What makes you think she even opened it to find out it was a bill rather than just a "join our organization!" kind of letter? If she saw the HOA letterhead for the return address, she probably trashed it without even opening it, thinking it was basically junk mail.
Well, then she should have opened it. When has mail from an HOA ever been junk mail? And like a PP said, some of her HOA-related mail would have been from an attorney. I know because I totally forgot to pay our dues one quarter and got a letter via registered mail from our HOA's attorney. If this went far enough for her to lose her house, then she surely received something similar. Think she tossed the letters from the attorney too?
She didn't even know what an HOA was. And the certified letter from the attorney was returned so she clearly didn't get that one. She probably wasn't even getting them at all. And in fact, they KNEW she wasn't getting them and they foreclosed anyway.
Nathan Billings, an attorney for the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association, said the association did not know anyone lived at the house. The court appointed a "warning order attorney," whose job it is to make an effort to track down defendants in debt cases.
The warning order attorney also tried reaching Boak by certified mail, but the letter was returned. Despite a warning from that attorney that Boak "has not been notified of the nature and pendency" of the foreclosure, the case proceeded anyway.
The home was sold and the proceeds were divided up, according to court documents, among the homeowner's association, attorneys, the master commissioner and Boak. Boak received about $88,000 from the sale of her house, about $40,000 less than it was worth.
Routinely, homeowner's associations foreclose on abandoned homes once the owner has moved away or died, and those cases proceed much the same way as Boak's - with numerous letters sent out and no reply.
"Because of her failure to respond, the association had no way of knowing otherwise," Billings said.
However, Billings said he didn't know if anyone from the homeowner's association asked any of Boak's neighbors if she still lived there.
Jeff Jackson, who lives next door to Boak, said no one ever asked him if the home was vacant.
Jackson, a Lexington police officer, said it was common knowledge that Boak lived there, at least among her next-door and across-the-street neighbors.
He said he and others mowed her lawn and kept an eye on her property when she was travelling the country with her racehorses, and Boak would often leave presents and keepsakes for his kids when she was home.
Nathan Billings, an attorney for the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association, said the association did not know anyone lived at the house. The court appointed a "warning order attorney," whose job it is to make an effort to track down defendants in debt cases.
The warning order attorney also tried reaching Boak by certified mail, but the letter was returned. Despite a warning from that attorney that Boak "has not been notified of the nature and pendency" of the foreclosure, the case proceeded anyway.
The home was sold and the proceeds were divided up, according to court documents, among the homeowner's association, attorneys, the master commissioner and Boak. Boak received about $88,000 from the sale of her house, about $40,000 less than it was worth.
If the Association didn't think anyone lived at the house, it tells me their records of her membership (and obligation to pay) were highly suspect. They may not have had any signed paperwork from her. The bills might not have had this woman's name on them, making it look more like a generic invite than an actual legal responsibility to pay.
Even if they knew she owned the house, they didn't take necessary steps to notify her. Why was the certified letter returned? Why didn't they go to her house to talk to her? Why didn't they try to mail the letter again or run a search for the owner's name through the NCOA database to find a better mailing address? The rush to foreclose (far worse to the neighborhood than being shorted $280) screams to me that there was major paperwork mischief here.
I'm curious if this fact changes the minds of people who think this absolutely must be her fault.
Well, then she should have opened it. When has mail from an HOA ever been junk mail? And like a PP said, some of her HOA-related mail would have been from an attorney. I know because I totally forgot to pay our dues one quarter and got a letter via registered mail from our HOA's attorney. If this went far enough for her to lose her house, then she surely received something similar. Think she tossed the letters from the attorney too?
She didn't even know what an HOA was. And the certified letter from the attorney was returned so she clearly didn't get that one. She probably wasn't even getting them at all. And in fact, they KNEW she wasn't getting them and they foreclosed anyway.
This whole thing is starting to remind me of the thread a while back about jury duty. Remember how somebody thought (or knew somebody who thought) that if you just ignored the jury duty summons, then you wouldn't have to serve? And how everybody got a good laugh out of that because of course it doesn't work that way?
I know HOA membership isn't in the same category as jury duty -- belonging to an HOA isn't a civic duty. But I'm assuming this homeowner did sign something when she purchased the property stating that she was aware of the HOA and the responsibilities of HOA membership. And if she signed something stating that she was aware of and agreed to the terms of HOA membership, then she can't really be all, "Oh, oopsie! I thought that was a social invitation and I trashed it!" Well, she can, but it'll ultimately result in her losing her house. If you agree to belong to an HOA, then you agree to meet the requirements of HOA membership, including paying your HOA dues. And if you choose to trash your mail without reading it, then you have to accept that you might miss something.
If this woman really and truly had no idea what an HOA is, then either she failed or the person acting as her agent failed. The HOA did not fail here: It sounds like the HOA made every reasonable effort to communicate with the homeowner.
If we learn down the road that the woman who lost her house wasn't given the opportunity to learn about the HOA, then I'll change my opinion. But for now I'm team HOA on this one.
If this woman really and truly had no idea what an HOA is, then either she failed or the person acting as her agent failed. The HOA did not fail here: It sounds like the HOA made every reasonable effort to communicate with the homeowner.
They sent a certified letter, which was returned, they KNEW that she was not aware of the proceedings, yet they went ahead with the foreclosure anyway. They didn't bother to talk to a neighbor and find out where she might be, they didn't bother to find alternate ways to get in touch with her. That is not a reasonable effort at all to me.
Nathan Billings, an attorney for the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association, said the association did not know anyone lived at the house. The court appointed a "warning order attorney," whose job it is to make an effort to track down defendants in debt cases.
The warning order attorney also tried reaching Boak by certified mail, but the letter was returned. Despite a warning from that attorney that Boak "has not been notified of the nature and pendency" of the foreclosure, the case proceeded anyway.
The home was sold and the proceeds were divided up, according to court documents, among the homeowner's association, attorneys, the master commissioner and Boak. Boak received about $88,000 from the sale of her house, about $40,000 less than it was worth.
If the Association didn't think anyone lived at the house, it tells me their records of her membership (and obligation to pay) were highly suspect. They may not have had any signed paperwork from her. The bills might not have had this woman's name on them, making it look more like a generic invite than an actual legal responsibility to pay.
Even if they knew she owned the house, they didn't take necessary steps to notify her. Why was the certified letter returned? Why didn't they go to her house to talk to her? Why didn't they try to mail the letter again or run a search for the owner's name through the NCOA database to find a better mailing address? The rush to foreclose (far worse to the neighborhood than being shorted $280) screams to me that there was major paperwork mischief here.
I'm curious if this fact changes the minds of people who think this absolutely must be her fault.
Actually, yeah, it does make me a bit more sympathetic toward the homeowner. But I do still have these questions:
o Why was she completely unaware of the HOA? It should have been clearly disclosed to her at the time of purchase.
o Why didn't she have an agent collecting her mail for her and possibly dealing with issues like this one on her behalf? Wouldn't you do that if your job required you to be away from home most of the time? I mean, you can't just ignore your mail altogether.
It sounds like the HOA made every reasonable effort to communicate with the homeowner.
.
Lol, no they didn't.
They admit to not thinking anyone lived there but sent the only notices to that location. What they did is called sewer service, and is illegal. The HOA (and their lawyer) actually has a legal obligation to find the person and give them notice of the foreclosure. They did not do that. Sending a letter to a known bad address is textbook sewer service, and in many states, is grounds for a civil suit for abuse if process. and the lawyer who did that can and should be reported to the bar for sanctions. Do it enough, and they will take your license away. It is SERIOUS shit.
If this woman really and truly had no idea what an HOA is, then either she failed or the person acting as her agent failed. The HOA did not fail here: It sounds like the HOA made every reasonable effort to communicate with the homeowner.
They sent a certified letter, which was returned, they KNEW that she was not aware of the proceedings, yet they went ahead with the foreclosure anyway. They didn't bother to talk to a neighbor and find out where she might be, they didn't bother to find alternate ways to get in touch with her. That is not a reasonable effort at all to me.
Honest question: If you're the HOA in this case, what do you do if you can't reach the homeowner via certified mail? Or at all? What's supposed to happen then? If they'd canvassed the neighborhood and learned that she wasn't home much, that still wouldn't have solved the problem of not being able to reach the homeowner.
It sounds like the HOA made every reasonable effort to communicate with the homeowner.
.
Lol, no they didn't.
They admit to not thinking anyone lived there but sent the only notices to that location. What they did is called sewer service, and is illegal. The HOA (and their lawyer) actually has a legal obligation to find the person and give them notice of the foreclosure. They did not do that. Sending a letter to a known bad address is textbook sewer service, and in many states, is grounds for a civil suit for abuse if process. and the lawyer who did that can and should be reported to the bar for sanctions. Do it enough, and they will take your license away. It is SERIOUS shit.
And this is where I admit I know nothing about how these things work. This makes sense. So yes, the HOA was too quick to foreclose.
I still think it's ridiculous that the woman thought the bills she received from the HOA were an invitation to join some kind of social club, though. Understanding the responsibilities that go along with owning your home is part of being a homeowner.
Putting aside that she may or may not have signed papers when she purchased this house that informed her about the HOA, does it not bother you AT ALL that they sent a certified letter to her about the pending foreclosure that was returned undelivered and their attorney said that she had not been properly informed and they moved to foreclose on her property anyway? All that sits right with you?
See my reply above. No, I agree that I was wrong on that one. It's not cool that she was truly uninformed about the foreclosure. That was a shitty thing for her HOA to do. I didn't read that part of the story thoroughly enough.
I still think it's unlikely that she was totally unaware of what the HOA was all about, though. And yes, I agree that my stance here is ironic since I just had some reading comprehension problems myself.
I also want to point out that the woman is an immigrant, so it's likely that she's never had to deal with HOAs before because they really don't exist anywhere else.
ETA: plus she's 75 years old. I can absolutely see how an elderly, non-American person would have no clue about how HOAs work.
I'm totally with you that the foreclosure itself was handled very very poorly. I also agree wholeheartedly that an HOA should not have the ability to foreclose. But again I fall back to the point of how could she not know about it in the first place? If she truly had no idea that this was mandatory HOA membership, then she either has a case against the sellers, her piss-poor agent, or an extremely piss-poor title company.
I think it's totally possible to see fault on both sides here. Of course I feel horrible that she got thrown out of her house. I'm not heartless.
Post by curbsideprophet on Nov 16, 2013 17:09:07 GMT -5
I am not sure if my grandmother knows what an HOA is. She has lived on the same property in the same small town for most of her life. If she were to move and purchase a home I am not sure researching HOA info would even cross her mind. I can certainly see someone just not opening the letters thinking they were junk mail.
I am happy our neighborhood does not have an HOA. It is slightly older neighborhood. When we were house hunting HOAs were much more common and hard to avoid in the newer developments. I wish this was not the case. We discussed HOAs with our realtor since we preferred to avoid them. Since the house we bought does not have one, I don't really know how an HOA impacts the closing documents etc.
It seems like they could have done a better job trying to figure out if someone lived in the home. Talking to her neighbors seems like a logical place to start since what they were trying was not working.
Post by wrathofkuus on Nov 16, 2013 17:26:39 GMT -5
If it weren't for this board, I wouldn't know that you couldn't just buy a house and say no thanks to joining the HOA. In fact, until today I didn't know that they could take your damn house for not joining (which is, essentially, what this is).
It is completely crazy that this thing that's basically the mob union from Armed and Dangerous rules so many neighborhoods, and people are okay with it because hey, at least it prevents the neighbors from painting their house an ugly color. What in the hell is wrong with you people that you'd happily pay to live under a suburban mafia if it lets you have a teensy bit of control over your neighbors?!
I'm totally with you that the foreclosure itself was handled very very poorly. I also agree wholeheartedly that an HOA should not have the ability to foreclose. But again I fall back to the point of how could she not know about it in the first place? If she truly had no idea that this was mandatory HOA membership, then she either has a case against the sellers, her piss-poor agent, or an extremely piss-poor title company.
I think it's totally possible to see fault on both sides here. Of course I feel horrible that she got thrown out of her house. I'm not heartless.
I'm here. I get that the HOA went through some shady foreclosure processes, and there are other completely reasonable measures they should have taken to notify her.
But in general I REALLY cannot get on board with "well, she's old, so she shouldn't have to know what a HOA is" or "I didn't open my mail" as excuses. A contract is a binding thing, and generally choosing to sign w/o reading or understanding does not invalidate it. Ignorance of the law is not a defense.
I don't get why people keep going back to "oh she should have known so everything that followed is her fault."
If you believe that it's more likely she screwed up, not the RE broker, title people, and HOA etc, do you think a fair punishment for failure to pay $288 is to lose one's home without an opportunity to contest it, and effectively pay a $40k fine? Is that a reasonable punishment to you? Do you think that is fair to everyone in the HOA, who have to live with the impact of a foreclosed home in the neighborhood? Even if you think she signed the papers, do you think she agreed to a contract that would allow her home to be stolen from her as a punishment for failing to pay $288? Would you agree to that?
Or do you think that even if it is her fault, other penalties would be a more appropriate response?
Even if she signed the papers, I cannot get past how unbelievably inappropriate the HOA's response was. It's just so unreasonable to me -- among other things, it is not in the best interest of the neighborhood, bad publicity, and it subjects them to litigation -- that I have to conclude that they had major paperwork issues and no record of her joining -- that would lead them to make such an irrational decision. They must have had bad information and made these decisions on that bad information.
If all the ducks were in a row, and there was just no issue, then it seems any sane organization would make smarter choices. So either the HOA is reckless and irresponsible, or they acted on bad information. I just don't see how you can come to a different conclusion. If you believe she had to have been given the paperwork in a non-fraudulent manner, then put yourself in the HOA's shoes and ask yourself if this is really the best course of action for the organization?
If it weren't for this board, I wouldn't know that you couldn't just buy a house and say no thanks to joining the HOA. In fact, until today I didn't know that they could take your damn house for not joining (which is, essentially, what this is).
It is completely crazy that this thing that's basically the mob union from Armed and Dangerous rules so many neighborhoods, and people are okay with it because hey, at least it prevents the neighbors from painting their house an ugly color. What in the hell is wrong with you people that you'd happily pay to live under a suburban mafia if it lets you have a teensy bit of control over your neighbors?!
I hate how on this board, if you have an HOA that you don't mind, since it ensures that my next door neighbor isn't a junked out trailer with a bunch of garbage in the yard (which was what we saw in the vast majority of neighborhoods around here without hoas), it means you must be a crazy person who wants to control your neighbor's beach towel placement. El Oh El.
Post by penguingrrl on Nov 16, 2013 18:36:16 GMT -5
I could easily see how she wouldn't be fully aware of the implications of an HOA. Had I not followed this board I wouldn't know that. They don't exist in my area. While I've heard the term it wouldn't have occurred to me that they had the power to forclose on your house. I'm not positive it would have occurred to me to research HOAs in choosing property since they aren't something I'm familiar with. I can even see why if she saw the first letter and thought it was an invitation to join a social club she ignored the others. I had no idea you wouldn't get junk mail from an HOA.
As far as the aesthetics the HOA ensures, my town has rules like that. There's no on-street parking from 2-5 am anywhere in town(which would solve the tenant issue mentioned above) , you aren't allowed to park on grass, garbage cans must be out of sight except on trash day, no clotheslines are allowed, snow removal from the streets and trash and recycling pick up are all provided by the town, there are lots of parks too, tennis courts, etc. Around here the local government handles those things instead of a private organization.
It's really getting me that she was getting bills for the HOA--and admits it..and then says "Well I didn't know! Didn't ask! Just threw them away!"
"The HOA dues in her neighborhood? $48 per year. She owes a total of $288. The homeowner says that she just tossed the letters she received, assuming that the HOA was some kind of social organization that collected money from residents to access the pool or something. “I didn’t know it was mandatory to join this…homeowners’,” she says with some distaste. “I told them, I’m not joining.”
But she didn't know they were bills - she thought they were trying to get her to join a neighborhood social group, she wasn't interested, so she threw them away. I don't think she even is familiar with the concept of an HOA, where you HAVE to pay money to a group, whether you want to belong to them or not and whether you actually get anything out of it or not.
Well. I would have to see what the bills looked like.
I just googled what HOA bills look like.
This is pretty standard. Looks like a bill to me--and if I got multiples of these--I'd stop and ask "WTF is this?" Instead of consistently throwing it away. Something just doesn't make a lot of sense here logically. If you got something that looked like a bill--you wouldn't stop and say--what IS This? I mean c'mon.
But she didn't know they were bills - she thought they were trying to get her to join a neighborhood social group, she wasn't interested, so she threw them away. I don't think she even is familiar with the concept of an HOA, where you HAVE to pay money to a group, whether you want to belong to them or not and whether you actually get anything out of it or not.
Well. I would have to see what the bills looked like.
I just googled what HOA bills look like.
This is pretty standard. Looks like a bill to me--and if I got multiples of these--I'd stop and ask "WTF is this?" Instead of consistently throwing it away. Something just doesn't make a lot of sense here logically. If you got something that looked like a bill--you wouldn't stop and say--what IS This? I mean c'mon.
What I'm saying is that she probably never even opened it. So it would have looked like this:
and then gotten thrown out. I mean, do you open every piece of junk mail you get?
Well. I would have to see what the bills looked like.
I just googled what HOA bills look like.
This is pretty standard. Looks like a bill to me--and if I got multiples of these--I'd stop and ask "WTF is this?" Instead of consistently throwing it away. Something just doesn't make a lot of sense here logically. If you got something that looked like a bill--you wouldn't stop and say--what IS This? I mean c'mon.
What I'm saying is that she probably never even opened it. So it would have looked like this:
and then gotten thrown out.
mine has the subdivision name on the outside of the envelope. Our bills are also emailed to us.
There is a lot wrong with this woman's plight but I think most of it has to do with they should have had a sheriff serve her once the certified mail was returned.
What I'm saying is that she probably never even opened it. So it would have looked like this:
and then gotten thrown out.
mine has the subdivision name on the outside of the envelope. Our bills are also emailed to us.
There is a lot wrong with this woman's plight but I think most of it has to do with they should have had a sheriff serve her once the certified mail was returned.
But again, if she thought it was a social club type of organization and they were trying to get her to join, she probably just threw them out. She didn't think she owed them money or anything, so why bother opening them if she wasn't interested? And she's 75 - I doubt she's getting her bills emailed to her.
mine has the subdivision name on the outside of the envelope. Our bills are also emailed to us.
There is a lot wrong with this woman's plight but I think most of it has to do with they should have had a sheriff serve her once the certified mail was returned.
But again, if she thought it was a social club type of organization and they were trying to get her to join, she probably just threw them out. She didn't think she owed them money or anything, so why bother opening them if she wasn't interested? And she's 75 - I doubt she's getting her bills emailed to her.
where does personal responsibility come in? If you can't expect people to open their mail what else could they have done short of sending the sheriff to notify her of the foreclosure?
mine has the subdivision name on the outside of the envelope. Our bills are also emailed to us.
There is a lot wrong with this woman's plight but I think most of it has to do with they should have had a sheriff serve her once the certified mail was returned.
But again, if she thought it was a social club type of organization and they were trying to get her to join, she probably just threw them out. She didn't think she owed them money or anything, so why bother opening them if she wasn't interested? And she's 75 - I doubt she's getting her bills emailed to her.
where does personal responsibility come in? If you can't expect people to open their mail what else could they have done short of sending the sheriff to notify her of the foreclosure?
and then gotten thrown out. I mean, do you open every piece of junk mail you get?
Lol. So...I've learned a couple hard lessons about how important it is to actually open "junk" mail. I do actually open every envelope now...Especially if it looks like a bill.
I almost threw away tax documents by messing around with this type of thing.
I don't open everything that comes in the mail. But I open everything unfamiliar. So while I don't think this is her fault, I do think it's odd that she wasn't opening her mail.
The return of the undelivered certified letter is where I get twitchy though. That's proof she didn't get the information about the foreclosure. I'm not sure I believe she didn't know about the HOA. But I don't believe you should be able to foreclose on someone without proper notification.
But again, if she thought it was a social club type of organization and they were trying to get her to join, she probably just threw them out. She didn't think she owed them money or anything, so why bother opening them if she wasn't interested? And she's 75 - I doubt she's getting her bills emailed to her.
where does personal responsibility come in? If you can't expect people to open their mail what else could they have done short of sending the sheriff to notify her of the foreclosure?
The burden is on those serving notice to show it is received. I don't know how foreclosures work, but if I file a lawsuit against someone and they ignore it, the first thing the judge will ask me before granting a default judgment is what steps I took to notify the defendant. If all I had was, "I sent it certified mail to an address that I thought nobody lived at," there's no way in hell the judge would say, "welp, personal responsibility! Too bad, so sad, defendant loses!"
Instead, I would need to produce evidence of the efforts I took to notify them, with "reasonable notice" being weighed with the damages. That kind of effort by the HOA here might fly for small claims court (unlikely since they admit it was a bad address), and no way would it fly for something serious. Due process, the bedrock of our legal system, requires that people get notice before their rights are extinguished and property taken.
Things I would do in this instance: run Internet searches to locate either other residential addresses or a place of business, run a search through the NCOA database, utilize other people finding searches (lexis offers them), and if that all fails, a PI. Given the rights at stake, a sheriff or PI is not unreasonable.
You know how you get notices in the mail for class action lawsuits? Courts require that, at a minimum before those notices are sent, address checks are run, typically through NCOA (run by the post office). For things involving a few dollars. Surely they could have done more here.
where does personal responsibility come in? If you can't expect people to open their mail what else could they have done short of sending the sheriff to notify her of the foreclosure?
The burden is on those serving notice to show it is received. I don't know how foreclosures work, but if I file a lawsuit against someone and they ignore it, the first thing the judge will ask me before granting a default judgment is what steps I took to notify the defendant. If all I had was, "I sent it certified mail to an address that I thought nobody lived at," there's no way in hell the judge would say, "welp, personal responsibility! Too bad, so sad, defendant loses!"
Instead, I would need to produce evidence of the efforts I took to notify them, with "reasonable notice" being weighed with the damages. That kind of effort by the HOA here might fly for small claims court (unlikely since they admit it was a bad address), and no way would it fly for something serious. Due process, the bedrock of our legal system, requires that people get notice before their rights are extinguished and property taken.
Things I would do in this instance: run Internet searches to locate either other residential addresses or a place of business, run a search through the NCOA database, utilize other people finding searches (lexis offers them), and if that all fails, a PI. Given the rights at stake, a sheriff or PI is not unreasonable.
You know how you get notices in the mail for class action lawsuits? Courts require that, at a minimum before those notices are sent, address checks are run, typically through NCOA (run by the post office). For things involving a few dollars. Surely they could have done more here.
I have a lot of issues with how the foreclosure went down, but I don't thinks she is exactly an innocent victim. If this was a NYT article we'd all be lamenting how they always choose unsympathetic victims
Anecdotally, I have a neighbor that is thousands of HOA dollars in arrears, has windows that have been open for years, and has a Life After People backyard going on, yet we can't take her home from her. Her home was even condemned because she's a hoarder, but she cleaned it up enough and has enough $$ to regain ownership. Makes me wonder why the HOA exists sometimes, but otherwise they're awesome in our neighborhood, I love it.