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March 20, 2007
Overpayment of Assessments - Can I get a Refund?
Here is a very unusual question that I received:
A reader discovered that she had been overbilled/overpaying on her monthly homeowners fees for 4 years or more. When she reported it to the Board of Directors, it took several communications and attendance at a face to face meeting to get the board to finally acknowledge the overpayment. The ultimate decision was to repay 8 mos of the fees which covered the period of time from the date the concern was raised through the acknowledgement date. The question is whether this is a fair resolution.
Since I am not giving advice on this situation and I have not spoken with the board, I will not say whether I think it is fair or not. It seems to fall short of the mark though. The person asked about statutes of limitations. In California, if the assessment was not paid for more than 4 years, a board could likely only collect up to the last 4 years, because of a statute of limitations on contracts that could be raised. I do not know if this would have bearing on how far back a person could go to ask for overpayments. One could find out, however, by going to small claims court and asking there to have the question resolved. That would be my suggestion. The mere filing of a claim might lead to more discussions on the subject.
The larger question here might be what would happen if everyone was being overcharged, and one or two fought the battle and got a refund or credit of a portion of the overpayment, but the board did not deal with this larger question once discovered. There are ways to address this as well, as a group. However if it were to happen, I assume that if the money was collected and used for valid purposes, the board would not want to start giving refunds or credits piecemeal.
Posted by Beth Grimm at March 20, 2007 9:25 PM