HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - March 13, 2026
Published: Fri, 03/13/26
Updated: Tue, 03/17/26
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HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - March 13, 2026
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In this week's tip, we're helping out an HOAleader.com reader who has a water-intrusion problem. Our reader lives in a condo where one owner found mold in her utility closet that was traced to a leak from the HVAC in the unit above her. The board suspected the unit above her was also filled with mold, and the building paid for the inspection report.
Sure enough, the inspector found mold, which the owner must remediate. He's refusing, saying he doesn't believe his HVAC unit is the cause of all the mold. The board has now agreed to share the report with him and have given him five days to address the problem.
This is one-hundred percent a state law and governing document issue. So, we touched base with our experts from various states to answer two questions: What are your general rules for how this should shake out? Also, did this board act properly in paying for the inspection and in its actions toward the owner suspected of being the source of the problem?”
Question 1: What are your general rules for how this should shake out?
In Colorado, when there's damage caused by water intrusion, Melissa Garcia, a retired former shareholder at Altitude Community Law PC in Lakewood, Colo., who provided advice and counsel to Colorado associations in all areas of community association law and continues to be a resources for communities, advised her clients to take three steps that are generally applicable to condos everywhere.
“First, figure out what was damaged,” she advises. “Then see what the condo's documents say as to who's responsible and who typically repairs the damage. And third, figure out whether negligence or insurance responsibilities shift the cost to someone else.
“Typically, who pays has nothing to do with who's responsible for the damage,” says Garcia. “In the reader's example, the water could have come from the owner's AC unit, but that owner could have also been in no way negligent. Why are we assuming that because the water comes from the owner's unit that they should pay for it? That's the big thing. It's not where the water comes from.”
The question in Florida is also whether someone was negligent, not where the damage originated. “Who's responsible always comes to negligence,” according to Matthew Zifrony, who advises homeowners and condo associations at Tripp Scott, a Ft. Lauderdale law firm, and who has also served as the president of a 3,000-home association. “For example, I moved to a high-rise condo—I'm now a condo owner rather than a single-family homeowner.
“In the first few weeks, we did all the renovations to our unit, and one of my AC units leaked and caused damage below,” he recalls. “Legally, who's responsible? It all comes back to negligence. If I didn't do anything wrong and I had no reason to believe the AC unit would leak, I'm not legally responsible. That's what insurance is for.
“On the other hand, if the AC company had someone flush the system and they did it wrong, they'd be responsible,” says Zifrony. “In another example, if a report showed that a water leak by the unit above was because the owner above tended to overflow their bathtub, it's pure negligence.
“Moving away from legal responsibility would be the moral responsibility,” he adds.
What? There's a moral side to this? Sure.
Read about Zifrony's moral argument—plus find out why negligence is a nothingburger in some other states and whether this board is handling this properly—in our new article: https://www.hoaleader.com/members/5270.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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