Sunday, October 02, 2011

The Long Arm of Debt Stretches into Condo Fees, Car Repos - Deal Journal - WSJ

The Long Arm of Debt Stretches into Condo Fees, Car Repos - Deal Journal - WSJ
But deficiency judgments aren’t just for soured mortgages.

Lawsuits are also piling up against borrowers who still owe money to the bank after their car is repossessed, according to lawyers for people sued by lenders. In addition, homeowners living in condominium complexes battered by foreclosures are going after unpaid condo-association fees.

“We help homeowners so they aren’t left holding the bag for deadbeats,” says Ben Solomon, a partner at Association Law Group, a law firm in Miami that has received more than 500 requests in the past year from condo complexes trying to recover fees from homeowners whose condos went into foreclosure.

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These collections lawyers are such charmers. Some poor slob who lost his job, can't find another one, and lost his condo to the bank is a "deadbeat." Right.
Thanks to Fred Pilot for this link. Yet another chapter in the sorry history of "affordable mortgages."

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

...and they claim to be representing "homeowners" - except that none of the other homeowners have contracted with the collection lawyer and neither has the homeowner that is the target of the collection lawyer.

To eliminate the constant confusion surrounding who these attorneys actually represent, it is necessary to replace the term "association" with "corporation". After all, the attorneys are representing the HOA corporation - NOT the homeowners.

Anonymous said...

"These collections lawyers are such charmers."

www.dailybusinessreview.com/legal_people.jsp

June 23

Ben Solomon, partner and co-founder of Association Law Group and Solomon & Furshman, has been named first vice president of the Builders Association of South Florida and will continue to serve as the organization’s philanthropy chair.

Anonymous said...

"These collections lawyers are such charmers. Some poor slob who lost his job, can't find another one, and lost his condo to the bank is a 'deadbeat.' Right."

Professor McKenzie,

Please report to the nearest Ayn Rand Re-Education Facility for a proper attitude adjustment. There, you will be instilled with proper-think.

Get with the program, drink the libertarian cool aid, and learn to hate people who do not live up to their contractual obligations.

Even the "Consumer Investigative Unit" of NBC's Miami affiliate has praise for Mr. Solomon's work:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjA5rzXNujE

If the liberal media can be made to see the light, there is certainly hope for you.

Anonymous said...

"To eliminate the constant confusion surrounding who these attorneys actually represent, it is necessary to replace the term 'association' with 'corporation'. After all, the attorneys are representing the HOA corporation - NOT the homeowners."

In a recent dispute with my HOA, I requested communications between my HOA's board of directors and the HOA's attorneys.

I was told that those were protected by "attorney-client privilege."

If

(1) The association is the homeowners
("The 'association' may be a corporation but in fact it is all of our neighbors")

(2) The client of the attorneys is the association and not the board of directors
("An association attorney’s client is the not-for-profit corporate entity or association which is naturally made up of the membership; the client is not the board or particular directors.")

then

Attorney-client privilege should not be invoked to deny homeowners access to the association's legal records. Especially if state law and/or the association's governing documents state that the homeowners have rights to all of the association's records.

But since attorney-client privilege is used by HOA boards, and the courts have upheld it, the assertions about "associations are the homeowners" and "HOA attorneys represent the homeowners" are demonstrably false.

Anonymous said...

"it is necessary to replace the term 'association' with 'corporation'."


Homeowners are not the customers of HOA corporations; they are the HOA's product.

The HOA's customers are the professional property management companies and HOA law firms.

Anonymous said...

regarding my comment about attorney-client privilege above:

In an interview with Shu Bartholomew last year, Tyler Berding said "Sometimes it's hard to divorce the interests of the owners from the interests of the association. Because by definition the association are the owners."

Every time the HOA Board of Directors claims attorney-client privilege to circumvent the open-records requirements of the law and/or the association's governing documents, the interests of the owners is divorced from the interests of the association.

Separating the interests of the homeowners from the corporate entity happens every day. The business of HOA managers and HOA attorneys depends on it.