Preston Tower Apparently Wants to Shift Things Away from HOA and to Owners… Even Maintenance!

Share News:

This came across my desk today from whom, I don’t know. All I know is, it sounds kine of strange. It sounds like Preston Tower, one of two condominium towers in the sizzling hot ‘hood at Northwest Highway and Preston, aka “Behind the Pink Wall”, wants to shift costs away from the HOA and onto the individual condo owners. Why would they be doing this?

Preston Tower has had a number of lawsuits over the past few years, some of which they have lost. Perhaps this is an effort to shift costs and responsibilities back to the individual condo owners, says our Jon Anderson.

But can they do this?

And what does this do to property values? If you were a buyer, would you buy in a building where your HOA had almost zero responsibilities? Let’s talk about this…

Posted in

Candy Evans, founder and publisher of CandysDirt.com, is one of the nation’s leading real estate reporters.

4 Comments

  1. KS on April 8, 2018 at 12:53 pm

    You ask “can they do this?” and my answer is it depends on where this chart comes from. My lay person’s understanding is that any change to the governing documents (the Declaration and the Bylaws) must follow state law and be voted in appropriately by a percentage of the owners as per those governing documents and/or state law. If some board member created this chart, and its not an officially HOA voted change to the Bylaws or Declaration, its probably meaningless anyway. If any of this chart does not follow state law, then the Board needs to get it changed. But you’d need an attorney to properly advise. If I owned a unit there, I’d be looking at this carefully and possibly having a real estate attorney advise me. As for future buyers, I am not sure most people even look at the governing documents before purchasing. That has been my experience anyway.

  2. Jon Anderson on April 8, 2018 at 3:31 pm

    When I blow up the document, I see that it’s page 22 from the Preston Tower January 2008 bylaws (probably the most current). It seems from the scrawl at the top that the HOA board is planning a vote to remove this page from their bylaws and that at least one person doesn’t want that to happen.
    .
    KS is correct. Few read a word of their condo docs before buying, but they all scream when something happens they don’t expect (that’s spelled out in the docs).
    .
    Removing this page appears to give the HOA board wiggle room in whether or not to cover damage. It may also have figured heavily into recent lawsuits brought against the HOA.

    • Jon Anderson on April 8, 2018 at 3:34 pm

      But as KS said, removing it won’t change what state law says about responsibility. It can only silence anything that may be above and beyond the law.

  3. KS on April 8, 2018 at 4:55 pm

    We lived in a condo where a previous board added documents to the Bylaws regarding parking lots. This amendment contradicted the original Bylaws which were not corrected and this document seemed to not be legal to me. Board did not keep proof nor document that the changes in this document were voted on and passed appropriately by the owners and legally filed. That was my point on this chart. A board may not be legally able to change the actual Bylaws on their own so I recommend consulting a real estate attorney which I am not. Most owners won’t bother or don’t care in my experience.

Leave a Comment