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HOA and neighbor questions

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sskrab

Junior Member
What is the name of your state? Georgia
I have 2 questions:
1) I live in a remote area in a largely undeveloped subdivision of 100 acres divided among 9 property owners (only 3 of us have built houses so far). Our subdivision has 2 private gravel roads and an access gate. Four years ago, when the developer sold all the tracts, they had a "handover" of the association to the owners, which consisted of them postmarking the notice for the handover meeting after the actual meeting. Only 1 landowner, who had happened to call the developer the week prior on an unrelated issue, was therefore aware of the meeting and showed up. Thus, the developer turned the association over to him. This person has been unable due to personal circumstances to ever get anything going with the association (has not collected any fees, done any maintenance, not even so much as called a meeting). Now, four years later, the gate is inoperable and needs repairs and the community roads are badly in need of repair. I have spoken with a number of co-owners over the years, and everyone seems to want to get the association working, but no one knows how to do it. I have contacted the "president" who now is wanting to sell his property, and he is willing to turn the job over to whoever wants it. I've tracked down the other owners through tax records, gotten a copy of the filed version of the covenants/restrictions at the courthouse, and sent out letters for us to have a meeting to all the owners. My understanding is, if we meet and elect a new president, and we document the minutes of this meeting where that happens, that this, in addition to the filed copy of the covenants/restrictions would be sufficient documentation for us to get a tax ID # for the Association and then open a checking account to hold the assessments we agree on that are collected. Can someone confirm this is correct? Since I've never done this before, I want to do it correctly so that everything is legitimate, and none of the other owners know what to do. I called every real estate attorney in my area, but none seem to handle HOA things or had any advice.

2) Recovering costs: over the last 4 years, my husband and I have made significant necessary improvements to a section of road at the end of the community road that is only owned jointly by us and our nearest neighbor. This neighbor is an attorney (actually, he was our closing attorney when we bought the property) and has a reputation of being very difficult to deal with (like, he threatened to sue the utility company for touching trees on his side of the road when they installed electric service along their right of way). On the section of road he and my husband and I are jointly responsible for, there was a major spring that left the entire road completely wet year round (like, several inches of standing water across the entire road for a distance of about 15 feet). My husband and I spent several thousand dollars fixing this spring as well as another less problematic one on this part of the road, in addition to just making the road passable (it was originally a very narrow old dirt logging road that we put several loads of gravel on and widened so that it would be passable if 2 cars were on it at the same time). We had to do this because it was our only access from our driveway to the development road. We've never asked the attorney to share in this cost to date. A few weeks ago, he sold his property at a profit. I was thinking of sending him a letter with an "offer to settle" of $500, including a copy of one invoice that went exclusively to fixing that bad spring and cost $1000, which represents only a fraction of what we spent fixing the problems with this part of the road that was 50% his responsibility. I was thinking of this approach because it would get us something on our investment without me having to take the step of taking him to small claims court, which I would prefer not to do. Since he has a bad reputation for being difficult, it will not surprise me though if he ignores this offer and forces me to take him to small claims. If I have to do that, I want to make sure we recover as much as we are entitled to. I assume if I can show paid receipts for work to this road, that he would be liable for 50% of those total costs? Is there anything I should do in the way of preparing paperwork besides receipts to strengthen my case in this regard? Like, do I need statements from the person who performed the work to justify that the road was not useable in its prior condition? (Unfortunately, I did not take before and after photos). Can any witness statements be written, or would the person have to appear with me at small claims court? Thanks for any advice in advance.
 



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