Georgia Lawmakers To Rein In Aggressive Home Owners Associations After Hearing Homeowner Horror Stories – Atlanta Georgia reporting
You can be up to date on your mortgage, never missed a loan payment, and lose your home to foreclosure by your Homeowners Association.
▶︎ Each month Karyn Gibbons mailed a check for HOA dues on her Gwinnett County condo to the address provided in writing at closing. But she said she never knew when or if it would be cashed.
“It was just random. I mean there’d be two, three, four, five months go in between checks being cashed,” said Gibbons. Then out of the blue she was served with a notice of foreclosure by her Home Owners Association, with late fees and thousands of dollars in attorney fees.
She owed more than $30,000.
“Did you even know you could be foreclosed on by an HOA?” Gray asked Gibbons.
“No. Never heard of it,” Gibbons said.
▶︎ “It’s totally insane. It’s totally insane,” said Tricia Quigley, a former Cherokee County homeowner.
She learned it can happen the hard way.
When Quigley’s Cherokee County home of 18 years was sold at foreclosure on the courthouse steps for about the amount of spare change on her coffee table as Gray interviewed her.
“It went for $3.25,” Quigley said.
She admitted she did not pay two of her biannual homeowner association dues payments totaling $800.
She ended up paying more than $10,000 trying to get right with the HOA but the late fees and attorney fees kept growing.
“I kept thinking I paid all this money; how come it’s not stopping?” Quigley said.
A big reason is attorney costs.
Every email, every inquiry, every attempt to contest, fix, or even pay the overdue bill adds to the bill.
Channel 2 Action News checked foreclosure records and found that ▶︎ just two metro Atlanta law firms that specialize in representing HOAs have filed 279 notices seeking damage and foreclosure notices in just the past three years.
By the time Juliet Graham finally sold her downtown Atlanta condo her HOA bill had reached $250,000.
“You broke us. We’re broke,” Graham said.
“I can’t imagine the mafia having been any worse than what my experience was with this,” Graham said.
State Senator Donzella James, a Democrat who represents South Fulton County, introduced multiple bills this legislative session trying to reign in overly aggressive HOAs.
“People need to be protected and safeguarded against foreclosures,” said State Senator James.
“This is where I resodded the whole thing,” said James McAdoo, a homeowner in South Fulton County.
The only way he could stop his HOA from intercepting his paycheck was by filing for bankruptcy.
“They garnished my wages,” McAdoo said.
He owes $36,000 and counting predominantly because of weeds in his front yard.
They were garnishing $600 from his paycheck every two weeks until he started the bankruptcy process.
“What way do you see out of this?” Gray asked McAdoo.
“Selling my home and just getting out of this neighborhood,” McAdoo said.
That is what Karyn Gibbons did earlier this year even though she still does not believe she did anything wrong.
“I just said enough. I can’t do it anymore,” Gibbons said.
She paid $34,000 in fines, interest, and attorney fees to end the nightmare.
“I don’t know how it’s legal,” Gibbons said.
And it’s not just happening to homeowners. Gray also spoke with a couple who said just because they were renting a home, they were not safe from an HOA.
Jasmine Latson and Jaquan Hunter said their HOA in their South Fulton neighborhood came after them over the condition of their yard.
They ended up hiring a lawn service to take care of everything. But that wasn’t enough for the HOA.
“I was like, maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m not doing good enough, I don’t know. So I went ahead and just hired an outside resource that my neighbor used. He’s been pretty consistent and good, but the fines keep happening,” Latson said.
Last year, they received a foreclosure letter saying the home’s owners owed fines and fees of more than $23,000.
“Never, never in a million years would I have thought that I would have would be dealing with this. You know? I pay my rent every month,” Latson said.
First Key Homes, Latson, and Hunter’s landlord negotiated down the fines to about $12,000 to prevent foreclosure. But the company has now passed that bill onto the couple along with an eviction notice.
Latson has fired an attorney and has a court date set for Friday.
Now, these renters are hoping state lawmakers can do something about these aggressive HOAs.
▶︎ A bipartisan bill sponsored by state senator and Rules Committee Chair Matt Brass, a Republican representing Newnan, did pass at the Gold Dome this year to create a study committee examining how to change laws to better protect homeowners.
Brass told Gray the No. 1 topic on the study committee’s agenda will be HOA foreclosures that he said are taking families’ generational wealth.
“To have some outside group come and take that away from me is again, it’s un-American. And we’re not going to stand for it in this state,” Brass said.
Several states have put in place laws limiting HOA foreclosure.
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Reasons why my biological dad is listed as “Disappointment” in my phone:
1. My grandma had a heart attack a couple years ago and was in the hospital unresponsive for about two weeks. (Don’t worry it’s the immortal grandma so she’s still alive) I was not informed of this until two weeks after she had the heart attack. This was my dad’s mother. My mom told me because she found out from one of my aunts on facebook. I texted my dad and yelled at him, asking him why the actual fuck he didn’t bother to tell me this. Like what if she died?! What if she died and I found out there was a two week period where I could have visited her that my dad neglected to tell me about??? My dad, when confronted with this, started pulling excuses out of his ass and eventually when he ran out of excuses he just said “Well it’s none of your business what I do and do not tell you.”
2. A few months after my mom divorced him, he took money out of my brothers’ and I’s bank accounts to pay a bill he was short on. I was five. He didn’t even ask. We each had about $100 in the bank accounts and he just…took it. My mom had to close the accounts. He never even paid us back.
3. He neglected to pay child support to my mom for years. Once he paid it just so the court wouldn’t take his drivers license away.
4. On the night I was being born (I was a C Section baby and my mom had scheduled it) my mom told him to stay home and watch my older brother. He put my brother to bed early and spent the rest of the night running up the phone bill while calling spicy numbers. My mom found out three weeks later.
5. He wasn’t even there for my first birthday. One of his friends asked him to help them move without knowing it was my birthday. He agreed without talking to my mom first or telling the guy he was on a time limit because it was my birthday. No he just missed the whole thing. I took my first steps on my first birthday.
6. He would lie to my mom about where he was. He would tell her he was going to help a friend move furniture or something and he’d really be at a bar playing pool with his buddies while my mom stayed home and took care of us.
7. He ruined both his and my mom’s credit scores because he let the house they bought together run into bankruptcy or foreclosure or whatever it’s called (essentially he stopped paying the mortgage or bills on it) instead of fixing it up or reselling it and since both their names were on the mortgage my mom’s credit got screwed over, too.
8. He couldn’t hold a job for more than a few months to a year for a long time.
9. He once bought season passes to an amusement park a state away from us and said that he would take me and my brothers up there a bunch that summer. He never did. My mom used the season passes to take us up once, though.
10. He never taught me to ride a bike without training wheels. My stepdad handled that one.
11. He always broke his promises.
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