Home Owner Associations Seeking Legal Help to Stem Tide of Foreclosures, Lost Dues

ORLANDO - The wave of housing foreclosures in the Orlando area has generated a big increase in legal work for Orlando attorney Mark Lippman.

Lippman, whose law practice has offices in Orlando and Kissimmee, focuses on real estate law and represents home owner associations and condominium associations who want to recover association fees from foreclosed home owners who fail to meet their obligations.

“When somebody stops paying their mortgage, they often stop paying their homeowner association fees or condo association fees,” Lippman explained. “That creates a deficit that the association has to recoup, either by recovering fees, raising fees of the other home owners in the neighborhood or by taking such legal action as declaring bankruptcy,” he said.

Home owner association bankruptcy was almost unheard of before the real estate downturn and the current spate of foreclosures, Lippman said, but it’s becoming more and more common.
Generally, Lippman said, an association will file a lien against the property owner who isn’t paying association fees.

Once a foreclosure process is initiated, the mortgage company may take over the property as the new owner, the property can be sold at auction, or the owner can initiate a ‘short sale’ to a new owner.

“Because the lender foreclosure process takes such a long time, some associations will initiate foreclosure proceedings, taking over ownership of the property and either selling the property to recover their fees, or renting the property out and getting their fees back that way,” Lippman said.

Concurrently, the mortgage company will proceed with its foreclosure case and eventually take ownership of the property. In that case, Lippman said, the association can charge back fees and dues to the lender that has ownership of the property.

Lippman, who has been practicing law since 2000, entered private practice in 2004. In Fort Lauderdale, as an associate with a law firm that focused solely on homeowner associations and condo associations, he responsible for more than 30,000 homes.

“We’re now approaching that number again, but under entirely different circumstances,” Lippman said.

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For more information about this press release, contact: Mark Lippman, Esq., Lippman Law Offices, 255 S. Orange Ave. Orlando; 407-648-4213; LippmanLaw@aol.com