An unfortunate result of the current state of the economy is that many owners are having difficulty paying their body corporate contributions as well as the myriad of other costs related to owning and maintaining a property.
At Jocumsen Body Corporate the following procedure is applied when levies are not received by the due date;
15 days after due date a reminder notice is sent
30 days after due date a second reminder is sent
45 days after due date (and following consultation with the committee) the matter is referred to debt collection
In Australia the debt collection process may, in a worst case, include the sale of a property to recoup unpaid levies.
Gratefully, none of the bodies corporate managed by Jocumsen Body Corporate have been involved in the forced sale of a property.
In the theme of acknowledging that there is always someone worse off than you we thought we should share the system of recovering unpaid levies as is currently operating in the United States;
The recession of the US property market seems endless with uncountable stories of home owners having to sell their places for a fraction of the initial value. If you were rubbing your hands and considering to buy property in the US you better do your homework and find out about their levy collecting procedures.
According to the US based NPR website, a Home Owners Association (HOA) has the power to foreclose a member‘s house without any judicial procedure n order to collect special assessments, fees and fines, or otherwise place an enforceable lien on the property which, upon the property’s sale, allows the HOA to collect otherwise unpaid assessments.
The so called non judicial foreclosure‘ is legal in 33 states meaning a house can be sold on the courthouse steps with no judge or arbitrator involved even if only a few hundred dollars are outstanding. It seems Texas may be one of the states you do not want to miss payments or accrue HOA fines as their laws allow the Home Owners Association to file assessment liens on properties who have failed to pay their assessments, and they also allow foreclosure on those liens.
Within only 27 days a Texan family lost everything, NPR reports. While the husband was serving in
Iraq, his wife missed two months of paying levies amounting to only US$800 which instigated the Home Owners Association to apply rigorous methods. The US$300,000 house legally sold for only US$3500 which settled the overdue account with the Home Owners Association and legal fees but left the family homeless.
The new owner sold it for US$135,000 which the family can now only fight in court because of the overseas military appointment of the father. Under ―normal circumstances there are no legal rights for a court case.
Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128078864&ps=cprs;
Jul - 13 | 
