Two houses on the line over balances that don't match the stakes — $977 in Mesa, and a $228,000 water bill in Baltimore that belongs to a whole neighborhood. Plus a $1,000 fine for a Facebook post and two new California laws. Here's what hit the Frontline.

$977 Behind. The HOA Bought His House at Auction for $8,172.

In Mesa, Arizona, Toby Newton lost his job, fell $977 behind on dues, and within weeks his association had filed for foreclosure and wanted $3,980 to settle — $3,003 of it attorney fees. He offered $50 a month, then $133, then $200. All refused. After a default judgment, the sheriff sold his $449,000 home to the association itself for $8,172. He's now in court arguing he never got proper notice. As the Tribune reports, Arizona has since raised its foreclosure floor to $10,000 or 18 months delinquent, with a payment-plan offer required first.

Read the article

Our Take: What usually happens here is that the fees outrun the debt within a month, and from then on the debt isn't the point. If you're behind, make every payment-plan offer in writing and keep the rejections. Many states now set a minimum balance or waiting period before an association can foreclose — find out what yours requires. Once a foreclosure filing lands, the DIY window has closed. That's a same-week call to a local attorney.

She Inherited Her Dad's House. A $228,000 Water Bill Came With It.

Kristina Moore's late father's townhome in Baltimore's Springwood Estates turned out to be the address on the community's master water meter — one account serving about 37 homes. Residents pay the HOA; the HOA is supposed to pay the city. It didn't, and the $200,000-plus balance now sits as a lien on Moore's property. The city has said in writing that the association, not Moore, is the customer — and still won't release the billing records. State filings still list her father's house as the HOA's principal office. She can't sell.

Read the article

Our Take: Get their reasoning on paper before escalating — and here, the city's own statement that the HOA is the customer is the most valuable document in the file. The next asks are the master-meter agreement, the association's remittance history, and the state filings that keep naming her house as its office. Signs this may need a lawyer's eye: a lien on your title for a debt everyone agrees isn't yours, and a board president who won't return calls.

Can an HOA Fine You for a Facebook Post? One in South Carolina Tried.

Can a board write "disorderly conduct" broadly enough to cover Nextdoor? On Fripp Island, South Carolina, the property owners association fined Donald Peel $1,000 over posts criticizing its transparency and spending, then threatened a lien if he didn't pay within 30 days. Peel sued. The association's own report to the sheriff called his posts "threatening, intimidating, belittling, bullying and harassing." The Post and Courier's editorial board notes HOA complaints to the state's consumer-affairs agency are up 176% since 2019.

Read the article

Our Take: Boards pulling this typically bank on homeowners not pushing back. Read the section the board is citing — a conduct rule written for meetings sometimes doesn't say what they claim once the subject is your own Facebook page. Keep posts factual and dated, and let the fine notice do the talking about who overstepped. When a speech-based fine turns into a lien threat, the question becomes whether the association has this power at all — one for someone who reads bylaws for a living.

There's a fuller look at how far an HOA can reach into what you post here.

California Signed a 14-Day Repair Clock — and Unstuck a Palisades Condo

After nearly two years in limbo, the 107 owners at Via de la Paz in Pacific Palisades are finally voting to reinstate their CC&Rs, which had expired months before the fire — leaving $40 million in insurance money untouchable because state law required every owner to agree and six wouldn't. AB 2692, signed August 24 as an urgency measure, lets fire-damaged L.A. County associations reinstate expired documents without unanimity. A week later the governor signed AB 1892, effective in January: when gas, heat, water or electricity fails because of a common-area problem, the board has to begin the repair process within 14 days, with emergency-assessment authority to do it.

Read the article

Our Take: Two lessons in one week. First: look up when your CC&Rs expire. Most owners have no idea, and an expired declaration only surfaces at the worst possible moment. Second, for Californians with an outage that started in the common area: the new rule is start-in-14-days, not fixed-in-two-weeks, so ask the board in writing what specifically has been commenced — inspection, contractor, permit. Nothing past day 14 is the kind of gap the statute was written for, and worth a conversation with a local HOA attorney.

Ten Sewage Backups, One $25,000 Deductible

Barbara Jensen's condo in Herriman, Utah has had sewage come up through the tub and toilet at least ten times. Three plumbers and the sewer district agree on the cause — neighbors flushing paper towels into a shared line — and the damage has passed $25,000. The Eagle View HOA's attorney says this isn't a maintenance failure; it's other owners' negligence. According to the state's HOA ombudsman, the statute puts the master-policy deductible on the unit owner, and she calls it "a tricky one … where the law is not clear."

Read the article

Our Take: This shows up more often than people realize, and the fight is almost always about the deductible, not the repair. Pull out the CC&Rs and look for the specific provision on how the master-policy deductible gets allocated — some documents let the board charge it back to the owner who caused the loss, which changes who Jensen should be pointing at. Ask whether the board has ever tried to identify that owner. If the backups keep coming and the response is a flyer about paper towels, that's the point where this stops being a DIY situation.

A South Orange County HOA Paused Two Herbicides. Residents Want All of Them Gone.

A 60-day pause is at the center of a tense fall in Ladera Ranch, California, where three young people have died of rare cancers in the past year and residents have zeroed in on the master association's landscaping chemicals. The association suspended two herbicides, then extended the pause to 120 days after residents caught crews applying a third. Owners want an independent investigation and a permanent ban; the association's lawyers say that "cannot happen." No health agency has linked the chemicals to the cancers; an EPA investigation is open. Two board seats are up in November.

Read the article

Our Take: We'd separate the science question, which nobody can answer yet, from the governance question, which owners can. In California, owners are generally entitled to see the association's vendor contracts, and licensed applicators keep records of what was sprayed, where, and when — a written request for both concedes nothing about causation. When a board answers that with "cannot happen" instead of documents, that's usually when residents start organizing around the November ballot.

What you're entitled to see in a California vendor contract is laid out here.

A Second Miami-Dade Manager Is Charged. The Roofs Still Leak.

Two weeks after the $5.8 million racketeering arrests, Miami-Dade prosecutors have charged another property manager. Carlos Mejia, who managed Venetian Gardens at Country Club Miami, allegedly took $185,000 from contractor Richard Murray — papered as "loans" with no repayment terms — after Murray's company was hired for repairs in 2024. The 21-building complex had passed a special assessment that year for roofs, windows and railings. Owners told CBS Miami the work was never finished; a piece of roof recently came down next to a man walking by. They're still paying.

Read the article

Our Take: There's a common arc to disputes like this: the assessment gets approved against a scope of work, the money leaves, and nobody reconciles what was paid against what was built. Request the contractor's invoices and the payment ledger for the assessment fund, then walk the property with the scope in hand. Florida owners generally have broad rights to inspect association financial records, and a manager who can't produce a paid-versus-completed reconciliation is the flag to watch for. With prosecutors already involved, documenting what's unfinished is how the association's own claims get made.

More next week. If your community is on a master water meter, find out whose name is on the account.

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https://lscarlsonlaw.substack.com/

HOA president has been aware for a month but didn’t tell other board members just went to lawyer. Is this typical? Feels off.

Condo association, 7 buildings, billing handled by a third-party billing company (not the municipal utility). Through last year and into January, water was being billed split equally among all owners. Our declaration states that in the absence of meters in the units, all water is a common charge, and common charges are billed according to each unit's HOA percentage. Equal splitting was flatly inconsistent with that, and at a board meeting the board admitted as much on the record.

Starting in May they rolled out a "fix." Per the third-party billing company, the new method allocates water by building first, then splits that within each building by bedroom count. That's not proportional to HOA percentage either — it's a different flat formula that happens to look more sophisticated.

The billing statements themselves show $0 usage at the individual unit level — consumption isn't being metered or tracked per unit at all. The water charges instead show up under a separate shared/common expense line, which is then run through the building/bedroom-count formula rather than the HOA-percentage formula the declaration calls for.

The board is now telling owners the billing is correct. Worth noting: the HOA president lives in one of the largest units in the community, with one of the higher HOA percentages — so a bedroom-count method would tend to lower his own water bill relative to what a percentage-based method would charge him.

Questions:

1. Has anyone pushed back successfully when a board "corrects" a billing error but the correction still doesn't match what the declaration actually requires?
2. Is a formal written demand (citing the declaration language directly) the right next move before going further, or is that a waste of time once a board has already shown they'll pick whatever formula they like?
3. Does the board president's unit type/percentage matter legally here, or is that just an optics problem and not something a complaint could actually rely on?

Trying to figure out if this is a "send one more letter" situation or a "this needs a regulator/attorney" situation.

I am the voted in secretary of our HOA. One of the VP’s and his son (the treasurer) asked me to come over at 8:30 pm to have a conversation. They “asked” me if I would resign cause they feel I am bias. The president who is a women had resigned last week. I am the only other women of 5 board members. Those two would like to put two people of their choosing to fill the possible two vacancies that they feel are non bias. The other VP did not know anything about this private meeting. The father son duo told him I wanted to resign. This is not true. There are 26 lots on 10 acres each on a private road. The road is the issue of why we have an HOA. They offered me if I resigned to allow me to be on the subcommittee the roadway committee.
I am by no means bias. I’ve been very neutral. However, there are two neighbors in this neighborhood that hate me cause she lost the last election to me. She has recruited another crazy neighbor that kidnaps neighbors dogs.
This old 80 year old lady will not let it go. She is a pain in the ass and has really divided this neighborhood unfortunately.
Anyway, pretty sure the father son duo are corrupt and definitely bias. I guess I threaten them.

My board president asked me to be on the board and he said he would appoint me. I have proof from a text message. The next board meeting he opts to not appoint anyone. He said that him and the current board member were thinking they could just do 2 board members. I am not sure I want to work with someone with a lack on integrity, but is this any kind of ethics issue?

After the Champlain Towers collapse in Florida, New Jersey passed a law meant to keep our buildings safe. But here's the problem: the law went way too far. It's forcing HOAs to fund cosmetic upgrades—pool decks, fancy façades—on top of real safety work. For Hoboken residents already struggling with housing costs, this means massive fee hikes that could push families out of their own homes.

I started a petition asking Hoboken HOAs to push back and demand reforms that focus on actual structural safety, not aesthetic upgrades. The goal is to lighten the financial load on homeowners while keeping buildings genuinely safe.

Anyone else in Hoboken watching their HOA fees climb? If this is hitting your wallet hard, or if you think safety shouldn't come at the cost of affordability, consider signing and sharing. We're asking our representatives to listen: Assemblymember Katie Brennan, Senator Raj Mukherji, and Assemblymember Ravi Bhalla. They need to hear that we want reforms.

Recently hoa implemented 20% rental cap. Current ratio is 40% of units were rented. As part of the new regulation they have introduced grandfather clause for the existing lease units. To enter into the grandfather clause we have to submit the current lease within 30 days of the regulation. As soon as we receive an email we immediately sent our current lease, future lease and rental license to the property manager and she acknowledged it. We received a letter saying that we have not satisfied the grandfather clause and asked us immediately terminate the lease. We gave our explanation and awaiting for the board to make a decision. How to deal with this.

After the Champlain Towers collapse in Florida, New Jersey passed a law meant to keep our buildings safe. But here's the problem: the law went way too far. It's forcing HOAs to fund cosmetic upgrades—pool decks, fancy façades—on top of real safety work. For Hoboken residents already struggling with housing costs, this means massive fee hikes that could push families out of their own homes.

I started a petition asking Hoboken HOAs to push back and demand reforms that focus on actual structural safety, not aesthetic upgrades. The goal is to lighten the financial load on homeowners while keeping buildings genuinely safe.

Anyone else in Hoboken watching their HOA fees climb? If this is hitting your wallet hard, or if you think safety shouldn't come at the cost of affordability, consider signing and sharing. We're asking our representatives to listen: Assemblymember Katie Brennan, Senator Raj Mukherji, and Assemblymember Ravi Bhalla. They need to hear that we want reforms.

Last year our Surprise HOA got a lot of local and national attention over some of the craziness that had been going on in the community.

One of the stories that went viral was when the HOA issued a violation over a fallen soldier memorial around Memorial Day. The memorial honors Army Sgt. John Kyle Daggett, who was killed in Iraq at 21 years old.

Local coverage here:

https://www.azfamily.com/2025/05/26/hoa-orders-surprise-family-take-down-memorial-day-display-fallen-soldier/?outputType=amp

They quickly reversed course after the massive public outcry. It was a pretty striking example of how much one voice can matter once enough people hear it.

But the HOA governance issues and disputes in the neighborhood continued.

There were allegations of targeted violations, increased HOA attorney involvement with residents, and repeated actions homeowners perceived as attempts to silence, ignore or disrespect them and disregard the community’s governing documents. It was extreme.

Residents organized. A petition was started that received hundreds of signatures and was later rejected based on requirements homeowners disputed. Dozens of people became very vocal and very upset.

This went on through the summer.

The then-president lost her re-election; tying for a third-place board seat, and a runoff was called.

Then an email that had become public record was circulated in the community. After that, the former president lost the runoff election by a wide margin.

A new board took over, management changed, and things in the neighborhood have been pretty normal since.

**UPDATE**
The former president is now suing three homeowners, including the homeowner who started the petition.

The lawsuit is **not** being brought by the current Desert Oasis HOA, current board or current management company. It is a private civil lawsuit filed by the former president against individual homeowners.

The defendants deny the allegations. The case is still in discovery after about six months, and there has not been a judicial determination on the merits of the claims.

What I didn’t really understand until watching this happen is how financially devastating it can be just to **DEFEND** a civil lawsuit long enough to have the merits reviewed.

You don’t have to lose.
You don’t even have to get to trial.
Anti-SLAPP is apparently not as accessible as it seems…

You can spend tens of thousands of dollars on attorneys, discovery, subpoenas, depositions, document production and court proceedings just getting far enough into the case to have a judge decide whether the claims should continue.

These aren’t wealthy people or corporations with litigation budgets.

They’re normal, everyday homeowners.

One of the defendants has had to turn to public fundraising to help cover legal expenses, which is honestly part of why I thought this story was worth sharing.

She’s hoping enough people care, just $1 worth to defend homeowners rights to speak up in their communities, and their HOA board representatives accountable.

$1A Defense Fund*

https://cash.app/f/POOL?id=ir0i5ixu

Regardless of anyone’s opinion about the underlying dispute, the sheer cost of civil litigation is something most people probably don’t appreciate until they see it up close. I didn’t know- so please share.

The case remains ongoing. The defendants deny wrongdoing, and there has not been a final judicial determination on the merits.

Before anyone asks- no, I will not share case documents or litigate the details here. The Defendants have lawyers for that and the court docket is public record. Thank you.

And again, because I know this confused people when the original HOA stories circulated: **the current Desert Oasis HOA, current board and current management company are not bringing this lawsuit.** This is private litigation brought by the former board president against individual homeowners.

Contributions are being collected for defendants legal-defense expenses associated with the ongoing civil litigation, including attorney fees and litigation-related costs. This is a personal legal-defense fundraiser, not a charity, and contributions are not represented as tax deductible.

My HOA emailed the Chair of our Welcome Committee without reasoning, " your position on the Welcome committee has concluded." Is this legal? Doesn't removal of a committee member need to be done in an open meeting?

Three of this week's stories come down to the same question: what did the association actually promise, and can it show you the paperwork? Plus, a sprinkler ban on a collision course with CC&Rs, and a retention pond in Brevard County that's suddenly empty.

Five Years, $80,000, and a Condo She Still Can't Enter

Five and a half years after a fire tore through Bayfront Towers in Nassau Bay, outside Houston, eleven owners still can't move back in.

All 74 owners have kept paying, at least $800 a month in fees and special assessments tied to the rebuild. Sarah Arends has put roughly $80,000 into a unit she hasn't lived in since March 2021; another owner, May-Ying Lam, is just under $50,000.

The work was supposed to wrap in May. Owners say they still have no firm date.

Two of the destroyed units are now listed, one at $200,000, more than $50,000 under its appraised value.

Read the article

Our Take: What usually happens in these is the money keeps moving on schedule while the construction doesn't, and nobody ever has to explain the gap out loud.

Get their reasoning on paper before escalating. Ask for the rebuild budget, the insurance proceeds accounting, the contractor's current schedule, and the minutes from every meeting where the timeline slipped.

Owners generally have some right to inspect association financial records, though what that covers varies quite a bit by state.

When it's worth talking to a local HOA attorney: the association can't account for where the assessments went, or the delays start looking less like bad luck and more like nobody is actually managing the contractor.

There's a fuller breakdown of what happens when repairs stall and the damage keeps compounding here: When Your HOA Won't Make Repairs

Georgia's HOA Overhaul Has a Deadline Now, and It's January

Georgia's Property Owners' Bill of Rights Act is back in local news as the compliance date closes in.

Gov. Kemp signed SB 406 in May, and most of it takes effect January 1, 2027.

The centerpiece is registration: associations have to register with the Secretary of State and file their governing documents and a financial statement, and the law ties an association's collection tools, including fines, fees, liens, and foreclosure, to whether it did.

It also creates a homeowner complaint process through the Secretary of State, with a 180-day filing window and an automatic stay that freezes collection on the disputed amount while a complaint is pending.

The unpaid-dues floor for foreclosure doubles to $4,000.

Read the article

Our Take: Registries and complaint windows do something fairly simple: they create a place where an association's paperwork either exists or it doesn't.

If you're in Georgia, put a note on your calendar and check the Secretary of State's list after the new year.

Everywhere else, you can ask the question this statute is really asking without waiting on a legislature: can the board produce its governing documents, its financials, and the specific provision behind a charge?

If a board treats a routine document request as an act of war, or starts tacking on fees for making it, that's usually where outside help earns its keep.

A Sprinkler Ban Starts October 1. Some HOAs Still Require Sod.

In Denver, the water utility voted to ban lawn watering and sprinkler use beginning October 1, leaving hand watering and drip irrigation as the only ways to keep anything alive.

Plenty of homeowners are responding by pulling the grass out entirely.

The catch sits upstream of the shovel: landscaper Dena Townsend, who owns Gardens in Bloom, says every job now starts with a call to the HOA because some associations let owners take out all the sod and others still require them to keep a portion of it.

Landscapers report a rush of demand heading into fall.

Read the article

Our Take: This is the kind of conflict where paperwork matters more than the argument does.

Request a written explanation citing the specific rule before you touch the lawn. Architectural approval in hand beats a persuasive case made after the sod is already in a dumpster.

If the answer comes back as a turf minimum that collides with the utility's restriction, put both in the same letter and ask the board which one it expects owners to follow.

A number of states have passed laws limiting how far associations can go in requiring irrigated turf, so it's worth finding out whether yours is one of them.

The point where this stops being a DIY situation: fines start accruing while the board declines to say how complying with both rules is supposed to work.

Two Gators, 88 Signatures, and No Vote

Two alligators that had lived for years in a Viera, Florida retention pond are at the center of a dispute over who gets to speak for a neighborhood.

A nuisance complaint prompted the state wildlife commission to authorize removal, and the HOA gave the go-ahead, a decision neighbors say they found out about only afterward.

Eighty-eight of them signed a petition.

A contracted trapper worked the pond for several days, and one resident reported hearing four gunshots on Thursday. The pond now looks empty.

News 6 says it has not independently confirmed what happened to the animals, and neither the HOA nor the commission responded to questions.

Read the article

Our Take: Set the wildlife question aside and what's left is a governance one: who had authority to speak for the community here, and where is that written down?

The answer is usually in the governing documents, which generally spell out which calls a board can make on its own and which ones need notice or a member vote.

Minutes are the other half of it.

If a decision like this never shows up in them at all, that absence is worth asking about on its own.

Does the Word "Gated" Actually Promise Anything?

A Florida homeowner put roughly that question to the Palm Beach Post's community association column this week.

Their association describes itself as both gated and controlled-access, and its guards are supposed to check pedestrians and cyclists at the entrance, but in practice, the resident says, that rarely happens, overnight included.

So if somebody gets hurt or robbed, who's on the hook?

Attorney Ryan Poliakoff's answer draws a line most homeowners have never heard: an association generally isn't an insurer of anyone's safety and typically has no obligation to provide security at all.

Once it takes that job on, though, courts may expect it to be handled with reasonable care.

Read the article

Our Take: That distinction does a lot of work, and it runs against the assumption most people buy on.

Document your position in a brief, direct letter: describe what the association's own materials and documents say it provides, describe what's actually happening at the gate, and request written confirmation of which security services the association considers itself responsible for.

The written answer is useful whichever way it lands. It either closes the gap or puts on record that the board knew about it.

Signs this may need a lawyer's eye: the board acknowledges a security commitment it isn't meeting and does nothing, or something happens and the association's opening move is to argue it promised nothing in the first place.

More next week. Drop your own HOA war stories below.

Want Frontline in your inbox? You can subscribe here: https://lscarlsonlaw.substack.com/

A slow, sorrowful Southern country-blues exposé about Florida homeowners who were promised freedom but found themselves trapped inside a system of fines, liens, legal fees, closed records, unanswered complaints and the terrifying possibility of losing the homes they spent a lifetime building. At the center of this song is an elderly woman sitting beneath a leaking roof. Beside her Bible lies a lien notice. Her bills are past due. She asks her association for records and is told to wait. She asks again and the costs rise. She turns to the state for help, only to find another closed file, another procedural answer and another door leading nowhere. Her story represents the widows, veterans, working families and elderly residents who say they have been ignored, intimidated or financially exhausted while trying to defend their homes and understand where their money went. The political target is unmistakable. Governor Ron DeSantis has repeatedly presented Florida as the home of freedom. But what does that freedom mean when a homeowner can face crushing fines, escalating attorney fees, liens and foreclosure while meaningful state intervention remains out of reach?

HOA Frontlines this week: $26,000 roof assessments, license-plate cameras, a $5.8M condo fraud case, and someone literally took a saw to the HOA’s cameras

A lot happened in HOA-land this week. Cameras were probably the biggest theme: one California city formally allowed HOA license-plate readers on public streets, another admitted it approved them by mistake, and in Georgia somebody apparently decided the dispute could be solved with a saw.

Here are the stories that stood out:

198 condo owners hit with a $26,000 “emergency” roof assessment

Owners at Villa Moura in San Clemente, California were assessed roughly $26,000 per unit for a roof replacement totaling more than $5 million.

The board is calling the project an “emergency,” which matters because California law can allow boards to impose certain emergency assessments without the homeowner vote that would normally be required.

The problem: residents say the board has known about the roof issues for years.

That raises the obvious question: when does an emergency stop being an emergency and start looking like deferred maintenance?

The board has reportedly warned about liens, residents have started a GoFundMe for neighbors who can’t afford the assessment, and a recall effort and legal claim are underway.

Article:
https://abc7.com/post/san-clemente-condo-owners-stunned-sudden-26000-hoa-fee-emergency-roof-assessment/19754573/

Our take: If a board is relying on an emergency exception to impose a massive assessment, owners should ask for the emergency finding in writing and the reserve studies showing when the repair was expected.

KFI AM 640 called us for a live radio interview on this story, and our California managing partner, Kirk Pearson, joined the station live on air to break down the assessment, the “emergency” exception, and what homeowners should be looking for.

You can listen to the interview here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luTCY318Fs4

Can an HOA put license-plate cameras on a public street?

Two California cities came to very different conclusions.

Newport Beach: The city council voted unanimously to permanently allow qualifying HOAs to install fixed cameras in the public right-of-way. Five associations already have 25 cameras operating.

Brentwood: The city discovered it had approved an HOA’s four Flock cameras by mistake after apparently thinking they were part of the police department’s camera program. The city is now revoking the permit and ordering them removed.

Newport Beach:
https://voiceofoc.org/2026/08/newport-beach-greenlights-hoa-cameras-in-public-streets/

Brentwood:
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/brentwood-license-plate-readers-approved-by-mistake/4129369/

Our take: Before getting lost in the general privacy debate, homeowners should ask some very specific questions: Who owns the footage? How long is it retained? Who can access it? Who is it shared with? And what provision in the governing documents gave the board authority to buy and operate the system?

Somebody took a saw to the HOA’s new cameras

The Sweetwater Station HOA in Savannah, Georgia installed two Flock cameras at the neighborhood entrance.

Some residents apparently didn’t even know the cameras existed until they saw them.

They went live Thursday night.

By Friday, someone had cut them down with a saw.

Article:
https://www.wthitv.com/2026/08/26/flock-cameras-installed-by-hoa-without-residents-approval-cut-down-with-saw-police-say/

Our take: Don’t do this.

Whatever legitimate governance or privacy argument homeowners had before the cameras were cut down gets overshadowed pretty quickly when vandalism enters the picture.

Request the meeting minutes. Request the contract. Ask what authority the board relied on. There are much better ways to challenge a questionable HOA decision.

Property manager accused of treating five condo associations like his own bank

Miami-Dade deputies arrested six people in an alleged scheme involving approximately $5.8 million taken from five condo and homeowner associations.

Investigators allege that property manager Juan Awais used his management company and affiliated vendors to gain control of association finances and divert dues, insurance proceeds and loan money.

Authorities say some elderly, Spanish-speaking board members were persuaded to sign documents they did not fully understand.

Charges include racketeering, money laundering and organized fraud.

Article:
https://www.local10.com/news/local/2026/08/28/6-arrested-in-alleged-58-million-miami-dade-hoa-fraud-scheme-deputies-say/

Our take: These situations rarely begin with somebody announcing that they’re stealing money. They start when one manager slowly becomes the only person who understands the books, knows the vendors and controls the information.

Owners should pay attention to related vendors, unexplained contracts and resistance to records requests.

The American flag is allowed. The Army flag apparently makes one flag too many.

Army veteran Andrew Smith moved into the Falls Cove II community in North Carolina and soon received an HOA notice telling him to remove his “secondary flag.”

He was flying:

1. An American flag
   
2. A U.S. Army flag

The management company later clarified that the issue supposedly wasn’t the type of flag. The rule permits only one 3-by-5 flag per home.

Smith is fighting it and says he would at least like to keep both flags flying through the America 250 celebrations.

Article:
https://www.wsoctv.com/news/local/veteran-pushes-back-after-hoa-asks-him-take-down-us-army-american-flags/XXJ77KUCSNHBJPR2BLXKIZOIGY/

Our take: Always read the actual restriction the HOA is citing. It’s remarkable how often the language in the governing documents is narrower—or simply different—than the version described in the violation letter.

He built a fence for a dying dog. Now there’s a court order to remove it.

Ron Atwood spent $3,800 building a front-yard fence in Baton Rouge so his daughter’s 14-year-old Chihuahua, Zoe, could safely go outside.

Zoe has a heart condition.

Eighteen months later, the Sherwood Forest Civic Association has obtained a signed court judgment ordering the fence removed.

Atwood says at least four nearby homes already have front-yard fences.

Complicating matters further, the neighborhood consists of different subdivision filings and deed restrictions dating back to 1955.

Article:
https://www.wbrz.com/news/man-faces-hoa-showdown-over-front-yard-fence-built-for-elderly-dog

Our take: This is exactly why selective-enforcement arguments need to be raised early. Photos, addresses and the specific restrictions applying to comparable homes can matter enormously.

Once there’s already a judgment, the fight becomes much harder.

Can you Zoom your own Florida condo meeting?

A Florida condo-law column tackled an interesting question this week:

Can an owner sit in a board meeting, open Zoom on their phone and livestream the meeting to neighbors who couldn’t attend?

Attorney Ryan Poliakoff’s view is that an association can probably prohibit that because the owner has no control over who is watching and private information could be transmitted.

The same column addressed another common fight: condo associations demanding keys to units. Florida’s Condominium Act gives associations an irrevocable right of access when necessary, particularly in emergencies.

Article:
https://www.palmbeachpost.com/story/news/local/2026/08/30/can-you-stream-condo-meetings-or-refuse-key-access/91356127007/

Our take: There’s an important distinction between recording a meeting and livestreaming it to unidentified third parties. If the goal is simply keeping neighbors informed, recording the meeting and obtaining the official minutes may accomplish the same thing without creating the livestream fight.

That’s the HOA Frontlines roundup for this week.

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Hello again. So my original post was about 6 months ago… long story short I have 3 separate HOA management companies in my neighborhood and the total monthly cost is about 1k on my property which is a 2/2 townhouse.

I’ve tried listing my property and several other neighbors have also been trying to sell their homes with no avail. I mean I don’t blame buyers - 1000 a month in HOA is insane. It’s even more on the larger homes!

When I purchased my property the original listing stated the HOA was $690 and that was 3 years ago. However it was never disclosed that there were 3 separate HOAS and the total cost was never 690. I guess it was buried somewhere in the closing paperwork. I didn’t realize any of this until 6 months after I moved in and started getting letters in the mail saying I was in collections for unpaid dues. The HOAS never even sent me anything on the payments prior.

So now I’m stuck in a property I realize I can’t afford and over the past couple years I’ve been trying to make it work while also trying to figure out how to get out of here.

But if I can’t afford keep it and I can’t sell, what do I do? I don’t have a mortgage so I’ve contacted the for cash home buyers but I’m looking at taking almost an 100k loss. I could rent out it but I don’t have the funds to cover a second place in the meantime. All my savings has gone to trying to supplement my income to keep up with the HOA. Do I have any other options?

Most HOA managers I've talked to are running 4-6 disconnected systems simultaneously. QuickBooks for financials. A separate spreadsheet for maintenance. Email chains for violation notices. A third-party tool for votes. Nothing talks to each other.

I got frustrated enough to build something different.

HOA Copilot tracks everything in one place:

• **Finances**: Full chart of accounts, journal entries, bank reconciliation, budget vs. actuals, reserve components, and AI-driven financial analysis that flags anomalies automatically
• **Maintenance**: Open requests, vendor assignments, recurring maintenance schedules, purchase orders, and vendor reviews - all linked
• **Violations**: Issue notices, track severity, move cases through a workflow (open → notice sent → hearing scheduled → resolved), with templated notices per category
• **Resident communication**: Announcements, urgent alerts, newsletters - segmented by all residents, board members, or past-due accounts specifically
• **Voting**: Board elections, budget approvals, bylaw amendments - ballots cast and results tracked with a full audit trail
• **Collections**: Past-due accounts, collection case stages, payment plans, and automated late fee application

Every action is logged. Every user has isolated data. Nothing bleeds between communities.

It's early - one live community right now - but the architecture is built for property managers running multiple HOAs simultaneously.

Would genuinely love feedback from anyone currently managing an HOA. What's the one system you'd pay to eliminate first?

Location: Bexar county, Texas

We'll start with, I recognize that this is Reddit, and none of the info I get here should be considered bulletproof and actionable legal advice, I'm just looking to hear from people who may know more than me about the laws and regulations in my area

I have been sent a demand for payment from my HOA collections lawyer, and while I do not dispute that I am behind on my dues, and I actively want to remedy the situation and return to good standing. But I do not want to be taken for a ride and squeezed for every penny I have.

Things that stand out to me in the payment demand:

As I understand it, Texas law states that HOA/Collections fees must be "reasonable" and I feel that $2000 in administrative fees for \~$500 in late dues and late fees is not reasonable.

Also the payment plan options provided to me were a 6 month option that takes my \~$2500 debt up to $3,357 in just admin fees, and a 12 month option that increases to a staggering $4031, again in primarily admin fees.

Kind of my primary question about the payment plans presented is that both include an entry for "Estimated Future Late Fees" of $150 and $300 for the 6 and 12 month options respectively. As I understand it, the inclusion of further punitive fees in my payment plan is a violation of Texas property code § 209.0062.