Today, economic woes seems to nip at everyone’s heels like creepy crawly things from the shadows, but for several residents in Lincoln Crossing, the creepy crawly things have abandoned the shadows and hunkered down on their front lawns.
Foreclosure signs have become a depressingly common sight in many cities and towns across the country. But did you know that some of those signs were put up not by banks or lenders, but by the neighborhood’s homeowner’s association?
One example of this, is the situation in Lincoln Crossing, where approximately 10% of the neighborhood’s 3,000 houses are in some stage of getting behind in payments and facing foreclosure from banks or their own HOA.
Now, I’m not entirely sure how I feel about this situation personally. On one hand, if you choose to purchase a house with a homeowner’s association, you sign the contracts at closing agreeing to all terms and covenants set out by the HOA– which can include foreclosure should you fall behind in your HOA fees. On the other hand, with the awareness of what’s going on in the economy would a well-timed meeting and the agreement to cut back costs of maintenance and temporarily lower HOA fees in the neighborhood have helped many of these struggling homeowners?
While the article itself presents a sympathetic view of the homeowners, and the comments below the article from local residents aggressively air some tensions between the two factions, I am more interested in what the property manager would have to say about this situation.
A simple search revealed that, “Lincoln Crossing is under the guidance of Merit Property Management.” While I take that to mean they are employing a professional manager of some sort, or at the very least receiving advice from a trained and experienced manager, the manager is curiously absent from the article.
Which leads me to the inevitable question, What Would a Property Manager Do? Obviously, in this situation, the property manager has advised the HOA to go ahead with steps toward foreclosures, but what alternatives might other property managers have suggested? Will this threat of foreclosures end up having more of negative impact on propety values and location than an HOA hiatus?
