First, sorry for the photo but I’m a geeky Star Trek fan so I could not help the Borg reference. That said, back in June I wrote a post about how the HOA now performs a presale inspection on all condos. My warning to sellers was to get this pre-sale inspection done as far ahead of time as possible because there may be noncompliant features to your home – that you don’t even know about!

Well, I am currently representing a seller that fell into this trap. She bought her condominium several years ago, when there was no HOA presale inspection, she was not aware that some of the features in her condo would be noncompliant. I urged the seller to order the presale inspection ASAP. The HOA came back with 3 noncompliant items which of course require her to complete an architectural application, which then must be submitted about two weeks before the next board meeting. It will then be reviewed at the monthly board meeting and hopefully a variance or other resolution will be forthcoming.

Depending on when you order the inspection and whether the board meeting provides you conclusive results, a seller could experience a delay in selling their home of a couple months if they are noncompliant and the buyer wants all issues resolved before close of escrow. However, the HOA will typically not stand in the way or stop close of escrow, they will simply only demand that the buyer assume liability to the issues raised.

Moral of the story is to get that pre-sale inspection ASAP. The HOA may require that your agent has already purchased the HOA docs before scheduling the inspection.

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UPDATE: so we went up before the Board and fortunately they approved everything. I think mostly because the work had been done so long ago by other residents. The Board did however make the current and future residents of the unit responsible for maintaining the deck. I think this could have gone very differently had the current resident been the one to make all the changes without the Board’s approval.