Residents of the Ocean Walk development in Surfside Beach
weren’t happy with their new developer and management company.
According
to residents, the developer didn’t seem to care that there were
problems with the swimming pool and a waterfall at the entrance or that
yards were eroding into ponds. They called the management company but
couldn’t get any answers there.
Then they were told their homeowner association dues were going up by $105 a month, and that was the proverbial last straw.
Though
eventually they came to a solution, the conflict in some ways mirrored
that between HOAs and residents all over Horry County, and indeed,
South Carolina.
South Carolina is home to 6,400 HOAs, according to
the Foundation for Community Association Research, and officials
throughout the state say that letters, calls and emails from
dissatisfied homeowners are a near constant. They don’t come in a flood,
say people in state and local governments, but you can count on them
every week or month or so.
The writers want to eliminate what they
see as unresolved problems in their developments and to rein in what
they feel are out-of-control HOA boards and declarants, as developers
are known legally.
There ought to be laws to help them out, they say.
Some
developers and management companies agree that the state’s current laws
that cover HOA and developer activities should be, at least, amended.
Property owners say they like laws that govern homeowner associations in
Florida, North Carolina and Virginia.
For instance, they require
that prospective owners get copies of homeowner association rules and
financial documents before they sign a mortgage so they know what they
are buying into when they get that new home.
Too often, say
homeowners in Horry County, those documents are part of the multitude of
printed material that passes before them at closing. Who’s going to
take the time to read them then?
But Mark Neill, a Surfside Beach
lawyer who has dealt with the issues for 17 years, warns that an HOA law
could result in higher dues for the members of the associations well as
clarify current law and infuse homeowners with power they do not have
now.
It costs money to produce the paperwork the law might require
be sent to prospective buyers as well as current homeowners, Neill
said. It can cost more money to get legal advice to answer challenges to
subdivision authority, even if that is in a mediation meeting.
Those
costs would have to be paid by homeowners, who could potentially have
to fund both sides of a lawsuit against their development.
Four
bills addressing some of the concerns of homeowners were introduced into
the S.C. Senate this year, but none got beyond the initial assignment
to a committee.
One of them, an overarching homeowners association
law much like that in Florida, has been introduced annually in the
Senate for at least six years. But it has never gotten out of the
committee where it was sent after it was put into the hopper.
Since this is the last year of the current biennial, all four bills will have to be reintroduced if they are to move forward.
It’s
not that South Carolina is without laws that govern some aspects of
homeowners associations. The state’s Nonprofit Corporation Act covers
the basics for most single-family home associations while the Horizontal
Property Regime Act applies to condominiums.
But even if the laws introduced this year had been adopted, they wouldn’t have resolved what Ocean Walk residents faced.
“We were livid,” said resident Ted Hawley, who purchased his home four years ago when the community was called Bermuda Gardens.
Hawley
said the original developer paid a portion of maintenance costs to keep
residents’ monthly fees down. That developer, according to Hawley,
thought it unfair to expect that a relatively small number of homeowners
should bear the cost of keeping up with all the common areas. His
reasoning was that he would lessen and eventually eliminate his
contributions as more people moved in.
But he was forced to
abandon the development during the recession, leaving it with
insufficient dues and no reserve fund to do the work when a new owner
came in.
The maintenance issues continued to be unresolved after
the sale and repeated complaints from residents to a new management
company went unanswered.
“The homeowners got together and we decided to make as big a stink as possible,” Hawley said.
They hired an attorney to help them resolve the matter.
In
response, Hawley said, the management company told homeowners that it
would not talk to them as long as legal action was a possibility. The
residents reversed direction.
The additional fee was instituted
after an emotional meeting in an empty store at Inlet Square Mall, at
which some owners said the new developer should pay at least some of the
cost, some threatened not to pay the increased dues and still others
said they would be forced to sell because they did not have the money to
pay more.
Since then, Hawley said, “Things have gotten better.”
The
maintenance is being addressed and the management company replaced the
unresponsive community manager with a new manager that Hawley praised
for her communication skills.
Hawley is placated, somewhat. He
said he still gets angry when he realizes that he must pay almost $500 a
month in association dues.
The law needs to limit dues increases to a maximum of 20 percent in any one year, he said.
Different, but the same
The
situation at Ocean Walk differed from many other HOA issues in that
nearly all residents were united in opposition to the increased fee and
angry with the property manager for not answering repeated questions.
And
yet, the basic dynamic, dissatisfaction with community owners and
managers, was the same that takes place wherever there are homeowner
associations, say those who deal with such situations daily.
Most
frequently, say developers, managers and homeowners themselves, it is
one or two or at most a small group of residents who raise issues, over
and over. Often, the developers and managers add, the same people come
back repeatedly with one grievance or concern after another and refuse
to accept the answers they get to their questions.
Battles between
such residents and community managers – developers, volunteer board
members or hired management companies – can go on for years.
Such is the case with Clete Linke at Waterford Plantation.
His
first issue with those running the subdivision came shortly after he
moved in several years ago when the homeowners association told him he
had to remove lattice work he’d put up to hide his heat pump.
Lattice
wasn’t allowed in Waterford, he was told, and he took it down even
though he said that other homes in the development had lattice work in
one place or another.
He had a run-in with the development’s prime
builder, who had the developer’s permission to act as declarant in his
stead, and the relationship between the two became antagonistic, with at
times angry emails shooting back and forth.