THE NEIGHBORHOOD: What’s going on next door from your condo association?

Much like a single-family home must maintain relations with their abutting property owners and neighbors, condominium associations have a responsibility to do the same, especially in the instances when abutters’ actions are anything but neighborly.

Homeowners Association Neighborhood

What if an abutter decides to sell their property to a developer that may not have ideas conducive to the culture of your association? The municipal zoning board will be involved. And most likely before the city council approves the development of a large piece of land, there will be hearings scheduled advanced, where neighbors will have the opportunity to speak their peace on the developers’ plans. Maybe the association will need to encourage residents to object to the development in their municipal forum should abutter’s plans not represent your neighborhood interests. Petitions are a powerful way to intercept land development that may threaten the culture of your association. Reach out to all your residents, keeping them informed of the neighborhood situation, give them space to decide if the issues matter to them, and when they do, charter buses if you have to and bus them down to city hall for the hearings and insist on a meeting with the Appeals Board, where both sides can hash out their concerns. The board may rule in favor of your association. Be heard, it’s important.

Outcomes may motivate the potential abutting land buyer to adjust their plans or decide not to purchase the land at all, opening your association up to a new potential abutting property buyer. Either way, use these communications prior to land development to get your neighborhood needs met along the way. Maybe traffic is a problem that may be fixed by the installation of a new traffic light, or sidewalks would add safety for pedestrians, or added landscaping may be needed to add beautification, or streetlamps could be added for security purposes. Whatever it is that may improve your neighborhood, include this in your asks during negotiations at the city council meetings, and or appeals board hearings during land developer’s planning. The argument is that improvements will benefit property values for all.

Remember that it is paramount that you choose your battles with city hall wisely and carefully, because keeping on good terms with the municipal government officials is important for the future of you community. You will be in long term relationship with city personnel, and they can choose to be supportive of your concerns or not. Diplomacy goes a long way.

What about existing neighbors and local businesses? Are they keeping up their landscaping just outside your nicely groomed landscaped front entrance? If not, ask them if it would be alright if you sent your landscapers on their property at no charge to them, to cut overgrown grass, or add a couple of plants, if you can afford it.  The gesture is not only neighborly, but offers incentive for the Pizza parlor and the local strip mall to maintain it after they see how nice it looks when improvement projects are completed.

So much for the neighbors outside your association, what about the neighbor issues inside your association? You can hope that the neighbors are able to work out conflicts among themselves, but they don’t always do. Often residents will phone the association management office for help and these requests usually come in the form of complaints. Some residents will be chronic complainers, phoning your office every single time a rule breaker is spotted. Everything may disturb them. Some complaints are as unique as the individual from where the complaint stems.  Other complaints are so blatant a group of residents all have the same complaint. It’s easy to deal with an obvious incident that a group of people are complaining about, but it’s the complaints that involve two or one person that sticks out and falls in a gray area or somewhere in the margins of the rules and regulations and/or by laws already established that will require creativity to resolve. For example:

The Association rule says there is no smoking in the indoor common areas, but one unit owner smokes on their deeded balcony in the morning while drinking coffee and the unit owner next door smells the smoke on their balcony and in their unit when windows are open, and the wind is just right. The nonsmoking owner phones the office three times over a ten-day period about the matter.  The property manager starts by advising the nonsmoker to talk to their neighbor to let them know what’s going on. After all, a person can’t fix a problem, they don’t know exists. If this idea fails, then management phones the smoker owner to ask them to be mindful, if possible, to the neighbor down wind, making them aware that there is an issue and offering up suggestions to consider what might be a solution.

That conversation sounds something like this: Manager: I understand that the neighbor next door is concerned about the cigarette smoke entering their unit. Would you consider phoning your neighbor before your balcony smoke break, allowing them time to close their windows. Or perhaps, using a fan on your balcony blowing smoke away from your neighbor’s direction would be a consideration.

When conversation fails to bring results, it’s time to put the conflict and potential suggestions for solutions in writing and send it to both parties involved. And if it’s clear the dispute cannot be resolved after putting it in writing, the next level is to send the maintenance supervisor to the scene to advise on some physical solution to the problem.

When all that fails, it’s time to involve the Board of Trustees or Senior Property Management Staff. Send a narrative about the conflict and all attempts made to solve it to the Board, and have the residents appear in person for the meeting to hear both sides of the complaint and work out a solution that benefits both parties.  With a four-step procedure like the aforementioned and a little creativity, neighborhood conflicts can be resolved with integrity and diplomacy. -D.S. Marquis

D.S. Marquis is a retired property manager and the author of the condominium living and working guidebook, The Condominium Living Paradox.