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Question
My wife owns a home that she currently rents out. The home is in a community that has an HOA. She had enrolled in auto debit of the HOA fees from one of her bank accounts. This worked fine for 5 years. Apparently, in 2007, the HOA management company changed. We never received notice of this change or of the inability of the new HOA to continue to be paid via the bank auto-debit. Last week we were sent a letter from a collection agency stating that we owed 20 months of HOA fees, plus late fees, plus attorney fees, plus lien fees, etc. (apparently a lien was placed on the house). Needless to say, this was quite a shock to us - we had not noticed that the minimal monthly fee was no longer being deducted from the account and we had NEVER received any letter/phone call, etc. indicating that we were past due in our HOA payments. We do not contest that we owe 20 months of HOA fees, but the total amount owed is now over 2 times what we would have owed in HOA fees (because of the additional fees). The collection agency admitted that no certified letters had ever been sent. (Seems like this would have been an easy fix for everyone!) Can we be sent to a collection agency without a single notice that our account was past due? Is there any chance we can avoid paying the 'extra' fees?
Thanks for any advice!
HOAs are very difficult to deal with but once they refer their problems to an attorney they are vulnerable to an FDCPA and maybe even an FCRA lawsuit. That is the only way I know of to deal with them. The nice part is that you don't even need to hire a lawyer nor ever actually appear in a federal court.
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Answers by Expert:
Creditwrench
Expertise
Debt Collections law, Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), federal law, how to properly answer court summons for collection cases, how to prepare federal cases against debt collectors, how to deal with debt collection phone calls.
Experience
I've been an active consumer advocate for more than 40 years and have helped hundreds of people win cases against debt collectors as well as helping them defeat demands for summary judgment lodged against them by banks, debt collectors and defeat mortgage foreclosures and keep their homes.
Education/Credentials
Paralegal courses for the most part.
I have been teaching people how to deal with judgments, mortgage foreclosures and other such problems both on and off the internet for many, many years. I am a Richard Cornforth information provider ever since 2000 and worked with many other organizations and causes since 1980. I was Oklahoma State Chairman for the nationwide drive to defeat the Constitutional Convention which was proposed by various factions within our federal government such as the Council of State Governments and the National Organization of State Governors who were working hard to organize a Constitutional Convention to be held in 1995 for the purpose of rewriting our American Constitution to be more acceptable to the United Nations. I worked with Senator Charles Duke of Colorado and Senator Don Rogers of California and many others across the nation to keep them from getting the number of delegate states required to lawfully hold a Con-Con and we were successful. I have worked with many other legislative issues in Oklahoma and have always been very successful.
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