Product Description

"An absolute MUST HAVE for anyone owning or planning to purchase a condominium."
-Jerome Jahn, Attorney and Real Estate Broker, Pasadena, CA

"A valuable guide to all aspects of community living."
-Stephen C. Sawicki, Attorney, Orlando, FL

Move into a community with a homeowners association and you not only buy a home, you choose a way of life. Homeowners Association and You is the ultimate guide to choosing and creating a harmonious community of good neighbors and peaceful living.

With questionnaires and checklists to help you work together as a group, sample letters and legal forms to run your association smoothly and a sample orientation manual to get your association off to a good start and stay on track, Homeowners Association and You has everything you need. With it, you will be able to:
- Create a positive community atmosphere
- Resolve common problems regarding people, pets and parking
- Deal with a disruptive homeowner
- Keep your home and your association financially secure
- Discover how you can be a community leader

A truly essential tool for anyone who lives in a gated community, condominium or other homeowners association.

Ideal for everyone involved with Homeowners Associations
Residents, Managers, Board Members, Real Estate Agents, Bankers and Title Companies

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #280737 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781572485518
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

About the Author
Dr. Marlene M. Coleman has lived in a condominium community in Los Angeles for the past twenty-five years. She has held positions as a Committee and Board member, as well as served two terms as President of the Board of her Community Association-having turned it around from near disaster. She is also actively involved in both state and national Community Association organizations. Dr. Coleman is Associate Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Southern California Medical School, an Attending Physician in College Health at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, California, and a pediatrician in private practice in Newport Beach, California.

Judge William Huss is a full-time mediator and arbitrator, overseeing individual, institutional, and corporate cases. He was named one of the Master Mediators by Verdict Magazine. Judge Huss was on the Los Angeles Superior Court, presiding over both civil and criminal trials. He also served on the Los Angeles Superior Court Executive Committee and was the Chair of the Education Subcommittee.

He was a cofounder of an Alternative Dispute Resolution company and served as its president from 1996–2001. He has successfully conducted over 2,800 mediations on the subjects of construction, business, employment, personal injury, eminent domain, malpractice, real estate, homeowners association, and many others.

Before becoming a judge, he founded a law firm in downtown Los Angeles, and he is now Of Counsel to the firm. Having been an associate and partner in small, medium, and large firms, as well as founding one himself, Judge Huss is well-qualified to share insights and experiences that will benefit lawyers who want to start a law firm themselves.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Five Basic Rules to Running and Maintaining a Successful Homeowner's Association

Adapted from Homeowners Association and You by Dr. Marlene M. Coleman and Judge William Huss

Community Associations can only succeed if they are managed well-not just well-managed. This means that as you look at your Community and its needs, you need to observe how it is managed-not just by whom. What are the methods to track and monitor projects? How is information disseminated? Are there any current risks to the Community? Are those risks legal? Financial? Structural?

Throughout your research, you must ask yourself, How do I know how my Community is doing? The questions of how much you know and from where the information comes lie at the heart of making sure your Community and its Association are safe. Only then can you be sure that your investment and your home are safe.

What must you do to find out whether your Association is well managed?

It starts with ground rules.

Ground rules are the guidelines by which those who oversee the Community and its needs must operate to succeed. The ground rules are not the same as the CC&Rs or any other governing documents. They are the active commitments that each member of the managing bodies (i.e., the Board, Committees, and management) make to one another to ensure the success of the greater Community.

Organizations that succeed do so because they are consistent and predictable. Those people who are overseeing the organization and its activities not only know the ground rules, but they ensure that those rules are set and followed. That way, everybody knows what is expected of them and everybody else. It also ensures that anyone who is working against the rules-and, as such, the good of the Community-can be easily identified and appropriate action can be taken.

The Community's ground rules must be actively followed by the Board, Committees, and management. These rules act as much to provide role modeling as they do to create consistency throughout the Community. It does not matter whether you have an outside manager overseeing your Association's activities or if that responsibility is performed by a resident manager-the ground rules apply to everyone involved in the management of the Community.

THE GROUND RULES
There are five basic ground rules that you and everyone involved in your Community's management and oversight must follow. Only by doing so can you ensure that the Association is managed well and well-managed. The five ground rules are:

1. Be consistent.
2. Be vigilant.
3. Enforce all the rules.
4. Review documents regularly.
5. Ask when you do not know.

Depending upon your Association and its needs, you may decide to add some ground rules to the list. Some communities add ground rules such as be honest; be respectful of others; or, ask, do not attack. These and others should be added if they will help your Board, Committee members, and management do their jobs well.

The ground rules should be posted at every meeting. They should also be reviewed periodically to ensure that everyone understands them and how they apply to your Community. This is particularly important if you have new Board or Committee members, or a new manager joining the group. In that case, special time should be set aside to discuss the ground rules in detail, ask questions, and make sure that everybody understands them and recommits themselves to their enforcement.

The following sections detail each ground rule and how it applies to the Community and its Association. As you read the descriptions, think about how your Community operates right now. Look for opportunities for improvement. Think about how you might introduce your thoughts to your fellow Community members-whether Board or Committee members, management, or just your friends within the Community who also want to become involved in the betterment of their home, Community, and Association.

Be Consistent
Consistency creates a sense of safety and comfort for all of those around us. Everybody knows what to expect, no matter what the circumstances. Decisions are the same-no matter who makes them. Consistency and a sense of safety are synonymous.

It is not just the CC&Rs or governing documents with which you must be consistent-although that is absolutely necessary. It is also the way that you deal with problems within the Community
that makes consistency so important.

One of the more popular tricks that residents play is to pit one Board, Committee, or management member against the others. It is the idea that "if Mom says no, go ask Dad." That can only work if "Mom" and "Dad" are not consistent in the way that they make decisions. Rather than allowing residents to believe that they can ask one person and get the answer they want-knowing that they would not get the same answer from another person-it is the responsibility of all those in management to make sure that they are consistent with the rules and with each other.

Realistically, that is a very big task. It is hard enough for any individual to be consistent from situation to situation. Try to bring that consistency to a group and the difficulties in the early stages seem momentous. The best way to overcome those difficulties is to commit to working toward being consistent, and then, at each meeting, discuss decisions in the larger context. Were they consistent with other decisions being made? Are certain residents trying to play one person off another? What should be done to make sure that everyone is consistent from situation to situation?

Being consistent requires an objective look at how you are behaving from situation to situation-and adjusting your behaviors so there is no discernable difference from one set of circumstances to the next. Even though it seems as if every problem is separate and apart from all the others, that is not actually the case.

***
EXAMPLE: In one Community, one of the Board members was constantly complaining about residents who made any changes to the outside of their homes that might be seen by others. She bothered the manager, the other Board members, even the residents themselves-sometimes even insulting them for their lack of consideration for their neighbors and the overall value of the property.

Somehow, though, it never occurred to that same Board member that she had made changes to the outside of her residence that were breaking the same rules she was complaining about. For months she ignored the manager and other Board members as they mentioned, asked, and demanded that she bring her residence into compliance.

She truly did not see that it was the same thing. She was guilty of violating the same rules for which she was pointing a finger at others, yet she thought that, somehow, her situation was different, not because she was a Board member, but because she did not find her violation offensive-to her or to the value of the property. It was only everyone else's infractions that created a problem.

Once it was brought to her attention, she realized her mistake. Until that time, she did not see her inconsistency. Once she did, appropriate action was taken-by her and others-and the problems were solved.
***

Be Vigilant
The best way to build upon consistency and ensure that ground rules are being observed is to be vigilant. It is so easy for the rules of the Association to be overlooked. There is a tendency to want to believe that this time was different, that the residents know better
and will take it upon themselves to correct their behavior.

Perhaps the Board, Committee, or management members are just tired. They know that something is wrong and they even know that they must do something about it. But how many times must they take the same actions, for the same-or different-people, until everybody understands their responsibility to their Community and their Association?

They have every right to be tired. At the best of times, being vigilant is not easy. Add the responsibility of knowing that your decisions can make or break your Community and your own home, and it often seems the weight of the world is resting on your shoulders.

That being said, being vigilant-in combination with being consistent-lessens the weight of the world. Ultimately, it allows those who are overseeing the good of the Community to set and demonstrate standards for how the Community is going to work.

Vigilance in the management of the Community and its Association makes all of its operations more predictable. Most importantly, it becomes predictable that the Community is operating as it should and must for the best interests of all the residents.

***
EXAMPLE: In a townhome community there was a couple whose children invariably threw their candy and ice cream wrappers in the driveway and garage areas. Everybody knew the perpetrators. A number of residents spoke to the managing members of the Community, complaining about the mess and the fact that the parents disregarded the requests of the neighbors to teach their children to throw their garbage into the appropriate receptacles.

Because no action was being taken, other residents began breaking other rules. Their feeling-justified in their eyes-was that they and their children should not be held to a higher standard if no one was going to ensure that others were not held responsible. That part of the Community quickly began to look like a slum-with property values adjusting appropriately downward.

Finally, the Board members realized that they could not be nice about the rules of the Community. They had to be vigilant. What had started out as a single instance-something to be treated only as a minor problem-had escalated to a very real problem for the whole of the Community.

Action was taken. A meeting was held with the residents of that part of the Community. Cleanup teams were established to bring the common areas back to their previously pristine appearance. It was even decided by the residents of that area that a nei...

Customer Reviews

You'd think we would get over our schoolyard politics as adults...
Unfortunately, many haven't, which is why the advice in this book is rather handy. The homeowners' association I am a part of is a fledgling community I have likened the the original 13 colonies. In spite of all the ankle biting and back-stabbing, our Constitution has held this country together for over 200 years, and it is our duty to the lives given in support of our democracy that we take every opportunity to pay homage. Assuring a safe and secure neighborhood for your family and neighbors is the least that we can do as citizens. This book suggests ways to pull neighbors together for a common cause and what each participant could do to improve the quality of a community. How Dr. Coleman reveals the nuances of homeowners' associations was an eye-opener for me. If you want to learn the basics and how to become a more astute member of a homeowners' association, this is a good start.

A wealth of knowledge - a must Read
This book has truly helped me to understand what an effective Board of Directors of a homeowners association should be like. I have always felt that a Homeowners Association should be operated as a business and this book really brings this point home. This is a must have book for anyone wanting to participate in running for the Board of Directors. It helps you to know how to handle most situations that can arise in a community run by a Home Owner Association. Thanks so much!

BG in Maryland

Valuable content, but extremely verbose
This book is full of useful information and ideas. For someone new to HOAs in general, it can be an easy way to adapt to community living. For HOA board members (that's me), it has a lot of great ideas to make building operations and management go more smoothly.

It is not a legal reference, and has some information that may not be so useful in your state. This is not a criticism; states change this stuff all the time, and no two states have the same laws regarding condominiums as far as I know. You should read your state's regulations for yourself.

My one criticism of this book is that the valuable content is about 20-30% of the book. The rest is filler, fluff, repetition, etcetera. If you need that kind of writing to get the concepts, absolutely buy this book. Otherwise, give this to an anal-retentive neighbor to highlight the good parts for you. It will save you a lot of time.