HOAleader.com - Tip of the Week - August 10, 2012
Published: Fri, 08/10/12
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How to Respond to Owners Publicly Trashing Your HOA
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In this week's tip, we discuss your HOA's remedy if
an owner has begun distributing a newsletter to
owners, created a website, or started blogging about
your HOA without authorization from the board.
"Unfortunately I've seen it, and it's always the
vocal minority-the people who are the maddest and
have the time to complain," says Ben Solomon,
founder of the Association Law Group in Miami
Beach, Fla., who advises more than 500 associations
and also represents developers through his second
law firm, Solomon & Furshman LLP.
"This is becoming a pervasive problem," agrees
Lisa A. Magill, a shareholder and association
attorney at Becker & Poliakoff PA in Fort
Lauderdale, Fla. "Community leaders may have
worked years and years to develop their
community's name recognition and establish the
community's reputation in the geographic area
for state-of-the art facilities, quality
amenities, impeccable common grounds, and
high standards."
And then they're faced with an angry owner who
goes online to spread his discontent.
"It's a problem for two reasons," says
Debra A. Warren, vice president of client
relations at the Dallas-based Associa(r), a
community association management company with
offices throughout the United States, Canada,
and Mexico. "As a culture, we tend to focus on
the negative in the media, and that typically
will also happen in these underground
communications. Search engines don't care who
the author of something is. If I'm looking to
live in The Meadows HOA and do a quick online
search for that, the search engine won't
distinguish between the HOA's website and a
nonsense website. But that nonsense may impact
my perception of moving into that community.
So that vehicle is having a negative impact
on the community's property values."
Can you sue? Sure, but is it wise?
Find out what our experts say, and learn other
ways to tackle the problem in our new article,
Underground HOA Newsletters/Websites/Blogs:
Can You Reel Them In?
http://www.hoaleader.com/members/748.cfm
Best regards,
Matt Humphrey
President
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