5 Things Your HOA Won’t Tell You About Property Damage (But You Need to Know)

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Hey everyone, Michael Mayoral from Perez Mayoral PA here. If you’re living in a condominium or home governed under an HOA and you’re experiencing property damage, whether that be a leak, water damage, mold damage, or structural issues, your HOA probably isn’t telling you everything you need to know about the property damage affecting your home. Point of this video today is to expose the five things your HOA is not telling you about property damage, which you need to know. Let’s get started. Number

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one, your condo association or HOA may be liable to pay for all the damages, not just the cost of repairs. Here’s what most people don’t realize. If your association is at fault for property damage, they don’t only have to repair the issue that caused the damage, like a leaking roof or broken pipe, but generally speaking, they are many times liable for all of the damages to the home. Whether that be out-ofpocket expenses for repairs, future costs of repairs, alternative living expenses,

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many times they are what’s called liable for that. Many associations are legally liable for this. But here’s the problem. They will rarely, if ever, inform unit owners that the association is liable and has the obligation potentially to pay them for the damages to those unit owners homes. will typically try to minimize their responsibility and then shift blame to other unit owners. Don’t let them. Understanding the full scope of their responsibility is key to you becoming fully compensated for your

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loss. Number two, the association’s responsibility doesn’t depend on what they say or claim they’re responsible and not responsible for. It depends on what’s clearly laid out in the governing documents of the association. Whether you live in a condo association or a classic HOA, the responsibility of your association are laid out in the governing documents. Under a condo association, that would be the declaration of condominium. Under an HOA, those would be the CCNRs. Under condo associations, your association is

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typically responsible for all common elements. Those typically are roofs of buildings, exterior walls, shared plumbing like sewer stacks, slabs between units. Your HOA may still be responsible for roofs and pipes and other things like that. For example, in some condominium association, the association is responsible for maintaining the windows. So, if you have a leak from a window, your association may be responsible to replace the window and to pay for the damages. A large part of what we do is look into those

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governing documents with you to give you a firm answer on who’s responsible for each element of the building and who’s responsible for the ensuing property damage. Number three, you do not have to make a claim against your own homeowner’s insurance if the association is at fault in a property damage dispute. This is just like a car accident in many ways. If somebody rearends your car, you have two options generally speaking if you have insurance. Number one, you can make a claim with your own insurance if the

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other party’s uninsured or if you just want to go through your own insurance. But usually what people do is they blame the at fault party. They hire an attorney or make a claim against that other at fault party’s insurance policy. It’s the same thing with regard to property damage disputes. In these cases, when the association is at fault, they are what’s called an at fault party. They are liable. That means that with an attorney, you could potentially make a claim against them and sue them

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for all the damages they caused to your unit. So, two things could be true at the same time. Yes, you have insurance on your unit and yes, you’re typically responsible for maintaining your unit, but if the association causes those damages, you have another option other than going through your own insurance or paying for your own damages. Number four, associations engage in a delay and deny tactic when it comes to property damage disputes. In my experience, one of two things happen when property

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damage is caused to the unit or the association’s at fault. Number one, the association fixes the issue. Those unit owners rarely call our firm because the issues resolved. Unfortunately, that’s quite rare. Typically, what we sadly see happening is a process of denial and delays. What we see happen in condo association and HOA property damage disputes is quite shockingly uniform across the state. Typically, first we see associations deny that a leak is occurring or deny that property damage

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is occurring at all. It’s almost like that saying, don’t believe your lying eyes. We’ve seen cases where there’s obvious property damage and the association will just put their head in the sand and pretend like it’s not happening. Second, what we see after that once the association has already realized that property damage has occurred is the attempt to shift responsibility. Many times they’ll look to see if they could blame other unit owners or blame the unit owner themselves who have reported the issue.

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Many times misstating what’s in the governing documents. Next, what we see is an association do what I just said, which is to provide what I’d like to say is misinformation or is at best, you know, intellectually dishonest as to the association’s responsibilities. What we will see associations do is tell unit owners, well, don’t you know you’re supposed to have insurance on your unit? So, even though our roof leak destroyed your unit, why don’t you make a claim on your own insurance? And they’ll even

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point to a part of the declaration that says that unit owners have to maintain their own units. What they’re not telling you is that they are liable. They are at fault. It’s exactly as if they had crashed into your car. Yes, normally you have to maintain your own car. If somebody else crashes into your car, they are now liable for the damages. Similar to your own unit, yes, you have to maintain your own unit. When an HOA fails to maintain common elements and that causes damage to your unit,

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they become liable. Number five, there is a law firm who can help you. Most HOA lawyers represent the HOAs, not unit owners. And most attorneys don’t practice unit owner representation and don’t know about how to handle these issues. Moreover, most attorneys charge on the billable hour for these cases, which creates a serious hurdle if somebody on a low fixed income, such as our many senior citizens in Florida or other people can’t afford litigation or are dealing with an unfair HOA and an

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unjust situation. What we do here at the firm for people experienced property damage and their condominiums or homes governed under HOAs is number one provide free consultations in those cases to analyze your governing documents, tell you who’s at fault, and provide you a game plan for how to get your home back to the condition it was before and make you whole again. The second thing we’re able to do in these cases is in many cases we we take these cases on a contingency basis, which means that there are no upfront legal

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fees on our client’s side. We only get paid if we recover money for you. We’re one of the few firms in Florida who do this. It’s one of the favorite legal products we offer. And if you or somebody you know is facing a property damage issue, damage to your condo, damage to your home, you don’t know who’s responsible, don’t hesitate to call our firm, email our firm, get in contact. We love to help people in Florida facing these issues. And don’t hesitate to call. Dealing with an HOA or

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condo association that is denying repairs can be extremely frustrating, extremely stressful, and can really wear down on people. If you’re dealing with property damage in your condominium or home governed under an HOA, you are not alone. You do not need to accept what your HOA or condo association is telling you about their responsibilities. You have help. Reach out to us and set up a free consultation. We will sit with you, go through your governing documents, and give you good and unbiased answers about

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who is responsible for the property damage affecting your unit, what your options are, and how to get your home back to the condition it was before. Thanks for watching. We’ll see you in the next