So, You Received a Written Inquiry

Your community association has just received, by certified mail, a letter from a unit owner with several questions about the operation of the Association. What do you do next?

First and foremost, you should always ensure that your community association’s legal counsel is promptly notified of such inquiries because receipt alone may trigger time sensitive legal obligations that can expose the association to penalties if the correct steps are not taken.

If your community association is a residential condominium or a cooperative association, the statutes governing such communities require its Board of Directors to provide an inquiring Unit Owner, within 30 days of receipt of the inquiries, one of the following:

(1) a substantive response;
(2) a notification that a legal opinion has been requested;
(3) or a notification that advice from the Department of Business and Professional Regulation has been requested.

When the Board of Directors notifies the inquiring Unit Owner that it is working with legal counsel on the response, such notification merely shifts the deadline to provide a substantive response from 30 days to 60 days. If advice from the Division if being sought, the statutes require that the Board shall, within 10 days after its receipt of the advice, provide the substantive response to the inquiring unit owner.

As with all rights, sometimes they are abused by unit owners. The statute takes this into consideration and provides the associations with the ability to adopt reasonable rules and regulations regarding the frequency and manner of responding to the unit owners’ inquiries, one of which may be that the association is obligated to respond to only one written inquiry per unit in any given 30-day period. In such case, any additional inquiry or inquiries must be responded to in the subsequent 30-day period, or periods, as applicable.

As there are penalties involved with failure to comply with a written inquiry in a timely manner, you should always consult with legal counsel when drafting rules regarding written inquiries.