In june we bought a property in a gated community "Sunrise at Parkwood Ranch".
Title Company "First American Title" informed us that the HOA was "Parkwood Ranch" and that there was a $ 120, - quarterly HOA fee.
A few weeks after closing I tried to get a key for the pool and called the HOA. They informed us "you have to call a different number, there is a Sub-HOA"
This was absolutely new for us and when we called the Sub-HOA we were informed that on top of the quarterly $ 120 we had to pay another $ 70, - a month to them. They also told us that the title company had not requested the CC & Rs from them and that they still had the old owner in their records.
They refused to give us the keys (one for the pool, the other one for the pedestrian entrance to the gated community) because the old owner still owed them about $ 1,500.-
We called the Title Co, they called the HOA and promised that they would receive their money, still they refused to give us the keys.
Without a car we did not have access to our property for several months. During the months of July and August we were not able to use the pool that we had paid for (we paid our fees for 4 months in advance). We never received a credit for not being able to use the facilities but had to pay 100% of the fees.
When we called them to ask where their office was they asked "why?" and I told them that we were planning to show up with the police (civil standby) to demand our keys. The answer was "we are not going to give you our physical address"
So we called the master HOA to see if they had their office address. They did not and they told us that the sub HOA had even blocked them from getting access to their website. But they were able to give us the private address of the members of the board of directors:
We went to see Megan Ramsey not knowing that she was actually the "President" of the HOA. We showed her that we had paid our HOA fees and asked her why we would not get the keys. We also asked her what kind of problem the HOA had to give us their physical address. The answer was "I have to ask the owner, Alan Hatch for permission to give out the address for our office"
She called him up and the answer was "no", not until the outstanding fees are paid. Well - for anybody with similar problems here is the address: 1550 E. University Dr., Suite Q (second floor), Mesa, AZ 85211. (Finally the Title Co. Was able to get it for us)
This was strange for us: None of the documents that we received was showing Alan Hatch as the "owner" of the HOA. But obviously this is a family business, Karin Hatch obviously is doing the accounting.
On 9/10 we received a statement from "Preferred Communities" that was showing that our advance payment for 4 months HOA assessments had been applied to the outstanding fees of the old owner. We called the Title Company because they were supposed to pay off anything that the previous owner still owed. They had received a totally different statement (with different balances for the same dates. For example: our statement was showing a balance of $ 70, - on 8/01/08 the statement that was subitted to the Title Co. Shows a balance of $ 1,520 for the same day.
HOA payments have to be submitted to a PO Box in California (with the HOA physically located in Mesa, AZ) — It looks like these guys are trying to hide something.
Doesn't that sound fishy?
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