Author: inboks
The secret that may lower your LADWP electricity rates for common area electric usage has proven its worth to our homeowner’s association (HOA). In the two years since our 26-unit building switched from a residential rate to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) electricity rate for the A-1 commercial category, our homeowner’s association (HOA) has saved $5,000 per year on common are electricity. That’s a drop of about 20%—without any change in our electricity consumption. The catch is that you have to know about the rate to ask for it. LADWP has confirmed to CondoWonk that it…
We have no murders in our Los Angeles condominium building, but we do have mysteries. Each case begins with something amiss. The security camera, unnoticed, witnessed the puzzling event. A board member, known here as The Great Rewinder, or GR, coaxes crucial information from the security camera, sole witness to the mystery. Here are the stories. All are true. The Heavy-Handed Houseguest Our gym is nothing fancy, but it does have a complete set of weights. Some weight sets jump sizes in five-pound increments, but this one brackets the ten pounders with a pair of eights and twelves as well.…
The former president of our HOA used to hold the latest reserve study aloft at a meeting and make a big show of ignoring it. The dues increase needed to fully fund reserves would be unthinkably large. Why even try? As it turned out, the number in the reserve study wasn’t big enough. The study, required to be performed every three years under California law, seemed thorough. Picky, even. It made digs at our lobby furniture, gym equipment and functional but dated-looking pool bathrooms and dutifully assigned a dollar value and estimated useful life to each. Yet despite this apparent thoroughness,…
The theory of reserve accounting is simple. Take the cost of the item (say, $100,000 for a roof) divide by its life expectancy (say, 20 years) and deposit that much per year into the reserve fund. Repeat for every item on the list. There are some tweaks and adjustments, including interest and inflation, but that’s the basic idea. It works okay for new condominiums. In the early years, when few repairs are needed, it makes sense to put away money for painting and roof repair. But as buildings age, fully funded reserves, or even close to full funding, are rare. Conventional…
When Surfside, Florida’s Champlain Towers collapsed in 2021, in a horrifying middle-of-the-night disaster that killed 98 residents, early reports focused on the problem of a volunteer board failing to act quickly enough to raise assessments and repair an aging building. The 126-unit condo, built in 1981, had undergone two inspections. In 2018, the consulting engineer warned of “major structural damage.” According to the New York Times, the report estimated that the repairs would cost more than $9 million. The same engineer performed a second study in 2021. By then, the problems had grown worse. It appears that neither study predicted…
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Condo vs House vs Townhouse | Which Type of Real Estate Should You Purchase? | First Time Home Buyer In this video, real estate agent and Realtor Matt Leighton talks about the six main things to think about when you are deciding between purchasing a condo, townhouse or single-family detached home. Looking for a real estate agent in your city? I have a network of top producing agents around the country. Email me and I can put you in contact with an agent in your area matt@orangelinecondo.com Buying in an HOA – Pros and Cons of Purchasing in an HOA…
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