No need to postpone condo board election
Q: I live in a condominium building with around 100 units. We have seven board members and we are supposed to vote on some new board members this fall. Residents will not attend open board meetings this fall due to COVID-19. Going door to door with proxies is not going to be equitable. Can we legally go against our bylaws and postpone the election?
A: There’s no need to postpone your election. Your condo association simply needs to embrace the same sorts of technology that are now being used by schools, businesses and couples getting married.
Many condominium associations, homeowners associations, government boards and municipalities of all types hold meetings online successfully where homeowners and residents can view the affairs of their associations, towns and cities through online meeting sites such as Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. Has your association adopted these methods of meeting? If they have, all of the unit owners can participate in these meetings as long as they have internet access or a smartphone, or even a regular phone that allows them to dial in and listen to the meeting.
Those online meetings should be open for all association members to view or listen except when discussing certain private matters where only the board members (and none of the owners) are on the calls. Online meetings can take care of many of the issues you raise in your question relating to holding the meetings and have unit owner participation. It’s not ideal, but it’s a good alternative given the dangers (and many unknowns)
of the coronavirus.
Now we turn to voting. There are many ways to structure voting to make it safe for all residents, including setting up a system to conduct online voting. But you can also distribute ballots, either by mailing them (a slow, but safe alternative) or putting one ballot under the door of every household. Residents would fill out the ballots and then return them to a locked box somewhere on the property or mail them back to the condo association.
There are several ways to get this done, and your board simply needs to figure out how and when they want to get it done to meet their deadline. We certainly don’t know what options your condominium association documents provide for voting, but we suspect
your documents give some latitude on the method of voting. And, if your association documents are too strict, it’s possible your state laws will overrule some of the association documents to provide alternate means.
Reader comment: You recently answered a question about a home seller paying the commission to an agent for a “pocket listing.” You bypass the larger issue and the reason that so-called pocket listings are against the National Association of Realtor rules. “Pocket listings” are against Fair Housing rules. You should put an addendum to your answer addressing that issue.
Our response: Thank you for your insight. You bring up a good point about
pocket listings: When real estate listing agents use pocket listings, they deny the general population of the ability to view and bid on properties that should be on the market.
We’ve written about pocket listings and the NAR passing a rule that prohibits pocket listings several times this year. A pocket listing is when a homeowner hires a real estate agent to sell their home, but the listing does not show up in any multiple listing service or in any online listing of homes for sale. The listing agent effectively keeps the listing for themselves (and their own customers) and markets the home privately to other agents who are often in the agent’s own office or to specific people before the world gets the right to view and bid on the home.
No matter whether the market is fast, slow or (in the words of Goldilocks) “just right,” pocket listings do not give the homeowner the benefit of having every possible buyer see that the home is for sale. The homeowner only gets a narrow slice of the market, and that slice is determined by the listing broker.
Now, we have heard arguments from listing brokers that say some homes are better off sold through pocket listings; in particular, high-end homes or homes of the rich and famous. Again, we disagree. Many agents of extremely high-end listings say that pocket listings at these price levels rarely work. We know of a top agent in Atlanta who advertises her listings (multiple milliondollar listings, some of which listed at prices over $10 million) globally. More often than not, she sells to an out-of-town buyer.
Your point is that pocket listings deprive the market as a whole of these listings and that listing brokers might intentionally or unintentionally market these homes in a way that deprives specific groups of buyers from even knowing about these properties, let alone making an offer. This is the essence of discrimination in housing, no matter the price point, which is illegal under the Fair Housing Act.
Ilyce Glink is the CEO of Best Money Moves and Samuel J. Tamkin is a real estate attorney. Contact them through the website ThinkGlink.com.