the first ever correspondence I had ever received from the HOA, between buying the condo and got served the lawsuit, I had never gotten a single correspondence from the HOA, no late notices, no minutes and meetings, no nothing at all. But due to the cost of hiring an attorney to help me fight the case ($2K-$5K retainer vs the $1,500+ I am claiming as unjust fees) I felt hopeless going up against this injustice, now the HOA have a default judgment against me. I was basically stuck between a rock and a bigger rock.
During this time between the ends of August to November, I had a tenant in the property and was in constant communication with the HOA manager regarding tenant inquiries, my unit’s parking space, my unit’s mailbox location, reporting kids jumping over fences in the back of my unit and many other things. Through the correspondence I have had with the manager regarding these subjects, the subject line of all of my email between me and the her always has my unit's address, and in those conversations, the manager has also has access to my direct cell phone number, my email, my assistant phone number as well as my tenant email. But I wonder why it had never occurred to the manager or the board to ever tell me anything about my account being behind with my dues and special assessments. Does it ever occur to her or the board that I may not have been receiving the mails they have been sending me? Or to notify me about neither the lien nor the lawsuit that the HOA will be filing against my unit if I don’t pay my dues through other channels of communication other than just sending me physical mails? When I came to inquire the manager about why she had never said brought this up to me through other means beside mailing, her only response was that the HOA did satisfied their obligation to me by repeatedly sending me mails regard this matter, and since I never responded, they took actions.
Since she kept stating that the HOA, and lawyer per the ledger, has repeatedly been sending me physical mails about my unit’s situation, I wanted to make sure that they had my correct address on file. When I inquired what my current address she has on file, on 04/07/2015 she confirmed that it was my Kent address, which is my old address. With that being said, I don’t believe she has ever updated my address to the Bellevue address per my request back in August, which may be the reason why I had never receive any letters from them. Then later she changed her story saying that the address was changed to the Bellevue address, but on 01/25/2015, a letter got returned there, so she went in to change it back to the Kent address, but then again, how come she never brought that up to me via the numerous other methods of communication she has available? And what about from August to January, was there anything else other than 1 letter being sent out to me to my Bellevue address? How come only one came back in 01/25/2015? What had happened to the rest? She also denies the fact that she does not know who I am when every time I questioned her about why she never reaches out to me via email or any other method other than mailing. But when I first came to her right after I got served the lawsuit, the first question in her email was, "are you the XXX LLC?" Which makes me believed that she is aware of my account and knows exactly who I was, not mentioning that my unit's address has always been in the subject line of every single emails correspondence I had with her.
When I first discovered that the attorney that the HOA hired to file lien and lawsuit against my unit had to go through a Private Investigator to search my automobile records to get my updated address in Bellevue, I was very surprised and frustrated as to why the HOA had to resort to this route because all of my info were never hidden but openly disclosed to the manager since the beginning. If there was not a response from the letters sent, isn’t it more reasonable to look for other alternative methods to communicate with me instead of moving so quickly to filing liens and lawsuit? I mean, hypothetically speaking, management didn’t get a response from the mailings and didn’t have any of my other contact info; there is always an option to knock on my unit’s door. If they don’t want to have a potential awkward conversion with the occupant of the unit, there is another option of just posting the notice on the door or mail a notice to the unit itself or turn off the utilities per the HOA’s CC&R. With so many other ways (phone, email, update address, post notice on unit, talk to unit’s occupant, mail to unit, etc.) that this situation could have been avoided and unnecessary monies not being wasted, I am appalled at this whole process and how quickly it has escalated without any additional efforts being put into it to avoid costly legal proceedings. Under reasonable process, wouldn’t management exhaust all form of communications before resorting to taking legal actions as the last possible alternative? I mean, per the lawsuit, the HOA filed a lien when my unit was only 3 months delinquent and the lawsuit came on the 5th month. I would consider that as extremely quick, absurdly harsh, unnecessary and unjustified given the situation. Especially given the fact that I had never proven to show any negative attitude or avoidance to not pay the dues, instead I have always been in communication on a professional level with the HOA management. Just because mails were sent out, that does not mean that the intended recipient received it, and in this situation is proved by the chance of an address change request that was never fulfilled by management.
At the end of the day, I am not denying the fact that I had forgotten to pay my HOA dues, but I don’t believe I was the only one who dropped that ball. And because of that, I don’t believe I should be the only one to hoard this blame and cost wholly. I believe the manager had exercised some form of negligence when dealing with my account, and to prove it again on 03/16/2015 I requested the ledger from her regarding my HOA dues, how much it is, who do I make out the check to and where to send it to for the month of April to avoid any more duress in an already strained, misunderstanding relationship with the HOA. She responded asking another person to send it to me and also had her email CC-ed on the response, giving me the impression that the information I am requesting is coming soon. After not hearing anything back for one full week, I followed up with her again on 03/23/2015 regarding the ledger. I still haven’t heard anything about it and still today 04/07/2015, which marks a full 3 weeks since the original request, I have not yet seen it.
I have tried yesterday to come to the board meeting to appeal my case with the board personally since they have never heard from me, but low and behold, the manager was there as well and she seems to be buddy buddy with all members of the board. At the end of the meeting, the board declined to waive any fee or lower anything at all. Nothing. They came to the manager defense and pretty much denies all accountability or responsibility of the address change issue. Again I felt so hopeless, is there no justice in this world?
I guess my question is:
1. Is there still a way for me to appeal the judgment?
2. If I were to pay off this judgment, can I take the HOA and the management company to small claim for negligence, failed to perform their duties to me, unjust, unethical practices, unreasonable, perhaps even barbaric with their timeline? I mean if my address were changed original as requested, I don’t believe nothing of this lien or lawsuit or lawyer thing would needed to happen. And now because of the judgment file against me and/or my company, it now tainted our financial records and potentially will be the just cause of denial for financing down the road for other properties.
3. If I take them to small claim, what’s my chance of recovering? How would this case look in front of a judge?
4. Can I file complaint against the HOA and the management company? Where?
5. Is there anything else I could do to entice them to lower the judgment or negotiate or reimburse me for the whole or part of the $1,500+ unreasonable fee? I am for sure paying the dues, I just don’t believe that I was fully responsible for the lien filing and lawyer fee.
6. The lawyer said that I am also responsible for $75 because he sent me a Post Judgment letter, is this true?
7. And if I paid the balance in full, I will have to also pay for the recording of the lien release, is this true? I mean, they filed a lien and got a judgment which I pay off, aren’t they are responsible to release the lien and any cost associate with it?
