Vivian G. Walker, who conducted a research study on disputes in so-called common-interest communities in 1979 and 1980, says that the underlying problem in most disputes within condominium associations is people`s desire for the autonomy and control of their lifestyles.
”These are very interesting hybrid communities, somewhere between a rental situation and a single-family dwelling,” says Walker, who teaches negotiation techniques at Northwestern University`s Kellogg Graduate School of Management and chairs the dispute resolution committee of the Illinois Chapter of the Community Associations Institute.
”It takes a lot for people to get adjusted to that. Some people don`t adjust well at all. They have disputes about the amount of money that`s spent on amenities required for the common areas.
”There are three broad categories of disputes. There are disputes between those who are governing and the rest of the group. There`s another category of disputes that has to do with lifestyle: loud music, barking dogs, kids racing the tricycle in the hallway, use of the common areas, smelly tennis players coming up in the regular elevator rather than the freight elevator. And there`s a third category where the group as a whole is in conflict with a developer, usually involving construction defects.”
Unfortunately, Walker says that the majority of disputes are not resolved through negotiation because people are reluctant to talk to each other one on one. Consequently, feuds drag on much longer than they should.
Some disputes are only resolved by moving out. A nice couple, both of whom played the piano, moved into condominium president J. Richard Bockelman`s building on Lake Shore Drive. They placed their piano on a parquet floor for acoustical reasons. It drove their neighbors crazy. ”It became a problem of personalites,” Bockelman says. ”The people complaining would say, `Please don`t play the piano after 8 o`clock at night,` and (the piano players) would say, `This is when I get my inspiration,` or `I`m not here in the daytime.` It was a real conflict. Life became unpleasant for them. They finally decided to move.”
It should be pointed out that it is not easy to be a member of a condominium board of directors. In a survey of condominium and homeowner associations conducted for the State of California in 1987, researchers Stephen Barton and Carol Silverman found that 44 percent of board presidents reported that in the previous year, board members had been harassed or subjected to personal abuse or threatened with a lawsuit.
”The kind of politics that you often have in homeowner associations is almost a caricature of homeowner/taxpayer opposition to government, believing that if any money is being spent, it`s probably being wasted,” says Barton, a senior planner for the city of Berkeley, Calif.
”The study showed a great deal of conflict or controversy on the board level and a great deal of apathy on the part of owners. We also did some case studies, and one of the best success stories we had of a board that managed to get beyond conflict was the one that had consciously gone out and got the people opposing them to join committees looking into the problems. In the process, everyone started seeing each other as human beings again.”
Irene Burse, president of a condominium association in south suburban Hazel Crest, says her main problem is owners who have the mentality of renters. ”People get bent out shape, and they think they can call me in the middle of the night, and I`m supposed to get up and do whatever needs to be done,” Burse says. ”They still feel I`m their landlord. Some of the people actually think the board gets paid a salary. There`s apathy. People come to meetings only when there is a problem, and they expect things to happen right away.
”Personalities come into play. Most of them don`t understand this is a $4 million complex and that you can`t run a business on likes. Whether you like me or not, I`m going to get a job done.”
Owners who cannot adapt to the collective nature of a condominium often chafe over the necessity of assessments to maintain a building`s common elements. ”There are some people whose philosophy is, keep the assessments low. That`s very foolish,” says Lucille Wenzel, a condominium dweller and member of the board of directors of ACTHA (Association of Condominium, Townhouse and Homeowners Associations).
”There`s also is the feeling (among those who don`t plan to stay long)
of, `Why should I pay to replace the roof when I`m not going to be living here.` They just don`t want to spend money. But in order to make money-if they think they want to make a profit selling their unit-you have to spend money. That`s a pretty hard concept to get across.”
Rules begin to rankle people as well. ”People all think rules are fine and that they should be enforced against everyone else but not against them-they`re the exception,” says Bockelman of the Near North Association of Condominium Presidents. ”I`ve encountered more people in my building who thought they should be subjects of special privileges or that the rules should be waived for them. They want a special place to park their car in the garage, or they don`t want the valet to park it, or they want to lock it and take the keys-various things we don`t permit.
”Whenever anyone asks me for a special privilege, I just tell them that at the next annual meeting when all the members of the condominium are there, I will recognize them and give them time to convince their neighbors that they are entitled to special privileges that they`re not entitled to. I`ve had no takers-not one-because they would lose, hands down.”
What makes buying a condominium unit such a gamble is that every condominium association is different. ”I can think of two condominiums, only two blocks apart, that we manage, and it`s night and day in terms of the kind of people who live there and the attitudes of the boards,” says William DeMille, executive vice president of J.S. James & Co. Realtors.
”We manage one association that has the philosophy that the board acts for the owners and they don`t need to be making extra money on things like the laundry room. They have a laundry room contract with a vendor, and the biggest thing to them is that the coin slides stay at 25 cents. If you`ve been to a laundromat lately, that`s cheap. In setting their garage fees, they have a higher rate for people who park in the building but don`t live there. Now other associations will try to squeeze money out of the laundry room to help fund the operating budget. Every association has its unique personality.”
Some small condominiums have the worst problems. Because they`re too small to pay for outside management help or because of their own attitudes about upkeep, they have a tendency to defer maintenance until the building is crumbling and the repair costs are that much higher.
”Sometimes they`ll do something cosmetic-vote a few dollars for landscaping-when actually all they`re trying to do is hide some bad brick, which is, of course, short-term profit, long-term loss,” says broker Lino Darchun of Palormo Realty Inc. in Lincoln Park and a condominium dweller himself.
”That is my most important concern about the small-condominium situation when I take a listing. I go through the buildings very thoroughly to make sure I`m not going to come up against a situation where any intelligent buyer coming through with an inspector is going to say, `Hey, stay out of this one.` ”If you have a condominium that has but six units, those six owners-at least at this particular point in the condo`s existence-come into the building at different times; their allegiance to the building and their allegiance to the city varies, and their primary concern is not to spend any money and to make as much as they can when they leave. That doesn`t work out all the time. They hoist themselves on their own petard. The problems come back to haunt them when they go to sell. They may end up selling at below market value because the buyer is taking the risk of having to pay for more work.”
To force condominium owners to manage themselves intelligently, condominium association annual budgets are required by law to include
”reasonable reserves for capital expenditures and deferred maintenance for repair or replacement of common elements.” It is left to each individual condominium to determine how much money that means.
”It`s a policy decision, really,” says State Rep. Levin. ”If you don`t have reserves, when the roof starts leaking or the boiler blows up, you have to special-assess everybody or go take a loan. Find out how long the roof will go before it needs major repairs. Say the estimate is 10 years; one tenth of the cost should go into reserve every year. You come up with a program.”
Of course, lawmakers can only set guidelines, not manage condominiums for people. Condominium dwellers are always involved in devising their own array of regulations to help make the communal arrangement work.
”Smoking seems to be one issue that has cropped up more in the last year,” says Thomas Vaughan, a member of the board of the Malibu East Condominium on North Sheridan Road. ”We had a referendum with our last election about whether we should restrict smoking completely in common areas or limit it to certain areas. It`s a problem because some people go outside of their apartments to smoke. They smoke in the halls because their nonsmoking spouse won`t let them smoke in the apartment. We`re in the process of implementing a policy to make as many people happy as we can.”
Lawyer Michael Kim, president of the Illinois chapter of the Community Associations Institute, notes that, for better or worse, condominiums are a microcosm of society. ”There`s apathy. People cannot resolve their differences, and consequently they are either sanctioned or punished, or they have to go to court and fight it out,” he says. ”Condominiums don`t turn out to be as perfect as some people would like them to be, but they`re a valuable housing option.”
And many people live in condominiums quite happily. Stacy Wallace-Albert, who lives with her husband, Wayne, in a vintage three-flat in New Town, is one of them. ”It`s very easy to live here, very harmonious,” she says, ”because people respect each other`s privacy. And we`re like-minded about how to maintain the building. I see some friction coming up about changing the front door, but the solution is simple: Majority rules.”
When the couple knew they wanted to buy into the condominium, they asked to meet with the other two owners. Asked how they knew the fit was good, Wallace-Albert says: ”Instinct. They were people we trusted, people we would do business with-and that`s what a condominum is.”
