Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Late HOA payments

[Sharon Villines (sharon]

> On Aug 14, 2018, at 11:28 AM, Elizabeth Magill <pastorlizm [at] gmail.com> 
> wrote:
> 
> Do you all have policies or procedures for very late HOA payments? How
> late do they have to be before you act? Or how many missing payments?
> When you act, what do you do?

In the beginning being overly solicitous, we never charged late fees. The 
treasurer would just talk to the person and work it out. If there was some 
reason that they would be late or have to catch up over time, they would work 
out a doable agreement and take it to the board for approval.

The policy has always been that a letter is sent on the 15th for payments not 
received and it costs $50 for the management company to send that so the late 
person has to pay that unless it has been charged in error. Delinquency 
interest starts on the 30th of the month.

We rarely, rarely have late payments. One a person got behind 5 months because 
she was unemployed. She worked out a payment plan. Another had sent the wrong 
payment for a year but no one informed her so she had to catch up over a few 
months. Those are the only two I remember, literally. And I’ve been on the 
board about 50% of the time and would have known at least during those 9 years.

Then a new treasurer who was also a new resident who was used to typical condo 
laws and who actually read our policy, reminded the management company to send 
letters. He thought they had just forgotten. They have been sent ever since. It 
was a new era in several ways related to finances. He was more liberal in other 
areas. He was in the DC budget office and viewed the budget as a planning 
document, not a restrictive document written in stone. One year we were $12,000 
under budget. His view was that we budgeted funds to be spent on things we 
wanted to spend them on. If we didn’t spend them then we were in danger of 
short-changing ourselves. Not doing repairs that needed to be done or 
under-supporting community events.

At the beginning of the year people often pay the wrong amount because they 
forget to update their automatic payments. That isn’t treated like a late 
payment.

Our management companies are always amazed at how consistently and promptly 
condo fees are paid. I’ve seen them check with each other because they don’t 
believe it.

Sharon
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Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC
http://www.takomavillage.org