HOA question

[vasc]

I’m on the board for my subdivision HOA. Our annual dues notice (paid once a year) was supposedly mailed to homeowners on December 15 with the due date being January 31. Well, that was probably the worst week of post office delays. Long story short, nobody has received them.

Board members have fielded numerous complaints on the online FB group about the missing bills (some folks remember they’re due around this time; I’m sure plenty don’t). We’ve been in touch with our liaison at the HOA management company. Her first response was for people to use the online portal feature to view and pay the bill, but there’s no guarantee everyone has an account nor wants to pay online (assesses a 10% surcharge) —plus, again, many folks probably don’t know the dang bill is due anyway.

Clearly the management company needs to reprint and re-mail these things, right? IDK why they’re dragging their feet on this because in the end they’re not going to collect much money and might assess liens on properties without folks knowing they needed to pay in the first place. The liaison said they were prepared to wave late fees through February due to the delay in mail, but how long is too long to wait?

What do y’all think? To me it’s a no-brainer but am I missing something?

[mommyatty]

It’s a no brainer. They need to mail new bills with a new due date.

[waverly]

I would remail now. We sent Christmas presents from IL to MI so just one state over, and it took a month. These were priority 2 day mail. They were mailed right around that Dec 15th timeframe and just got there this week. So I would say a month is a good timeframe to wait and mail again.

Another option is mailbox stuffing if the HOA has the ability to access mailboxes.

[mustardseed2007]

No brainer: no one got them so re-mail now and give everyone the same amount of time they ordinarily would have had if it had been sent and received normally. It sounds like there's normally 45 days given from the date it's mailed so that's what I would do.

Since no one received them, your HOA management company should not charge for this.

If anyone wants to see their bill earlier than that, they can set up an account and look at it, but I'm sure the only reason anyone is concerned is because they are afraid of late bills.

FYI, I'm on our HOA board as well. It is the HOA board and not the management company who gets to decide the late fees so you just tell your management company what you want them to do and they will do it. You should have a specific person assigned to your HOA (or at least that's how we do it) and she or he should just take care of this for you. The management company works for the HOA. 

[sdlaura]

Is it possible to email bills? People could still pay by mail/not pay the online portal charge. Or could someone just walk the neighborhood and put them in mailboxes?

I still have Christmas presents I sent by priority mail December 10th not delivered, so not sure the postal service has their act together 100% even now.

[vasc]

Thanks for confirming what I thought but what the other members of the board were dragging their feet on. The bills will be re-mailed Friday.

[vasc]

Email would have been possible for folks already in the know about the missing bills, but plenty probably didn’t even realize the bill was missing. The HOA management company doesn’t keep an email contact list.