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Condo owners, board members ask tough questions at ‘Condo School’
About 200 condominium unit owners and association board members attended an hour-long seminar that was part of the Chicagoland Condo, HOA, Co-op & Apt Expo real estate trade show. How to Bulletproof Your Association’s Biggest Asset – The Money was presented by Sara Benson, president of a Chicago-based real estate data analysis firm. Benson took questions from the audience, which included a treasurer who said $200,000 was missing from his board’s budget and the property manager was refusing to give him a complete accounting. A newly elected board president said for the past five months, his management company has refused to give him copies of bank statements. A past board member was suing his association’s current board for breach of fiduciary duties and the board was refusing to give him copies of any accounting or insurance information. A unit owner said he spoke out against his board’s lack of transparency and was fined $500.
Unit owners who attended the seminar received a 35-point “survival handbook” of financial procedures for board members. The free 12-page guide is also available at Benson’s website. Her company, Association Evaluation, helps buyers of association-governed residences evaluate their purchase in advance by using a new scoring model called “Private Association Rating.” Numerous Chicago-area associations have already been given a rating, called a PARScore. The company says the rating will eventually evaluate more of an estimated 324,600 homeowner associations in the United States. Don DeBat, co-author with Benson of Escaping Condo Jail, a book about the risks of association-governed living, assisted with this article. Photo: River Place condominiums from Chicago Avenue Bridge on October 10, 2013. Websites: |
