Do Association Boards have the Power to Prohibit Garage Sales?
Do condominium or community association board members have the power to prohibit such things as garage sales? This question was posed to me by a co-owner of an association who has a board member attempting do to just this by imposing a fine upon any co-owner who holds a garage sale.
While board members may feel they are all-powerful, this is one power that they do not possess. I write about this very board member in my book, Condo Living: A Guide to Buying, Owning and Selling a Condominium (Momentum Books, 2005). “This outspoken person (I will call him a ‘dictator’) tends overtly, or covertly, to seize control of the board of directors. The dictator may believe that he or she is ‘destined’ to serve on the board for years to come. . . If the board harbors a dictator, and the dictator is able to cause the other directors to blindly follow his dictates or whims, be they altruistic or otherwise, the board is inevitably doomed to failure. On some occasions, the dictator is likely to lead the board astray or to impose his personal biases on the remainder of the members to the detriment of the association as a whole.”
Based upon a New York case with similar facts, the garage sale was not deemed to be a nuisance and the board did not have the authority to impose a fine. The Court said that the Board's powers were derived from State law and the association governing documents and neither banned garage sales. The only way the Board could consider the garage sale to be a prohibited nuisance was if they could prove that it substantially inconvenienced the other co-owners and caused them damage, and the Board could not prove either one of those things. So, contrary to the wishes of some board members, garage sales are still legal in condominium and community associations for the time being.