131 | Florida Reserve Funding Legislation & HOA Law

131 | Florida Reserve Funding Legislation & HOA Law
SPEAKERS
Speaker 2, Robert Nordlund, Russell Munz, Announcer, Marnie Dale Ragan

Marnie Dale Ragan 00:00
There’s a lot of investors in Florida, and whether they be out of state or out of country, they’re also not keen to see assessments go up for things that they don’t necessarily use, because if they’re renting the property and they’re not getting complaints from their tenants, they don’t want to pay more. So there is a battle you will see between resident owners versus investor owners.

Announcer 00:19
HOA Insights is brought to you by five companies that care about board members: Association Insights and Marketplace, Association Reserves, Community Financials, Kevin Davis Insurance Services, and the Inspectors of Election. You’ll find links to their website and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund 00:36
Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I’m Robert Nordlund, and I’m here today for episode 131 with an attorney from Florida up to her eyeballs in condom condominium issues. Ms, Marnie Dale Reagan. Now, Marnie is a partner with the renowned haber law firm and the co chair of their condominium and HOA practice group. Now I say it that way because in Florida there are different bodies of law for condominiums and HOA and looking into her background to find out a little what makes her who she is. Back in college at George Washington University in Washington, DC, she wrote on their crew team, and that’s near and dear to my heart. It captured my attention because I was a coxswain for the University of Washington, and that’s on the other side of the country back when I was in college, but we have condominiums to talk about. So there’s always been plenty going on in Florida with respect to condominiums and Hoa, since it’s pretty much neck and neck with California for total number of associations in the state, but the activity in Florida increased significantly, as you can expect with a tragic collapse of Champlain tower south in 2021 so we’re glad to have Marty with us today on the program, so you can hear from her what she’s been observing and dealing with the last few years. Well, last week’s episode, 130 was another one of our great board hero episodes, this one featuring a board member from an 18 unit association in the Pacific Northwest, and she told the story of passing $100,000 per unit special assessment for essential building repairs. And keynote here it’s on units where the property values are about 300,000 so that’s clearly Heck of a challenge and a heck of a story. So if you missed that episode or any other prior episode, take a moment after today’s program to listen from our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, or watch on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe from any of the major podcast platforms, so you don’t miss any future episodes. Well, those of you watching on YouTube can see the HOA insights mug I hear, but mug I have here, of course, it’s one about budgeting that you can browse through from our Hoa insights.org website or the link in our show notes, and you’ll find we have some great free stuff there, like board member zoom backgrounds and some specialty items for sale, like the mug. So go to the merch store, download a free zoom background, take a moment, look around, find the mug you’d like, and email me at podcast@reservesday.com with your name, shipping address. Mug choice, mentioning episode 131 mug giveaway, and if you’re the 10th person to email me, I’ll ship that mug to you free of charge. Well, we enjoy hearing from you responding to the issues you’re facing at your association. So if you have a hot topic, a crazy story, or a question you’d like us to address, you can contact us at 805-203-3130, or email us at podcast at reserve study.com and this episode was prompted by Elizabeth from all the way out in Honolulu, who asked, do we need to know about Florida legislation reacting to the Champlain tower South collapse? There? Is that a Florida issue? Or will it affect our legislation here? And that’s a great question from a Hawaii listener. So Marnie, welcome to the program, and how will you respond to Elizabeth?

Marnie Dale Ragan 04:11
Well, thank you first for having me. I really appreciate it. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you, as well as your viewership. The answer is yes, if Florida law does matter, there’s been a long standing joke that that we kind of held ourselves to the standard of the rules are different here, and they really are because, you know, similar to California, Florida is full of all type of communal housing, whether it be condominiums or homeowners associations. And what we’re seeing now is their aging, and that’s exactly what what happened there. You have a dichotomy of amazing luxury properties selling for the 10s of millions of dollars per unit, and you have a lot of retirees that have come from the Northeast or all over the rest of the country living closer to a fixed income. And so it’s really creating a lot of financial issues and struggles for condominiums in Florida homeowners associations and. Florida and the legislature that’s really trying to bridge the gap between the two. So it’s difficult. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund 05:05
I can imagine condominiums, a condominium, but if you have a six unit beachfront place that is luxury, you know, grand, I don’t know, 3000 4000 square foot per unit, wonderful places. And I’m imagining here, floor to ceiling views, that kind of thing. And then a mile away you can have a little 60 unit place that’s 30 years old, that was apartment conversion, and you got to find rules work for both of

Marnie Dale Ragan 05:35
them absolutely. And then actually you can double that 30 years because we have some communities here in South Florida that started out maybe as rental and apartments, and they were built in the 50s and 60s. So these buildings are 6070, pushing 80 years old. And certainly the maintenance on those is

Robert Nordlund 05:51
incredible, yeah. And every day all of them, the new ones, the luxury ones, the older ones, the simpler ones, they’re all getting a little bit older. And that’s the roofing, the HVAC systems, the hallways, the infrastructure, the asphalt, everything a little bit older. Every the plumbing, the electrical, everything’s getting a little bit older,

Marnie Dale Ragan 06:13
absolutely. And so what we saw was, you know, with Champlain towers, we’ve seen a flurry of legislation over the last four years, and each year, they tweak it, and they fine tuned it more and more. And you know, best intentions there are, there’s still ambiguity, there’s still some errors, but what it’s really doing is it’s it’s removing the option for the attitude of, I won’t be here when the repairs are necessary, so I’m not going to fund them. And what that comes down to is reserves. Reserves are the collection of monies, where I make a very simple example, roof is 10 years. It’s $100,000 to replace. Collect $10,000 a year, and you have it for years. And years you had retirees who said, I’m not going to be here. Let’s waive the funding of reserves. And by statute, you could. So what our legislature has done is they’ve created two categories of reserves. Some of them are called the structural integrity reserves, which is the roof, the structure, the fireproofing, plumbing, electrical waterproofing, and exterior windows and doors. And they’ve said you can no longer waive the funding. You absolutely have to fund this.

Robert Nordlund 07:16
Let me stop you there, because, from my point of view, Florida is almost unique. I think Ohio is the same in that the homeowners have a line item veto over reserve funding.

Marnie Dale Ragan 07:29
Nope. Not here, okay, not here in Florida.

Robert Nordlund 07:32
My impression was that homeowners have had, as you say, avoid, a voice in this, and they can say, well, I don’t want to do that. I’d rather go to Disney World. I’d rather hold on to the money myself. And that’s a problem when you have the board trying to provide for the sustainability the association, and you have the homeowners saying, I’d rather pay less,

Marnie Dale Ragan 07:54
correct, and everybody always wants to pay less. And so up until four or five years ago, the membership could vote to waive, or they could vote to partially fund those reserves, and you could lower the amount that they contributed. What the legislature has now said is there are certain reserves that are mandatory. You can’t waive them. You can’t even take a vote. It’s not up to the membership, and it’s not up to the board. There are some reserves now that they still can waive, but it takes a full majority vote of the membership,

Robert Nordlund 08:18
so they’re making it harder for the homeowners to say, No, I don’t care,

Marnie Dale Ragan 08:24
absolutely and at the end of the day, it all comes down to life safety. And that’s that’s the impetus for the for for the creation of this legislation. It’s a good idea. And so what you find here in Florida is you find communities that, if they’ve been funding their reserves in the past, it wasn’t such a devastating blow. It’s the communities that had been waving year after year. They’ve financially really taken a hit over the last year or two,

Robert Nordlund 08:48
right? We’ve had a steady stream of clients, community associations who want to know what’s our responsibility, how much should we be setting aside? And that the volume of clients is much smaller than California. I’m looking over for the YouTube people. I’m looking over at my United States map on my wall here. That’s that volume of business that we’ve had in Florida is a lot smaller than in California. Again, a similarly Community Association size state, because there’s so many boards historically that said the homeowners are just going to waive it. So why do we care that much? And so it’s wonderful for the legislation to be tightening the standards and saying, Hey folks, it is all about and in our words, paying the ongoing cost of deterioration your fair share for the 365 days you’re in it this year. Let’s pay your fair share of how it’s getting a little bit older every day,

Marnie Dale Ragan 09:43
absolutely, and it’s and it’s the it’s a very financially sound decision to make. And there are some communities that have been undertaking reserve studies over time because they wanted to also do a bit of a check on the property. How are we doing today? How’s our snapshot? And then you could forecast from there, and you would see that sometimes maybe the. Useful life would be extended farther out, and that item could come down a little bit. And then in other cases, you saw something that may have been degrading more quickly than anticipated, right? So there has always been some some reserve studies undertaken in Florida, but now it’s mandatory.

Robert Nordlund 10:13
From your point of view. As an attorney, you see board members who have. They come from many different backgrounds. They may be titans of industry. They may be professionals like yourself, a doctor, a lawyer, they may be someone who had less of a significant professional background, and they’re all the board members. They’re the decision makers, and what do they know about a roof? What do they know about delinquent assessments? And so much about being a board member is probably knowing when to ask for help. Do you see it that way?

Marnie Dale Ragan 10:46
Absolutely and you know, and again, I can talk about Florida, because this is my home. You know, what you see is you see volunteer board members, and 99% of them, I truly believe, are doing the absolute best they can. Everyone has a pet project, and I appreciate that. But to that end there, they still know that this is an asset. This is a not for profit corporation. They’re an elected board of directors to govern this corporation and to protect this asset, which for some people may be the most significant asset, as well as liability that they own. And so there is a real pride of ownership to that, and they’re taking it very seriously. We have heightened education requirements here in Florida for board members, they have to take education within 90 days of being elected. You know, my first piece and my continued piece of advice to them always is trust your professionals. Surround yourself with professionals that you that you trust, that you believe in, whether that be attorneys, management companies, engineers, accountants, and let them do the heavy lifting, and then you have the ability to rely upon their guidance to move forward comfortably.

Robert Nordlund 11:46
Yeah, I like the way you characterize that, because I’ve heard so many people talk about board member job being being a decision maker, not a researcher. But when you have the decision makers, the people doing the heavy lifting, the specialists teeing it up for you, they will say we could do A or B, A, one, make a simple illustration. We could fix the roof for 100 grand and it’ll last 10 years. Or we could fix the roof for 150 grand, 50% more, but it’ll last 20 years. Either way, you get a fixed roof, and the professional has laid it out for you, and then it’s just up to the board to decide how cost effective do they want to be, how much do they want to spend? And in so many situations, if you have a good team like that teeing it up for you, then you get to be, I want to say, just the decision maker, and almost like, can I say, like a jury, where a jury, a group of people, your peers, which are the board members, representatives of the members, saying, Yeah, we prefer to do it this way, and not doing the research, but just making the decision Absolutely.

Marnie Dale Ragan 12:57
And that’s that’s the way you’ve got to do it, is you get as much information as you can provide it to you by the people that have the ability to to ask the right questions, get the right get the right details, and then you can make that informed decision. But what I will say is, you know, board members are elected, and ultimately it is their decision, and it’s not always the best decision to say, you know, hey, let’s make this a vote of the members, because it’s not really appropriate. And I’m all for transparency. I’m a huge proponent of filling your your meetings full of so much information that there’s nothing left for an owner to ask and in that can start out with having a lot of really long board meetings, but as your membership begins to trust the process, they’ll rely upon that more. But ultimately, these are decisions of the board so that they, you know, share the information, go forward, but then make the decision, and have the professionals around you that can back it up for you as to how that decision was made. You

Robert Nordlund 13:50
talked about something there trust, and when the board is transparent, when they’re saying this is the way it is, these are the facts, then the homeowners get comfortable that they’re in good hands with that board as leaders, and does that minimize the differences and the political tension at an association when you’ve got that going on,

Marnie Dale Ragan 14:10
sometimes, I’ll give you a lawyer’s answer. It depends, you know, because Florida, listen, Florida is Florida, and every state has these issues, but we had, you know, kind of dueling or competing interests in the legislature for the last few years. One absolutely life safety, the structural integrity reserves, the movement on that. We’ve also had a lot of transparency pieces of our legislation, and it unfortunately resulted from bad actors management and some board members that hadn’t had stolen some money. So there’s a lot of distrust in Florida right now towards board members and some management and some attorneys, frankly, and it’s a matter of trying to overcome all of that. So it’s it’s having this board sitting at the front of a room, having their professionals around them, showing why we’re having these increases in budgets based upon state mandated, state mandated reserves. You know, let’s throw in. Our insurance for good measure, because that’s a response. It’s been a very difficult road for board members to do it. And what I’m seeing is that you have, you know, I tease. I’ve been doing this for close to 25 years. I used to joke and say, you know, it takes one and there’s at least one for every building, so you have to be somewhat conservative. Well, now there’s at least five in every building. So you’ve got to be able to withstand those questions and that pushback from these owners as to why you’re doing things, why money is being spent, why things are costing more. And as you lay out insurance and reserves and you you sell to your membership guys, we need to budget more for legal we need to budget more for our accountants and management, because we want to have talented professionals with us, and some of the owners start to push back on that. Then, you know, to throw in another caveat you have, you have some, for lack of a better term pundit saying, we need to have professional board members. We need to be paying them. Well, guess what? That costs money. None of this is going to be free. And so there’s, you know, there’s communities where the units are beautiful and luxurious, and there’s over 55 retired communities where they’re they’re doing all they can to stay afloat. So I don’t know if it creates a crisis. I don’t know if it’s going to create redevelopment and terminations, but it’s certainly a very interesting, dynamic time to be in this industry in Florida, as well as other states. I pick on Florida because we’ve got a lot of coastline and a lot of people want to come here. Politics outstanding, right?

Robert Nordlund 16:21
There’s a lot of good reasons to come to Florida. And it’s been a stereotype that when you retire, you can go to Florida, and it’s just it’s beautiful. And we had a board hero just a couple months ago who was talking about how she moved from Michigan, and she’s now in the Florida Keys. She is the happiest girl in the country. And next time I go to Miami, I’m going to see if I can schedule some time and drive south to visit her, because she was talking about the idyllic world that she’s created down on the keys. So yeah, there’s a lot of attraction, but you talked about a whole bunch of things in that. That last statement you’re talking about, where do we go from here? Being a board member is challenging, and that’s why we started this podcast. We want to encourage board members. It is hard work, and one of the key steps to making it easier is having the right information keyed up or teed up so you have just decision points. You’re not doing your research, you’re not wondering. And I think of issues like, you’re not managing the $500,000 roof project. You have a construction consultant that’s doing that kind of project. Lot of challenges right now. Inflation makes things more expensive. We learned about supply chain a few years ago, making things more expensive insurance, with all the weather events and expensive damage that we have from hurricanes, hail storms and other areas of the country, wildfires in California here, it’s expensive, but I think we have to get somehow, and it maybe comes back to communication and transparency. Owning real estate is expensive. Can we get around that?

Marnie Dale Ragan 18:02
Absolutely. I mean, it used to be a pretty well settled notion that you could work and you could retire to Florida by condominium and live on a fixed income. And I don’t want, I’m not going to say cheaply, but you could do that. That is no longer the case. And anyone that thinks that living in the condominium is going to be cheaper is sadly mistaken. It’s just not the case there. You know. It has to be treated just like a home. There’s going to be maintenance costs and carrying costs, and there’s no way to avoid them. An

Robert Nordlund 18:29
inflationary economic environment. It’s going to get more expensive if you bought into the association 10 years ago, when the monthly assessments were 350, or are they now 550, 600 and they’re going to go higher and higher and higher.

Marnie Dale Ragan 18:44
And, you know, thankfully, knock on wood, cross fingers, insurance has gotten a little better for us. This year we’ve seen some reductions, and in a lot of the there’s a bit of a leveling out with respect to some of the the SIRs requirement funding, because the first, the first bite at the apple, happened last year. And so I think the shock value is gone. So it’s, it’s settling down a touch, but it has not completely resolved itself. There’s still going to be, I think, an increase in collections. We’re going to see some more foreclosures. And it’s unfortunate, but it, but it is necessary, because at the end of the day, this, these reserves, their life safety. It’s not optional. It’s, it’s not, you know, for fun and giggles. This is about maintaining the protection of the building and its residents and its property. So they’re definitely necessary.

Robert Nordlund 19:29
Yeah, Champlain towers South taught us that so abruptly overnight back in 2021 well, Marnie, we need to change which I feel like we’re starting to go down some depressing type things here. So let’s take a quick break to hear from one of our generous sponsors, after which we’ll be back with more common sense for common areas, and talk about things that you can do.

Russell Munz 19:48
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Robert Nordlund 20:19
And we’re back. Well, we were talking about some of the higher costs, some of the challenges, but I want to spend a little more time here on the podcast talking about, what can boards do. So Marnie, what advice do you have for boards? How can they what best practices can you suggest for them to safely and successfully be guiding their association forward?

Marnie Dale Ragan 20:40
Sure, and I don’t want to be Debbie donner, Florida is fantastic. Living here in South Florida is wonderful. I was in the Keys last weekend. Wouldn’t trade it for the world. There’s nowhere else I’d rather live. But to that end, I mean communal living is where we’re at, and we’ve separated condominiums and homeowners associations. And homeowners associations used to be a little bit more wild west, you know, a little bit less regulated. They’re looking more and more like condominiums here in Florida, and there are regulations. You have a road map. We have an entire division up in Tallahassee that helps homeowners as well as board members with the governance of these community associations.

Robert Nordlund 21:14
Because we’re talking about for Hoa, we’re talking about single family homes united by a road, a gate, a clubhouse, maybe a golf course, tennis, pickleball courts. So there’s a lot of stuff. And so when you look at it, you have your private property or your private space, and then shared space. And so that makes it similar to condominiums, private space and shared space. And so there is some

Marnie Dale Ragan 21:42
it does in a condominium, you own your unit, and you own a percentage share of the balance of the building. In an HOA, you own your home, and you own and then you pay and you contribute towards all of the amenities, which is just what you spend, you know, clubhouse amenities, pools, gyms, spas, and what we see in Florida is there’s a lot of branded residential development happening. And so these amenities are incredible. They could be multiple golf courses, but all of that, there’s carrying costs to it, and it attracts buyers and makes for Fantastic communities. But it certainly, you know, it does need that governance. It’s not just 15 homes sitting on a cul de sac anymore,

Robert Nordlund 22:17
flipping a coin and saying, Hey, Joe, what do you think the budget to be next year. And who cares? Yeah, yeah, it’s a big deal, and it’s legal consequences,

Marnie Dale Ragan 22:27
of course. And again, and when you’re talking about these are, these are assets. These are individual, you know, their their home, their their asset, their liability, and they want to see it well governed. So you know what I want for boards, and I’m always thankful for my board members, because they they want to get in there, they want to take care of things, and they want to do the best they can. The best thing they can do is, you know, have a good board. Always respect each other. You would think it goes without saying, but I always say it, you know, have a good board. Work together. Use your professionals. Listen to your membership. I’m

Robert Nordlund 22:57
going to slow you down, respect each other. Listen, you’ve done this. This is what you do all the time, every day. Respect each other. Listen to your professionals.

Speaker 2 23:10
And there was homeowners. Listen to your listen to

Marnie Dale Ragan 23:15
your kids, right? Because a board that’s pushing, you know, one item, if it’s not what their members want, what was the point of it, but also the downside of that is, if there’s hard decisions to make, you’ve got to be able to withstand to know that you are doing what’s best for the community, and it’s not always going to be the most popular choice initially, at least

Robert Nordlund 23:33
well, as you suggested earlier, there’s going to be some people that bought there and they’re on fixed incomes and they no longer can afford it, and maybe it’s time for them to realize they need to go live with their I’m going to stereotype here, live with their grandkids in Cincinnati, because you can’t drag down the entire association for Mrs. Johnson, nice Mrs. Johnson in unit 13, you just can’t do that. It’s a corporation, and the board has the commission, because they’re they got the governing documents. They got state law, what business judgment, rule, fiduciary principles. So many reasons to focus on the association, not Mrs.

Marnie Dale Ragan 24:12
Johnson, correct, and they and when you say fiduciary duty, fiduciary duty, it’s not optional, and it’s not just an elderly individual or fixed income. There’s a lot of investors in Florida, and whether they be out of state or out of country, they’re also not keen to see assessments go up for things that they don’t necessarily use, because if they’re renting the property and they’re not getting complaints from their tenants, they don’t want to pay more. So there, there is a battle, you know, you will see between, you know, resident owners versus investor

Robert Nordlund 24:41
honors. Okay, so how does a board running the association charter with the responsibility to run this entity? And they’re volunteers, they’ve gone through a class, you said, within 90 days of becoming a board member? Yes, and in Florida, I recall, they have licensed managers, so the managers have some

Marnie Dale Ragan 24:59
training the. Managers have extensive training. And an interesting caveat to our law now is that we’ve always hear, hear stories about a board member who, you know, never has to run through an election because he kind of, you know, bulldozes or bullies people. There’s language now for managers that if they see things going on during the election process that aren’t upheld by law, they have a duty to report it. So it’s it’s really put on a lot of pressure on not just board members, but managers and management companies to do the right thing, to make sure that things are proceeding as they should. So you don’t have maybe a 20 year board president who’s always controlled things with an iron fist and behind behind closed door that’s over in

Robert Nordlund 25:40
Florida. Fantastic. Okay, so let’s go to that point number three, listening to your homeowners, communicating effectively to your homeowners, having that transparency. So it’s a we, not us and them. How do you break that us versus them down? Where you have the board saying the assessments need to go up from 450 to 500 and the homeowner saying, We don’t want it, you know, you’re bad. We’re going to recall you guys, you’re crazy, you know, that kind of stuff. How do you break down the us versus them and make it more of a we

Marnie Dale Ragan 26:11
it’s time and communication, and it’s really it’s holding budget meetings, budget workshops, having a lot of explanation. We also have tools now that are required in Florida websites where a lot of information has to be made available to the members through a password protected login portal. And so to that end, all of that information, all that backup for this decision making, is available to the members. They can see it. And so it’s just a matter of going through that process, having those conversations, sometimes repeatedly, and really explaining to the membership why these decisions are being made, that they are legally required. This is not just a discretionary decision for the board. These are things that have to occur, and that really does help. And again, that communication over time. Again, it takes a while, but it will get those members there. And you do, you start to see a decrease in attendance, because there does become that trust, because they understand it, and it’s really because you filled them with so much knowledge that they get it,

Robert Nordlund 27:07
yeah, well, you just got me thinking, there’s probably a healthy fraction of people who come to board meetings when there’s a lot of dissension. You may have a lot of people at home owners at board meeting because they’re they’re there with questions. They’re there with anger. You don’t want apathy where no one is there and no one cares. No one wants to work on a committee, be involved on the next board, but you do want it low enough to represent that people are content. Their homes are in good hands with the board. They’re doing a good job. As Americans, our home is generally our number one investment. You want the situation where you’re trusting the board, and I hope that that’s what we’re doing for our audience here, inspiring them to be the trustworthy board. And I like your ideas about time, communication, build trust. And I think of the phrase political capital, where you’ve done it long enough consistently enough that they trust you absolutely.

Marnie Dale Ragan 28:12
You know you joke around in this practice area. The here you have four problems, pets, parking, tenants and money, period, most issues and an association is attributable to one of those. So when you have these meetings and you’re talking about assessments that may be going up, you are going to have a vocal minority, absolutely. And the concern is warranted. I get it, but what you want to do is you want to try and go ahead and fill that audience with people who already understand it, already agree, get it and let them speak up to that vocal minority is very clearly shown to be the minority, and you have the very Hey, for lack of a better term, reasonable majority understanding that these are, these are things that just need to be done.

Robert Nordlund 28:54
Well, there’s two levels that that helps with, because on one level, you have the people that are believers in the board, supporting the board. They’re vocal, and those are also the people that are seeing that the board is doing a pretty darn good job. And they’re honest, they’re forthright, they’re helping and those are committee and board member candidates for the future, and it reminds me, we had a board member hero on the program not too long ago, and he was talking about, he had a high rise condo menu Association, and he had floor captains at every floor, and they were responsible for the emergency procedures. They were responsible for answering questions. When people had questions of what, what’s the board doing? Why are the assessments going up, and they they were building that into just the way they run their association. And I just sat there listening, what a fantastic thing you are. You’re building a communication pipeline full of people. It’s not just the newsletter, it’s not just the website, it’s not an. Slipped under people’s doors. You’re talking about time and communicating. So that’s different ways, different times throughout the month, I love that.

Marnie Dale Ragan 30:11
I do. You know what? I like the floor captain, my only comment or concern just because of things that I see. You want to make sure that they’re authorized, that they have the right information, because you don’t want to see misinformation get spread. Yes, but it can absolutely be a wonderful tool. Yeah,

Robert Nordlund 30:25
those were his association. They were official floor captains. They had a copy of the board meeting minutes, and they had a copy of the budget, and they were, they were the pipeline of information from the board to the floor captains to the homeowners. It was, it was a great system. Yeah, you know, you, you do this enough, and I do this enough that every once in a while you, your heart is just warmed by the associations that are doing it well. And you think, I want to, I want to see more of that going on. And I hope we’re giving some good ideas here. Well, Marty, we’re getting low on time here, but I want to ask you, how did you get into this crazy field of community association law?

Marnie Dale Ragan 31:06
That’s a good question. I’m a born and raised Floridian, and I’ve always liked property and development, but I didn’t want to just do development. I’m not knocking it by any stretch of the imagination, but it seems kind of a little too form over function. For me, this is interesting, because I really do sometimes I feel like I need a psych degree, but I do feel like this is the great way for me to work with my clients. I really do feel like I’m helping them. I have great relationships with my clients. This is their asset. This is their home, and they and they love it. And so I had the opportunity to kind of get into it a little bit by light, by chance, but this that was back in 2001 and I’ve been doing this ever since. And I really enjoy it, because it’s not boring. I get to do all aspects of association, corporate law, so whether it be drafting contracts, you know, dispute resolution, opinions, running elections, I get to see my boards. I get to see more board members. And for me, it almost becomes a bit of a challenge. So that when you have a board that’s elected, and the anti board gets elected the next year, and the anti board after that, to me, it’s a testament that I’m still counsel there. It means that they’ve got enough trust in me, whether they liked my opinions, liked the board or not, that they’ve maintained my representation throughout. So it’s something that’s really interesting, and so I’ve gotten to create great relationships with my clients over over the years, and managers as well. They’re at one property, they go to another, they call me up and say, hey, I want to work with you again. And it’s a very nice compliment. It’s very rewarding for me, so I do enjoy it well.

Robert Nordlund 32:33
Being the trusted advisor is a wonderful thing, and I was just imagining you coming in and like an auto mechanic, you’re tuning things up. You’re making things work, you work. You hear that they’re going through a rough patch with a special assessment or a interpretation of the governing documents, or whatever it is on the legal side of things or collections. And you can come in and you can smooth it out and get that engine running smooth again, and get board members on the same page. This is what your governing documents say. This is what the Florida law says. And so this is the right way to do it. And step one is A, B, C, D, E, F, G, and they’re like, Okay, now we know what to do, and they can confidently move forward. And you’re fixing things,

Marnie Dale Ragan 33:15
yeah. And to that end, you know, board members are volunteers, and they’re I always say they went professional in something else. When you have those, you know, hotter topics that are that are more heavily debated or challenged, let your professionals, let your attorney come in and be the bad guy, because at the end of the day, I’m not going to see him in the elevator. So if I need to say the things that are necessary, or explain things a little more firmly or strongly, I’m happy to do that, because at the end of the day, this is community living. You know you want, you want to not be uncomfortable in your garage and you’re in your lobby by the pool and be able to separate the two so that board members can still be residents enjoying this property. And that’s I want that for them.

Robert Nordlund 33:54
Yeah, and you don’t want to be the board thinking. I’d love to do it this way, but it’s only gonna get you into deeper trouble. And you’re there to say there’s a right way in the wrong way. The right way may take a little more courage at the front end, but it’s going to save you money and time and trouble if we do it the right way. So please do it the right way. And I love having you there, and for all the board members out there listening, I hope you have a Marnie on your team that brings peace, that helps give you that wise counsel, and that helps you move forward. So anyway, thank you, Marnie. It’s great talking with you and having you on the program. Any closing thoughts to add at this time?

Marnie Dale Ragan 34:31
Um, I think I hit most of them. And again, it’s it’s use professionals, rely upon professionals make sure that you’re doing everything that you need to do to protect yourself as a board member, as well as the property, it is an asset, but it’s really just keeping your eyes open and as well as your ears. That’s that’s the best advice I can give to any board member.

Robert Nordlund 34:50
Yeah, well, to all our board members out there, thank you for serving. If you’d like to get in touch with Marnie or learn more about haber law, you can go to their website at Haber. Dot law, l, a, W, so we hope you learned some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

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