It’s October 2015 and I was walking around Brittan Heights and noticed that the building that caught fire 10 months ago, still seems to have a long way to go before it’s finished. The exterior siding is missing and the interiors still appear to be bare studs. I would think that we are still a good 6 months away from seeing these units completed.

A local client of mine had a house catch fire, majority of the damage was related to smoke and not fire damage – it took nearly two years to complete that house.

“The HOA basically came back and told us that their inspection of the unit 18 months ago did not count!”

A few months ago I wrote a post about how ‘resistance is futile’ with the HOA inspection at the time a condo is sold at Brittan Heights.  https://brittanheights.com/2014/11/06/resistance-is-futile-you-shall-comply/. Maybe resistance is not so futile…

So sometime in 2013 my clients purchased a top level Brittan Heights unit which was advertised as having attic storage  – this was very desirable to my clients.  We were informed that the HOA did its inspection and flagged the wood floors in the living room as possibly non-compliant and would need to be reviewed by Board for HOA  approval. The Board later met and approved the wood floors, my clients moved in, everyone was happy.

Fast forward 18 months later and my client decides to sell his Brittan Heights condo. We advertised the place as “great condo with attic storage,” receive an offer, and asked the Brittan Heights HOA to perform its inspection.  Since no changes had been made to the condo in the past 18 months – what could go wrong?

Well about 25 days into the escrow, the Property Management Company [PMC] for Brittan Heights comes back and tells us that the attic does not comply with the requirements as a space to be used for storage. The PMC sends us the Attic Storage document

https://brittanheights.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/attic-regulations.pdf

and we then learn that they failed to inspected the attic 18 months ago. They further tell us that my clients should have somehow known that the attic was neither inspected nor compliant. How were we suppose to guess that? The attic guidelines document was not part of the previous disclosures so it wasn’t like we could even judge for ourselves whether it was compliant. The attic trap door and the rope hanging from the ceiling were there 18 months ago, so how the PMC missed it before is beyond me.

I kept arguing the point with the PMC and finally received an email from the PMC which included the HOA’s attorney’s opinion on the issue. Big surprise, the attorney told us that the HOA was not responsible and that it was basically our fault. Well, I replied back countering the attorney’s argument and a couple days later the PMC informed me that it would make the attic repairs at its cost.

The moral of the story here is that I believe we have the right to reasonably rely on the fact that the HOA performed a diligent inspection of a unit for non-compliance with its own rules. If the HOA does not flag something as non-compliant, then there’s an inference that it was approved. But that’s just my opinion, and I argued it, which resulted in getting the repairs we sought and a very happy client.

 

 

Not everyone may have heard, but there was a fire at Brittan Heights in December 2014.  This fire started in the mid level unit and travelled up towards the top level condo. When the fire department came they of course sprayed water everywhere, which got into the downstairs unit too. So, three units were damaged in this fire. The source of the fire was undetermined.

The good news is that I don’t believe anyone was hurt. The bad news is that these things usually take a long time to fix. First, there’s often an inventory taken by the insurance company to determine a valuation for the personal property and the damage to the unit. Then there’s the clean up. In this case, there are popcorn ceilings, so abatement companies must be brought in to deal with the asbestos. Homes which catch fire will also often require to be stripped down to the studs and completely gutted. This means cabinets, carpets…everything. This is so the wood structure can be sealed, otherwise the smoky smell may return for a long time.

After its gutted, it of course needs to be rebuilt again, but such things also require permits. So permits must be taken out and reviewed. Often permits sought for such complete remodels might require mandatory code upgrades, so the rebuild gets more complicated and more expensive.

Depending on the contractor and required code upgrades, it can take 1-2 years for a home to be ready to move back in after a fire.

Moral of the story is make sure those smoke and carbon monoxide detectors are functioning and be well insured. Also, remember that you live in a community, if you’re careless, you could cause problems not just for yourself, but also for those neighbors around you.

If you were one of those folks affected by the fire, I hope you are well and that your home gets repaired quickly.

 

With summer upon us and the heat getting turned up, some of you at Brittan Heights maybe thinking that it would be nice to have air conditioning. You likely heard that it’s not allowed and went home hot, sweaty, and disappointed. However, one day you may have been walking around on a hot day, heard a buzzing overhead and saw an AC unit hanging off a neighbors patio wall. You immediately thought to yourself, “Hey what’s going on here?”

Well, Brittan Heights does make some allowances for AC units if the occupants have a medical condition that requires AC. The AC unit may remain installed only as long as the person remains living on the premises. Should that occupant move out or sell their unit, then the rules require that the AC unit be removed.

So next time it’s hot, remember that you have four pools to choose from!

So you’re living at, or thinking of living at Brittan Heights, and want to purchase an electric car. How are you going to charge it?

California has passed a few laws to prevent HOAs from flat out denying the addition of charging stations to a parking spot. However, it can still be costly to a homeowner. Typically the owner must pay for its installation plus the costs to maintain it, the liability insurance, and for the electricity used.

This can be a challenge at Brittan Heights. Some carports are close to the buildings, so bringing electricity from the house to these areas might be less challenging. However, other carports are on the other side of the road and quite a distance from the buildings, this distance could make it nearly economically impossible to want to install a charging station. In these impossible cases, the law states that installation of a charging station for the exclusive use of an owner in a common area shall be authorized by the association “only if installation in the owner’s designated parking space is impossible or unreasonably expensive….” “Impossible” means incapable of happening.

So, in theory it should be possible to have a charging station at Brittan Heights. I’m only aware of one homeowner so far that has done it. He had a mid-level unit next to his carport. He chose to install a 110v outlet for his charging station. It cost him approximately $1,300 to pay a professional electrician to do the job. It would have cost about $2,500 to bring 240v from the circuit breaker area in the laundry room out to the carport and he would have had some holes in the wall to repair.

Basically they just ran metal conduit outside the building to the carport. They put the electronics in the locker above the carport and have the charger cable coming out there. The homeowner did need to purchase a liability insurance policy in excess of $1M. This was HOA approved.