For many first time home buyers and empty nesters, buying a condominium seems like the perfect choice. Owning such a dwelling is a way to build equity and have control over your home without the headaches of maintaining a single-family residence and yard. Typically, homeowner association fees cover shared maintenance costs, allowing condo owners to pool the costs of maintenance without the individual burden of doing all the work. Today in Oak Park, there are approximately 5,000 condos, governed by roughly 294 associations. But such condo living is not always a bed of roses.
Many local associations and owners are finding that shared ownership can come with very real challenges. The burst of the real estate bubble and the recession created a lot of problems for both parties, and they continue to struggle with the age-old issues of privacy concerns and personalities.
Condo owners, typically one per household, make up the voting members of each condo’s association. The voting members elect a governing board. Condo boards govern their associations under the guidance of their own individual bylaws and the Illinois Condominium Property Act, but navigating issues within these parameters is often challenging.
Oak Parker John Cabral, a condo association mediator, points out the inherent difficulties in bringing together property owners in one association.
“Condominiums are a wonderful way to have the benefits of homeownership without owning a single-family home. There are many tax benefits, and you don’t risk a quick eviction if problems arise. There’s no landlord, so you’re in control of your home. On the other hand, you and the other owners in your building are all homeowners, and it’s not as easy to leave as it would be in a rental situation. It’s more imperative that you all get along, plus you have to run the building together.”
According to Tammie Grossman, housing programs manager for the Village of Oak Park, problems often arise when owners want to do things one way, and the board wants to do things another.
“I always tell disputing parties that as long as it’s not in violation of the Illinois law or the association’s bylaws, it’s okay. It can be difficult because the owners have given control of the building to the board, but owners are sometimes not willing to live with the board’s decisions, and they’re not willing to run for the board themselves,” she explains. “I tell them that if they have a problem with the current board, they should run themselves.”
Grossman conducts Learn and Lead seminars throughout the year to educate board and association members as well as operates a blog at www.oakparkcondocorner.wordpress.com, which disseminates seminar material and relevant news items. She notes that the village recognized a need for education of board members about the proper way to run an association.
“Condo boards are like businesses and should be treated as such.”
Oak Park resident and condo owner Henry Sullivan believes the business approach doesn’t fully address all the issues that can arise from ownership.
“When we first moved to Oak Park, we were just looking for a less expensive alternative to a single-family home, so we looked at condos. At the time, we weren’t thinking about a condo as an agreement to communal living, but that’s what it is,” he says. “In our building of six units, we’ve gotten along with everyone for most of the time. Some problems have arisen when board members try to tell others what they should and shouldn’t do.”
Sullivan notes that in his small building, the bylaws date back to the 1970s. “They don’t make a lot of sense today, and most people here don’t live by them, and they are routinely violated,” he says. “Our current board is working on new rules and regulations. For the most part, they are following procedures very well, but I have some concerns about basic issues.”
For instance, Sullivan adds, the rules state that board members should have keys to the units so that they can have access during an emergency.
“There is nothing in the rules about background checks on officers or what to do as the board changes,” he says in regards to privacy issues. “Where’s the safety? This is my home, so I have a right to choose who enters and when they do.”
Sullivan states that this and other concerns may seem minimal, but the impact is not.
“They build frustration and there’s no mechanism to address this. The village really helps out boards with education on how to manage, but there’s no person to help moderate conflict between boards and the other unit owners. I see a real need for some sort of professional to take on disagreements that don’t necessarily get covered by the by-laws.”
Beth Swaggerty, of the Oak Park Residence Corporation, leads the Small Condo Program, a pilot program underwritten by the village that provides education, training and guidance to small condo buildings of 12 units or less. Swaggerty works closely with four to five condo associations at a time, taking them through the step-by-step process of developing effective self-management and also fields questions from other small associations throughout the year.
She says that all condo associations are affected by the current economic climate. “My experience has been that when a unit owner experiences financial difficulty, the first thing that goes is the payment of assessments. When you think of it in terms of a percentage of operating budget, the loss of two or three units’ assessments has a much greater impact on a five-unit building than on a 40-unit building.”
Whether problems arise that are economic, like unpaid assessments, or personal, as in the case of Henry Sullivan, Swaggerty notes that small boards often are at a disadvantage. “Some boards wait to deal with issues because it’s a small community and people don’t want to be in conflict with their neighbors,” she says.
According to village records, last year 153 condos or townhomes fell into foreclosure in Oak Park. In a village of 9,626 single-family homes and 5,000 condos and townhomes, foreclosures have a significant impact in the condominium community.
“The impact is so great when people don’t pay their assessments or when there’s a foreclosure in the building,” says Cabral. “Your financial well-being is wrapped up in what others do. The degree of interdependency is much higher.”