Homeowners Assoc & Privacy

[ron mc]

Virginia

I belong to a HOA and my dues are 600.00 per year and in 2011 I wasnt able to pay my dues. They have placed a lien against my property, which I understand, but at the last HOA meeting they made this public in the minutes. Do i have any rights as a owner regarding privacy? Is this a violation of privacy?

 

[HomeGuru]

Virginia

I belong to a HOA and my dues are 600.00 per year and in 2011 I wasnt able to pay my dues. They have placed a lien against my property, which I understand, but at the last HOA meeting they made this public in the minutes. Do i have any rights as a owner regarding privacy? Is this a violation of privacy?

**A: what exact information did they make public? Did they state your name, property address and unit number? If they did then the answer is yes. Such private information should only be discussed by the Board in a Board executive session.

 

[festival]

Privacy is the least of your problems. One of the next steps for the HOA is to (publicly) foreclose the lien, and add all the legal fees to what you owe.

The board should have discussed your situation in private (executive session), and written privately. Ideally, the HOA should have sent you a letter of intent to record a lien on your property, so you would know what was coming.

They could have kept it out of the minutes, but, hey, a recorded lien is a public (government) record, so the HOA had no choice but to make it public. I don't think you have much to complain about at the lien stage.