HOAs have experienced six years of “bad behavior” from the lending and mortgage community. Commonly, they do not foreclose on delinquent owners within a reasonable time frame (sometimes two to three years of delinquency without proactive action being taken), or they foreclose and do not inform the association of the change of ownership.

Both are frustrating and can be very costly to HOAs. However, CAI-CLAC was successful in sponsoring a bill that requires a foreclosing party to notify HOAs of a trustee sale within 15 days and send a copy of the Trustee’s Deed Upon Sale within 30 days of the sale. Assembly Bill 2273 (Wieckowski) passed in 2012 and went into effect Jan. 1, 2013.

HOAs can benefit from this law ONLY if a blanket recordation is recorded in the county in which the community is located. The document is called a Request for Notice Under Civil Code Section 2924(b). This document has also been referred to as a blanket recordation. The Request for Notice includes an attachment listing all properties in the community described by the assessor’s parcel numbers (APN). I also recommend using the property address for each unit in combination with the APN.

This document is easy to record, with the cost determined by the number of pages recorded, not the number of units involved. An example of the Request for Notice form, as well as additional information, is available at www.caiclac.com. If you need assistance in preparing the Request for Notice, contact your collection agent or legal counsel.

The hard work has already been accomplished by CAI-CLAC in turning this essential document into law. The easy part is now the responsibility of our HOAs. Have this document prepared and recorded in your county today. Otherwise, the lenders and trustees will continue to be allowed to benefit from their bad behavior!

Janet Quinn Dennis has been involved in the common interest development industry since she worked at a San Francisco law firm in the early 1980s. She supervised a department that provided collection services for CIDs. When ADR was mandated in our industry, she obtained training and became a certified mediator. Janet has used those communication tools to facilitate resolutions concerning enforcement of CC&R’s and in the collection of delinquencies. In 1996, Janet started Pro Solutions, which works with more than 1,000 CID’s throughout the State of California.