Something Fishy is going on here....

[spix14]

Ok, so we live in a townhome complex. We own our home and all the homeowners are expected to pay a maintenance fee. Nothing weird there, right? However some of the people that have lived here for a long time recently decided to go around and ask what each homeowner pays per month. (Fee goes up according to how big your townhome is) When all is said and done, they make $95,000 a month here from maintenance fees. Now, this complex is not super large. There are something like 170 units. 2 pools. There are 2 maintenance men for the whole place. They mow the grass themselves. They care for the pools themselves. Any repairs on the units are the homeowner's responsibility and not the maintenance men. I.e, if it's plumbing problems you call a plumber, air conditioner you call AC repair, and so forth. The complex is nice, but not amazingly so. The only utility we do not pay ourselves is water.

Now, 95 grand a month adds up to $1,140,000 a year. That's over a million dollars a year, if you can wrap your mind around that. And not to mention the manager refuses to tell us where, exactly, the money is going to and what it is being spent on. They say it is none of our business. None of our business!

Does this sound fishy to anyone else? Does anyone know about what the operating costs are for a complex this size? I would like to know where my money is going, quite frankly, and the tenants here have had suspicions for quite a while that not all of it is going to the complex, if you catch my drift. I am wondering if I am just being paranoid, but a million dollars a year sounds like QUITE a bit of money.

Opinions?

[BlackLava]

yea id be suspicious....that money IS going somewhere, straight to their pockets!! how many maintenance men do you know out there that make that much a year??? if they all made that much, there sure would be NO shortage of maintenance workers, thats for sure.

[Adrya]

Drugs.

I'd call police or somebody else in on this one who can investigate it.

[John_E_Dove]

This is why they say to read the contracts before you buy in.
It is just another way they can get more profit from their sales.
Right or wrong does not matter if you sign a contract. It will take a court order to put a stop to it if it is illegal.

[spix14]

Originally Posted by Adrya_Webb

Drugs.
I'd call police or somebody else in on this one who can investigate it.

I would be quite shocked if it was drugs..it's a bunch of older women running the place, and things are pretty quiet around here. I'm thinking they are just pocketing the surplus.

Originally Posted by John_E_Dove

This is why they say to read the contracts before you buy in.
It is just another way they can get more profit from their sales.
Right or wrong does not matter if you sign a contract. It will take a court order to put a stop to it if it is illegal.

Well we inherited the place from my grandmother, who lived here for 30 years. So I've never gotten a look at the contract she signed.

I'm wondering do i have a legal leg to stand on here, though. Who would I call or report this to to get an investigation going? Is it legal for them to refuse to tell us what they spend the money on?

[stalk]

170 units at 95 grand a month is approx. 600/month of homeowners fees. Are you sure you're not looking at it from rent rather than homeowner's fees? 600 per month per house is obscene, and I doubt that's correct. At most I can see it being approx. $50/month which would give you $8,500 per month or $102,500 per year. That is very good. Even at $100/mo you're looking at $205,000 and assuming the maintenance guys have a wage of approx. $60,000, that leaves $80,000 for everything else (truck maintenance, cost of equipment, wear and tear, pool maintenance, water, and so on.) which is a bit high but not too unreasonable.

If you're paying 600/month in homeowner fees then something is completely wrong.

[spix14]

Originally Posted by stalk

170 units at 95 grand a month is approx. 600/month of homeowners fees. Are you sure you're not looking at it from rent rather than homeowner's fees? 600 per month per house is obscene, and I doubt that's correct. At most I can see it being approx. $50/month which would give you $8,500 per month or $102,500 per year. That is very good. Even at $100/mo you're looking at $205,000 and assuming the maintenance guys have a wage of approx. $60,000, that leaves $80,000 for everything else (truck maintenance, cost of equipment, wear and tear, pool maintenance, water, and so on.) which is a bit high but not too unreasonable.
If you're paying 600/month in homeowner fees then something is completely wrong.

Hmm. It was my neighbor that clued me in to this, I'll have to ask her how she calculated everything. I know we pay 175 for maintenance fee, but other pay as much as 500 a month. Even at 500 a month, something doesn't add up, so I'll talk to her tomorrow and see what she calculated into everything. I know it wasn't rent, because the total would have been even higher.