California
I currently rent a condo through a mgmt company in a condo complex. During the initial walkthrough with the mgmt company, I was given verbal notice of my parking spot number and have been parking in that spot for the past 5 years. My lease does not state what spot is mine. During that time, 7 different people have either rented or owned the condo adjacent to ours and have used the parking spot adjacent to the one I was told was ours. You can probably see where this is going...
The 8th neighbor of our tenure bought the unit next to ours about 2 mos ago. I noticed that he was parking kind of haphazardly in the community, mainly using a parking space of an empty unit close to the entrance of his own unit. This is a pretty common -illegal- occurrence among people who have been in the community for a while and know whose parking spot is whose. The neighbor is very unfriendly and the opportunity to tell him of the rules never came up - nor would it be my responsibility to do so. If only I had known...
On 12/15 my wife and I left for an extended vacation. We returned home on 1/6 to find our new neighbor's car in "our" spot. After a frantic weekend of collecting information I found out that our neighbor had called the tow company listed on the sign in the neighborhood and had our car towed on 12/16. My neighbor curtly explained that he had checked with the HOA, we were in his spot and he authorized the towing. When I checked my mail the next day I learned that the tow co had placed a lien on my car and I owed $1000 to get it back. The car is not worth that much, but I was forced to pay it to avoid further charges and damage to my credit rating.
We met with the HOA and they informed us that our mgmt company had never registered us with them as being tenants in the community. They say that their laws state that the parking spaces are the private property of each owner and the owner has the right to authorize towing without notice pursuant to cvc 22658. When I read the code it seems to me that "associations" need to follow a protocol before towing that was not carried out in this case.
Based on the above, do HOA's need to authorize towing? I feel that if they had done at least a little bit of checking they would have realized from the registration that the car was that of one of the condo occupants.
p.s. Just to make matters worse, when I picked up the car some things (probably about $50 worth of stuff) had been removed from the car - the towing company alleges that the car was unlocked when they towed it (total bs, but it's my word against theirs). I tried to speak with a manager and was told to "f off". nice
thanks
I currently rent a condo through a mgmt company in a condo complex. During the initial walkthrough with the mgmt company, I was given verbal notice of my parking spot number and have been parking in that spot for the past 5 years. My lease does not state what spot is mine. During that time, 7 different people have either rented or owned the condo adjacent to ours and have used the parking spot adjacent to the one I was told was ours. You can probably see where this is going...
The 8th neighbor of our tenure bought the unit next to ours about 2 mos ago. I noticed that he was parking kind of haphazardly in the community, mainly using a parking space of an empty unit close to the entrance of his own unit. This is a pretty common -illegal- occurrence among people who have been in the community for a while and know whose parking spot is whose. The neighbor is very unfriendly and the opportunity to tell him of the rules never came up - nor would it be my responsibility to do so. If only I had known...
On 12/15 my wife and I left for an extended vacation. We returned home on 1/6 to find our new neighbor's car in "our" spot. After a frantic weekend of collecting information I found out that our neighbor had called the tow company listed on the sign in the neighborhood and had our car towed on 12/16. My neighbor curtly explained that he had checked with the HOA, we were in his spot and he authorized the towing. When I checked my mail the next day I learned that the tow co had placed a lien on my car and I owed $1000 to get it back. The car is not worth that much, but I was forced to pay it to avoid further charges and damage to my credit rating.
We met with the HOA and they informed us that our mgmt company had never registered us with them as being tenants in the community. They say that their laws state that the parking spaces are the private property of each owner and the owner has the right to authorize towing without notice pursuant to cvc 22658. When I read the code it seems to me that "associations" need to follow a protocol before towing that was not carried out in this case.
Based on the above, do HOA's need to authorize towing? I feel that if they had done at least a little bit of checking they would have realized from the registration that the car was that of one of the condo occupants.
p.s. Just to make matters worse, when I picked up the car some things (probably about $50 worth of stuff) had been removed from the car - the towing company alleges that the car was unlocked when they towed it (total bs, but it's my word against theirs). I tried to speak with a manager and was told to "f off". nice
thanks