PREVIOUS OWNERS CAN BE HELD LIABLE FOR VACANT PROPERTY PROBLEMS
Depending on who is doing the talking, investors buying foreclosed homes in the Las Vegas area are either being gouged by greedy homeowners associations or are contributing to neighborhood decay by failing to maintain their newly purchased properties states an article in the Las Vegas Sun Foreclosure investors suing over HOA, collection fees.
The associations frequently have to shell out money to contractors to work on rundown properties, deal with stagnant and toxic swimming pools and to water lawns and vegetation. If that money can’t be recovered from previous or new owners, it hits association budgets, jeopardizing their maintenance programs.
Those charges flew Wednesday as news circulated that investment groups had filed class action lawsuits in Las Vegas claiming they are being overcharged by hundreds of homeowners associations and collection agencies for assessments, fines, interest and collection costs that typically accumulate while homes sit vacant during foreclosure proceedings.
The lawsuits, filed by Adams Law Group Ltd., said the associations and their collection agencies charge investors more than what the law allows.
That past-due amounts are capped by law at the equivalent of nine months of association assessments and can include a combination of regular assessments, fines and other charges. After acquiring properties, investors must pay monthly assessments as well as fines like everyone else.
