A homeowners association is a corporate body of real estate developers who are responsible for marketing, managing and selling homes, plots and residential housing units like apartments and condos. A person needs to shoulder a lot of responsibilities when he or she becomes a part of a homeowners association. Joining such associations may raise not only many questions but also some misunderstandings. Therefore, it is always best to enter the association with enough knowledge on it. Below are answers to few of the more common questions about housing association laws: What process would a condo association follow for collecting the past due payments? The condo association would possibly hire an attorney to collect the past due payments so that it can press charges against the owner for not paying the past due fees. In order to try and have the fees collected they can either send collection letters to the owner or may have the attorney do this. In addition to that, they can hire a collection agency if the owner does not respond to them or fails to pay the fees. The collection agency is usually hired to appoint an attorney in return so that they can sue the owner. In such cases, some of the attorneys may behave like collectors as themselves to collect the past dues and if they fail to do that, they usually file lawsuit against the owners. How does a homeowners association differ from a condo in New York? A condo is a housing unit that consists of a larger building or complex that is usually used as a multi-tenant building. A townhouse, on the other hand, is an independent housing structure that shares the same walls. In a townhouse form of ownership, the owner usually owns the land or is the holder of a specific property while, a condo owner owns no land except for the interiors of a condo. If there is no demand from the IRS on not filing an 1120H form for homeowners association, should they file it? Usually, by filing an 1120H form you are able to get the benefit of the homeowners’ tax breaks. In case a person does not file the form within the due date, then HOA should file a tax return. However, you must know that filing the returns at this point does not have any effect on them. Is it possible to sue a condo association if they failed to meet a tenant’s needs? It is usually possible for a tenant to sue the condo association if they do not meet the requirements of the tenant. The tenant’s rights allow the filing of a lawsuit against the condo owner, if the owner did not fulfill the tenants’ needs in making the condo a descent place to live in. This could mostly happen if the tenant had requested the owner a number of times for things to get repaired and finds out that none of the requirements were met. There are many rules and regulations that every owner or tenant would need to follow once they join an association and therefore it is important for them to know the rules before buying into the association. They should inspect and scrutinize through all the homeowner association documents which should also include the financial statements in order to avoid all HOA related problems in future. If you need any clarification about your particular situation with respect to housing association laws, you may wish to ask a real estate lawyer for legal insight based on an expert evaluation of your circumstances.
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