Legal Update
Associations can collect rent directly from tenants and suspend common area privleges in certain cases. Learn how! A summary of these changes and printable downloads are avilable now.
Damage between neighbors
Managers are often called upon to mediate situations of conflict between unit owners. A common scenario is one where a water leak in one unit results in damage to an adjacent unit. When attempting to determine who should pay for what, the important concept to keep in mind is neglegence.
In most cases (which is to say, when no negligence occurs) each party is responsible to pay for his or her own repairs.
Similarly, in the event a common property element (such as a roof or a pipe) becomes the source of damage to individual units, the
responsibility for repairs falls each to its owner. The Association will take responsibility for repairs or replacement of common elements (in this example, the pipe or the roof). But it will not pay for damage to the personal property of unit owners.
Refer to the definitions in your own Association documents for clarification about who owns what.