Do you have to pay your home's previous owner's HOA dues I didn't even know there was an HOA?

Answer 1

That you didn't know that you were buying real estate included within a home owners association must have come as a nasty surprise. This 'failure to communicate' may have reached across all the professionals involved in your purchase, including the realtor, the title company, your lender and so forth.

Review your purchase documents to verify that you have indeed purchased real estate covered by an association. As well, you will find text there indicating your responsibility to pay assessments that you owe.

Finally, best practices dictate that you work with an association-savvy attorney to resolve this matter. Before engaging one, you should collect:

• Copies of all your governing documents
• Evidence that the previous owner was delinquent in paying assessments
• Proof that the HOA attempted to collect the previous owner's past-due amounts
• Evidence that the HOA may or may not have clouded the title to the property you purchased with a lien based on unpaid assessments
• Evidence that none of the professionals involved in your purchase knew that you would be buying into an HOA-covered home
• Evidence that you have been notified of the HOA assessments that you owe since your purchase.

In collecting this material, the HOA board may discover its failures to effectively collect from the previous owner.

Generally, unpaid assessments are collected at time of sale, based on a lien that the HOA has placed on the title to collect them. Unpaid assessments, if they were collectible from you, should have been clearly stated within the context of the purchase/ sale, agreement/ process in some form.

Answer 2

Generally, yes. The HOA dues run with the property. It is a duty of your legal representative at the closing, an attorney or title company, to obtain a certificate showing that all dues and assessments were paid on the unit. This must be ascertained prior to the purchase so that If money is owed then it can be deducted from the proceeds before they are handed over to the seller. Obtaining that information is part of the closing package and generally, the certificate should be recorded with the deed.

The HOA would be disclosed by the title examination performed by your legal representative prior to your purchase.