Are your neighbors creating a vintage car collection?

This is the title of my next article in “Common Interest” magazine.  A couple of recent incidents that happened in my complex helped me share this information with our members.  There is a delicate balance that has to be maintained when you are a member of the board of directors.  A balance between being a good neighbor and protecting everyone’s investment and quality of living.  In our complex parking is a place that really has an effect on everyone’s quality of living.  We have had residents fight harder for their parking spot than increases in monthly fees.  While other residents just thought it would be ok to take up parking spaces with an old vehicle they just could not part with.  Left unchecked the parking lot can quickly fill up with junk yard gems. 

Here are a couple of parking lot problems we face when trying to clear our lot of stored vehicles:

• The delay tactic – They have no intention of using the vehicle but have this need to hang on to the past.  They ask for time to keep the vehicle, delaying the inevitable.  Unfortunately in this instance it is at everyone else’s expense.  This the squirrel crowd, they keep gathering old things just in case.
• The two door shuffle – Once caught with a stored vehicle they keep it on the move for a while thinking you will just give up and go away.  That is until you let them know what the new storage fee is going to cost them every day.
• The Assist – When you get the person who completely ignores you, like the rules don’t apply to them.  They get a little help deciding the best course of action for their vintage vehicle from the local salvage yard.

Check out the February/March issue of Common Interest magazine for the complete story and visit our website at www.caict.org for more information about this publication.

Michael Zimmer is the President of The Meadows of Southington Condominium Association, Inc. Michael has served on the board of directors for this 166 unit complex in Southington for over 15 years and has held the position of President for the last 12 years.  He can be contacted via email at mjzimmer@bigplanet.com.  

What do they value?

How do you know when it is better to loose a couple of minutes and be courteous? Answer at the end of this post...

It simply amazes me the risks that people take in their lives and their assets. How little regard they have for the items of most value and what high regard they have for their items of least value. Here are two stories that support my point.

Story 1 - What were garages designed to hold?

A little over a year ago my condominium complex decided to build garages on the property in an effort to help increase values and utilize more of our property to generate revenue. At the time we received all sorts of feedback both positive and negative. Most of the negative feed back would simply make you want to say HUH?

The most notable comment against the structures was that the rules would include that the bay could not be used for storage. It made absolutely no sense to this person that we would not erect a garage that could be used for storage. After about 30 seconds of holding back my "What in gods name are you thinking comment?" I asked "Where do you plan to park your vehicle?" and he said "Outside in the lot" like it was so matter of fact I must be an idiot. I simply responded "Only in America do we park our $20,000 vehicle outside and fill our garage with junk. We are constructing garages not public storage and the last thing we wish to happen is to loose a number of vehicles because someones junk pile caught fire." I still shake my head when I recall this conversation.

Story 2 - Is it ok for me to live with my trash?

Last night I was called to assist one of our units with an issue they are having. They live in one of our ranch buildings which are flats with 6 living units with a common hallway. The problem is the people own a third floor unit clearly have a different view of how to live share space and they have been stacking trash in the hallway and from the smell outside their door it appears they must be stacking trash inside as well. This has resulted in one unit owner moving out and another not being able to effectively show their unit which is for sale. Again this neighbor has little regard for what has to be one of the largest investments they made or for what effect their unkempt habits will hold when and if they decide to sell this asset.

Educating our residents about the importance of valuing what they own and the importance of valuing what their neighbors own on our properties has to be our greatest battle. For some reason many of our residents do not understand that our complex functions as whole and not as individual complexes on the same piece of dirt.

Background on this post:

It has always amazed me how much risk people take with themselves and their vehicle. They race around to save five minutes, cutting off traffic and running red lights with the most important and expensive tool they own. Without this they probably can't easily get to work to pay their bills and worse the automobile has been shown to be the leading cause of death in this country. I was heading back home this afternoon and as my light turned green I watched as that one last car ran the red light crossing traffic so not to have to wait a couple of minutes for the next light change. The irony is his vehicle already had front end damage where he had appeared to have performed this time saving stunt one too many times before. This picture says it all...

I am guessing they were late.

Michael Zimmer is the President of The Meadows of Southington Condominium Association, Inc. Michael has served on the board of directors for this 166 unit complex in Southington for over 15 years and has held the position of President for the last 12 years. He can be contacted via email at mjzimmer@bigplanet.com.

Can you protect your association when developers fail?

We are already hearing stories about developers walking away from projects before all of the units are completed or sold. This is an association’s worst fear, but history shows that associations can emerge from these situations and remain solvent.

I run an association that was in that same situation in the early 90’s. The developer had a history of successful developments, but then the economy soured and banks were no longer lending money, the developer had no choice but had over the keys to this 166 unit complex with only a hand full of units sold.

Here are a few of the issues we experienced:
• A bank stepped in and attempted to run our association
• Units were rented by the new owner (the bank) to cover the costs of the monthly fees which were now their responsibility.
• The bank took over the efforts of selling and financing units – the same units they told the previous investor they could not finance.
• They were eventually forced to sell the complex for pennies on the dollar to an international investor because they could no longer hold the debt.

Each of these issues created their own problems for our unit owners. I am working on a detailed version of this document for our next Common Interest magazine. If you are interested in this topic or concerned about this possibility pick up the next issue of our magazine.

The good news is you can remain solvent and emerge from this type of nightmare as a healthy association. Hopefully we can provide you with a few ways that you can head off the problems we experienced and continue to experience as a result of investors that were more interested in profits than they were in the health of our complex.

Look for the complete article in our September Issue of Common Interest - Reserve Specialists/Finance/Banking.

Michael Zimmer is the President of The Meadows of Southington Condominium Association, Inc. Michael has served on the board of directors for this 166 unit complex in Southington for over 15 years and has held the position of President for the last 12 years. He can be contacted via email at mjzimmer@bigplanet.com. You can also read his postings on our association blog: caict.blogspot.com