Cameras in Your Condo’s Garage: Should Owners Be Allowed to Install Them?
HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - September 15, 2023
After a break-in at a condo garage in Canada, the board forced an individual to remove cameras installed on the common property that allow the owner to monitor their vehicle.
In this week’s tip, we discuss what you should think about if an owner says they’re entitled to hook up a camera on your common property so they can monitor their property.
The basic rule is that common areas aren’t any single owner’s property to do with it what they choose. "I don’t know how things work in Canada, but usually in the United States, the common elements are owned in common by individual owners, not the association," explains Scott D. Weiss, CCAL, a community association lawyer at Ortale Kelley in Nashville, Tenn., who represents more than 800 condos/HOA
communities throughout the state. "But that doesn’t mean individual owners have the right to install things on common areas for their own use."
Elizabeth White, counsel at the law firm of Sands Anderson PC in Williamsburg, Va., where she
leads the firm’s national community association industry team, says owners’ rights on common property will vary depending on the association. "But generally speaking, you don’t want private owners putting anything in the common areas or common elements, at least without a board review process," she says. "And then the question is whether the documents would even allow that to happen.
"Under Virginia law, the board has the right to grant easements across the common element," says White. "But we don’t want to see owners making exclusive use of common elements.
"There’s a case here, White v. Boundary Association Inc., no relation to me, where the Supreme Court of Virginia dealt with a board giving owners exclusive rights to parking spaces," she explains. "The argument against it was that the owners were getting their own, exclusive use to the common area with the grant of particular parking spaces. The court held the board didn’t have the
authority to assign to individual owners parking spaces in the common area."
Of course, assigning parking spaces is different from allowing a camera on common property. Could your board authorize owners’ installation of cameras? Maybe. It’s
going to depend on your documents, your state law, and specifically what you’re permitting.
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President