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replacement of building envelope components meet the community’s specific guidelines. Any associations that are considering adopting an ACC guideline related to building envelope projects should include an in-depth post-project inspection requirement as well as outlining a remediation plan if an owner’s project does not meet the guidelines or fails the inspection for another reason.
Include a remediation plan in case an owner’s project fails the ACC inspection.
Having a well thought-out and clear post-project inspection clause in your policy, that the homeowner must acknowledge prior to any work being done, will help ensure that the project is completed in a specific time frame and returns the building envelope to standard. This document should also provide the association with recourse if the project is not completed to the community standard.
That seems
like a lot of work, maybe the association should take over…
Low Assessments Vs. High Quality
While there are a variety of reasons that an association’s governing documents may have been written to shift the burden of exterior maintenance items to individual owners, it is often the case that this was originally done as an approach to save the association money—keeping assessments lower over the years.
Owner responsibilities may be delayed or mishandled.
However, placing building envelope maintenance responsibilities on individual owners often leaves these
20 Community Associations Journal | October 2022
critical component projects, with the largest risk of impacting multiple units, vulnerable to being improperly handled or delayed. For all of these reasons, the association may wish to consider evaluating whether shifting such responsibilities to the association via an amendment to their governing documents is in the community’s best interest. As each association’s concerns may be different when considering an amendment, there are multiple ways to approach a change. One option to consider is pursuing an amendment that shifts the maintenance responsibility to the association entirely.
One option is shifting the maintenance responsibility to the association entirely.
While assessments will likely increase for the association, each individual homeowner’s financial burden for these projects will obviously be reduced or even negated by the change, with the additional benefit of ensuring that all items are being uniformly handled. Additionally, while the original intention may have been to keep costs lower to the association, the individual cost to maintain, repair, and replace may be significantly more than if all projects were grouped together and paid for by the entire membership. If the association has concerns over quality assurance, another option to consider is an amendment that allows the association to do the work and then invoice any impacted unit owner for the expense.
Costs to maintain, repair, and replace may be significantly reduced if all membership projects are tackled as one.
Clear Guidelines
No matter which route an attached unit association takes to address maintenance, repair, and replacement of building envelope items, either developing clear guidelines that owners can follow or through an amendment which reallocates the responsibility entirely, it is important that any document provides clear direction and standards so that these critical components are properly maintained for years to come.
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