046 | Why Are Condominium & HOA Laws Changing?

David Ramsey: 0:00

If you own a single family home, and you know you're going to have to replace your roof and 10 years, 15 years, whatever it might be, you have a choice, you can either say, Hey, I have a little mistake, I'm going to put a little money away for that. Or when it comes, I'll go out and take out money in my home equity loan or I'll do whatever I have to do to replace the roof. You can't do that the community association because people are not planning on that special assessment coming.

Announcer: HOA Insights: 0:29

Common Sense for Common Areas exists to help all 2 million volunteer board members nationwide have the right information at the right time to make the right decisions for their future. This podcast is sponsored by four companies. They care about board members, association insights and marketplace, association reserves, community financials, and Kevin Davis Insurance Services. You'll find links to their websites and social media in the show notes.

Robert Nordlund: 1:00

Welcome back to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas. I'm Robert Nordlund. And I'm here today with episode 46. With a special guest to talk about why condo and HOA laws are changing in states all across the country. We'll just when you thought you had it figured out or thought that it couldn't get any more complicated. There's a new law in your state or rumors of new legislation. But no worries. We're here week after week to encourage and equip you for the hard work you do leading your association. But before we start with news about why the laws are changing, let me remind you that episode 47 Next week, will itself be a bit of a change. While you'll be able to listen or watch in your normal way. Episode 47 will be a live stream on April 1. No fooling. At 3pm Pacific time. This will give you an opportunity to participate in a live podcast and ask questions live and night episode I'll be addressing the topic of reserve study legislation is your state next. And to help you prepare for upcoming changes I'll be describing where things started three different purposes, trends, and why this all matters nowadays. So mark your calendars for April one 3pm. Pacific. And the way to get there is click on the YouTube link in the show notes below. To visit a live podcast YouTube page. Then click on the Notify Me button to make sure you get notified when the live podcast is about to begin. Well, I hope you enjoyed last week's episode number 45 with insurance expert Kevin Davis, where Kevin did his regular great job of guiding us through the story of what happens next, when you face a problem and need to contact your associations attorney or insurance agent. And that episode came from an audience question. So keep those questions coming. And if you missed that episode, or any other prior episode, you can find them on our podcast website, Hoa insights.org, or on your favorite podcast platform or finally on our YouTube channel. But better yet, subscribe, subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss future episodes. Now, we often start with an audience question, but today, I'm the one with the questions for our guest expert. But as a reminder for future episodes if you have a question you'd like us to address, leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130 Leave a comment on the YouTube video or send us an email at podcast@reservestudy.com. But back to today's episode. For 37 years in this community association industry I've been able to work with a number of fascinating, influential and well connected people have one of them was with us today. David Ramsey as a prominent New Jersey attorney and a shareholder in the Becker law firm. You can learn more about Becker at Beckerawyers.com That's BECKERLAWYERS.com. They have offices in New York, New Jersey, DC and Florida. David is chair of Becker's New Jersey Community Association practice group and he is the go to lawyer for Community Association issues in New Jersey. In fact, we had to move today's podcast recording because of a meeting he had earlier today with New Jersey's legislative staff. Well, we've asked David on the program today because New Jersey just passed a significant body of law back in January. We're fortunate to have him on the program with us today. So David, welcome to the program.

David Ramsey: 4:40

My pleasure to be here, Robert. Thanks for having me.

Robert Nordlund: 4:43

So tell me what legislation passed in New Jersey in January and why is it significant?

David Ramsey: 4:49

So the legislation that passed and was signed by the governor on January the eighth was a structural integrity and reserves bill. It's a variant Orton piece of legislation that we think really advances the law in New Jersey and benefits community associations.

Robert Nordlund: 5:08

Now when you say structural integrity and reserves that makes me sound Champlain tower South is that is that the driver?

David Ramsey: 5:16

You bet! So as we all know Champlain tower south, tragically collapsed in June of 2022. Soon following that the community Associations Institute organized a number of task forces. The ultimate result of those task forces coming together on a variety of topics was a structural integrity public policy. And that public policy formed the basis for the legislation that we created in New Jersey.

Robert Nordlund: 5:46

Okay so it was based on the CAI public policies, they did a number of policies at that time, compliments to CAI. And for those of you who aren't aware CAI is the national trade organization, community Associations Institute, and you can get there at CAIonline.org. So they had condo safety, they had structural integrity they had they just finished I think a maintenance recommendation best practices, so a lot of good things coming out of CAI, and again, great for CAI to mobilize so quickly, and get that information out there. But it's one thing to have education for board members, something we're trying to do here. It's totally another thing to have legislation. So okay, was driven by Champlain Towers South 2021. Was it a grassroots effort, or were the legislators trying to was legislator driven. So

David Ramsey: 6:40

soon after the Surfside disaster, our legislative action committee had formed a task force. I was a member of that task force. But soon thereafter, Senator Singleton in New Jersey came to the CAI chapter, we had worked with him previously on other legislation, and said, Listen, I'm thinking of having something prepared that would deal with situations to avoid a Surfside Florida type of tragedy in New Jersey. And we said, wonderful, we're thinking about that. And we'd like to offer you our thoughts on that. And we drafted an outline for legislation. And Senator singleton took that to what we call the Office of Legislative services, who drafts all the bills for New Jersey legislators. And they produced the bill, obviously, like every other bill, it goes through, you know, the legislative process, and there's some changes, but I will say that they stayed pretty faithful and did spite all of the, you know, back and forth that you

Robert Nordlund: 7:48

have. Yeah, agendas and hidden agendas. Yeah.

David Ramsey: 7:52

Well, I mean, you know, the old story, there's two things you don't want to see being made sausage and legislation. And that's an old saw, but there's some truth to it. A lot of truth to that. Yeah. Yeah. I will say, though, that there was a lot of sincerity, I think by New Jersey's legislators, in wanting to see the right thing done, there was some concerns, and we can talk about that if you'd like, but they really wanted to see that New Jersey wasn't going to suffer the kind of tragedy. And you know, interestingly enough, during the time that this bill was pending, there were a number of other partial collapses. That happened in other areas of the country, but also right in New York City. We had a balcony collapse on one building in South South Jersey. So you know, that that really speeded up the whole process. Maybe I shouldn't say speeded up, because it took us two years to get through. But no,

Robert Nordlund: 8:46

no, no. For legislation. That's probably probably pretty good speed.

David Ramsey: 8:50

Yep, that is the downbeat. Well, I

Robert Nordlund: 8:54

like that the legislator was wise enough to come to the experts, the CAI committee, great for the CAI committee to make themselves known and to be a force and a factor. I think what we have to be careful of is legislators who have great intentions, but have no idea what they're talking about. They have power, but for the CAI committee and the knowledgeable people, people like yourself, who know how the community association industry works, how board meetings work, how homeowners become board members become the people who form the future of the association, to actually know how that works. Boy, that I that's critical for there to be that foundation of good legislation.

David Ramsey: 9:41

There is no question and and the one thing if you deal with legislators on any kind of regular basis, you come to understand that even if they happen to live in a community association, they really don't understand necessarily how it works. And it's a real education process and And, you know, those who are willing to spend the time really do get it. And, you know, I think they better appreciate what goes into all the volunteer time that board members put in, and all of the allied professionals who provide services. And hopefully we're all going towards the same goal, which is to keep the housing stock in our particular state in good shape,

Robert Nordlund: 10:21

right, in good shape, affordable, and to make it a great destination to live. I'm from California, and every once a while we have a horror story of a legislator who got elected, went to Sacramento, the state capitol has a second home, they're now their condo where they do work for the state. And it's unfortunately run by a rogue or in the legislators word, crazy ward. And there's a reactionary piece of legislation that we have to tamp down because it has to do with one association, not the whole body of community associations in the state. So again, great for this to come from a grassroots that gives it a strong foundation. Well, David, thank you for that. I've got a follow up question on that point. But we need to take a quick break now to hear from one of our sponsors.

Paige Daniels: 11:14

numbers matter. And we need numbers like game scores and bank balances to let us know where we stand. The same is true for your association is yours thriving or struggling? Let me introduce you to the FiPhO health score, like your own personal FICO credit score. Now in one simple number, owners and boards can learn the combined financial, physical and operational health of their association. The good news, it's free! At ourFiPhO.com. That's our F I P H O.com. Learn how your association measures up.

Robert Nordlund: 11:45

And we're back. Well, David, I want to follow up on that we will move very quickly from what that New Jersey legislation was. And there's actually two parts, can I get you to pull those two parts apart and articulate that, please? Absolutely.

David Ramsey: 11:59

So the two sections, we start with the structural integrity side. And consistent with what the various task forces at CAI I had come up with, our concern was those types of buildings that would be subject to absolute collapse of the the entire building or a portion of the building. Now, we really divided this up into buildings that had steel, concrete, masonry, heavy timber, that type of construction or podium construction, and said, these are the types of buildings that if there is deterioration, and it's not taken care of, then this is going to result in the possible future collapse of a portion or a whole building.

Robert Nordlund: 12:47

And by class are talking about, I kind of don't care about a building falling, what I do care about is taking people with it. So potential loss of life.

David Ramsey: 12:56

Exactly, exactly. Right. So so that became the we call that a covered building. If there's a covered building, we then created a inspection scenario, where, depending on how old your building already is, it has to be inspected by a structural engineer, within 15 years of when the certificate of occupancy for the shell of the building for the structure was originally obtained. Okay,

Robert Nordlund: 13:26

so we're talking when it hits its 15 year old point. Correct.

David Ramsey: 13:31

And we indicated in that part of the bill that the American Society of Civil Engineers standards for structural inspections were required to be followed, that then results in the engineer issuing a report. Of course, that report goes to the board. But it also goes to the local construction official. And the concept, although we don't have specific enforcement provisions, the concept is if the construction official gets the engineers report, and the engineer says there's certain work that needs to be done now, then the construction official, and we certainly have this model in New Jersey already is likely to follow through with the association. Now that structural engineer is also supposed to say this work needs to be done immediately, within three months, six months, you know, whatever it might be, if the structural engineer really found something that was, you know, structurally dangerous, there might have to be some shoring. Wood in a New Jersey is a mature state with a lot of older buildings. And people really haven't, you know, I go into buildings all the time, and I'm sure you see them to where you went to a garage and you see chunks of concrete, you know, falling off, and you see exposed steel that's rusting. And people have a sense that oh, no, this could last for decades this way now

Robert Nordlund: 14:53

Well in the United States. We're not used to buildings just falling down. And we have a couple other facts factors at play. One is that board members are often focusing, unfortunately, on the disruptive goal of keeping their monthly assessments low and not necessarily giving the building the carrot needs. And then there's this other human factor where we call it in our business, familiarity blindness. So when you walk from your car every day, in the underground parking garage to the elevator, after a few days, you no longer see that missing chunk.

David Ramsey: 15:26

That's a great point, Robert, it's absolutely true. We see it all the time. But you know, I have an office building, there's a garage under that office building. And frankly, until I got involved in that legislation, I started looking around the building, and you

Robert Nordlund: 15:40

looked up, you look at the pipes, and you looked down and you said, Okay, it's moist, because it's a rainy day, and the cars have swept water in I understand that. But why is there a puddle of water over there? And you know, you start looking at things that you never thought about before? Yeah,

David Ramsey: 15:54

yeah. So we're all subjected to that to that bias of just missing things that we see every day. And by the way, the legislation also says that all of the unit owners have to get a copy of that report. Okay. We thought that was important, because if the board isn't paying a lot of attention to what it's supposed to be doing, hopefully, the unit owner, will the unit owners of the some of them will start to say, hey, wait, a second chance report indicates there's a serious condition here, we need to take care of it. Yeah. covering

Robert Nordlund: 16:25

each other's blind spots. Exactly. Okay,

David Ramsey: 16:28

now, and then what happens under the legislation is, every five years thereafter, there has to be an additional structural inspection, or, at such time, as the structural inspector says such earlier time, as the structural engineer says it needs to be inspected. So maybe a structural engineer comes in and sees some rust bleeding through rust, color, bleeding through some concrete, doesn't believe it requires immediate attention, but says, You know what, I want to look at this, again, we created this baseline inspection, we know what it looks like today, I want to compare it to a year or two from now,

Robert Nordlund: 17:08

right? I've got a bunch of good pictures. So we've documented state, let's look at it in 12 months, see if it's progressing or if it's static. Right.

David Ramsey: 17:17

And that doesn't require an entire new inspection. But it requires looking at those elements of the building that may have been of concern when they were there. I

Robert Nordlund: 17:25

like it, it hasn't gotten overwhelming. It can be as simple as how the engineer look at it. Actually, engineer or architect, is it in New Jersey?

David Ramsey: 17:36

Well, it's no for that part of it. It's a structural engineer. And you know, we don't licensed structural engineers in New Jersey, so just has to be somebody who's who's willing to attest to the fact that they have that experience as an engineer to be able to do that kind of work.

Robert Nordlund: 17:52

Good. Well, as a homeowner, in a building like that, I would like knowing that someone who knows what they're talking about is looking around my building and making sure that we don't go on that unfortunate Champlain Tower South list, you get the inspection, you get the follow ups as appropriate. You get a well visit, like we go to the dentist, every six months, here, a building will get a well visit at five, five years. But if they say no, there's a reason to come earlier than it can be a very simple one our visit to compare how things look, I like that there's a structural portion, and then there's the

David Ramsey: 18:30

reserve portion. Okay. So although they're part of the same bill, the structural portion went into what is called the New Jersey uniform Construction Code, which adopts the, you know, the International Building Code and so on. So that's, that's in that section of New Jersey's laws, the reserve section goes into that part of New Jersey's laws that deals with community associations. Okay. And that is now saying that there has to be a reserve study prepared in accordance with the reserve study standards of the community Associations Institute now.

Robert Nordlund: 19:06

Well, let me let me stop you right there. I really like the way you said so far. In the structural inspection, they're referring to existing, did you say civil engineering codes and construction codes, New Jersey didn't have to reinvent the entire wheel and on reserves, they didn't have to reinvent the entire wheel the wheel, they could say that we've got existing body of standards here. We've got existing body of standards there that they can just reference

David Ramsey: 19:33

and plug it in, right. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So it requires that the study be done by a reserve specialist toward a licensed engineer or a licensed architect, but no matter who it is, they have to comply with the CAI reserve standards. Now, they also have to include in that report, corrective maintenance very often on, you know, that sort of things we used to call deferred maintenance. That's really kind of become an old term that we're not really using because it's confusing to the world deferred, right. And sounds like things I should have done, but I just didn't do we know that wasn't the intent of that phrase. So we're now talking about Corrective maintenance. And the report also has to include a portion of the cost of the next if you're if you're covered building the next structural inspection. So yeah, for the structural inspection, and for your next resource study. So then there's a provision of okay, we have that. How do we deal with your study is done. You did a study three years ago, you haven't been reserving in accordance with that study. And I don't need to tell you that there's various refunding plans that could you okay, and

Robert Nordlund: 20:53

and associations have an unfortunate reputation of not funding reserves as they need, they're not keeping up with deterioration?

David Ramsey: 21:03

Well, you know, just a quick digression on that, Robert. So, as you said before, there's a resistance to increasing maintenance fees. Right, right. But what we typically see is if we go to the meeting in which the board's adopting the budget, the one applause line they can depend on every year is, and there's no increase in this year's budget. Crazy well, okay, maybe that could happen in a given year. But when that starts happening year after year after year, what they're not telling the owners, and the owners really don't recognize is the only place they can get that money from the fund operating is from what should have gone in to the reserve account.

Robert Nordlund: 21:46

They're supervising the future. They're sacrificing to the future

David Ramsey: 21:49

for the current. And you know, the board member attitude is often and look, I, I love board members, they do a great job. Sometimes they're this this attitude like, well, I won't be here when you know, the we have to pay the you have to pay the piper. Right, right. Right. And so for right now, we can just get this applause line and be done with it. Now, if the owners really knew that what this was doing, was creating the prospect in the future of significant special assessments, or significant loans. And it might be a result of the board not doing maintenance when they need to do it, which as you know, increases dramatically the cost over time, right. I think they'd have a different attitude if they were really educated about this. But they're not, they don't. So when that was when those special assessments hit, what's the reaction of the owner? Like, ah, what, yeah, I don't want this. I don't want to have to pay this. This isn't fair. Of course, no board wants to admit that the reason for it is because they hadn't been reserving adequately, right. Or, and in this situation, it's a newer board. But now they have to pay for the ills of prior boards who didn't practically reserve. The goal of this reserve portion of the legislation was to reduce to the maximum extent possible, the need for special assessments and borrowing, to fund what should be routine maintenance. That reserve study should be a budgeting tool, it should be a planning tool. And it's, you know, I find that often boards don't fully understand the different funding methodologies don't understand exactly what the purpose of a reserve study is, as a result, they kind of treat it casually, and not one of the most important documents that they get as a board member.

Robert Nordlund: 23:44

Well, David, you put a smile on my face, because I think everyone who's listening knows that I'm in the reserves study business. And those are, that's music to my ears. As you're saying, there's a lot of people that don't appreciate that, as of this day, Mother Nature and Father Time are undefeated, and they are going to deteriorate a building, no matter how much you close your eyes and pretend that the costs aren't there. So any board that is pretending that the roof deterioration is not their problem is just fooling themselves. It's just pushing the cost out onto future homeowners who are going to scream at you for allowing current owners should not be paying their fair share their their 120 of that 20 year old roof every year over time. Well,

David Ramsey: 24:31

you know, and the interesting thing when we met with legislators on this is one of the concerns and a little bit of pushback we got is Well isn't this going to increase their fees and we said you know, in the short run, it may it may increase their fees, particularly if they weren't reserving as they should have been reserving but in the long run, it is going to allow the association to do the work, the replacement, the maintenance, etc, when it should be done. And in the longer run, it's going to reduce their costs. Probably significantly, once it was fully explained to legislators, I think they understood it, there was still some oh my goodness, I'm going to get all these calls from all these people who live in condos and homeowners. And now they're going to start, you know, moaning about how this increase their fees. But I will say that, you know, it was overwhelmingly passed in both houses of the legislature.

Robert Nordlund: 25:25

That's fantastic. Yeah,

David Ramsey: 25:27

it really was good. We had some legislators that said, Well, why should I let the association hold on to my money for all these years, okay. Maybe I rather just pay a special assessment. You know, what we explained to that legislator was if you own a single family home, and you know, you're going to have to replace your roof and 10 years, 15 years, whatever it might be, you have a choice, you can either say, Hey, I have a little nest egg I'm going to put a little money away for that. Or when it comes, I'll go out and take out money in my home equity loan, or I'll do whatever I have to do to replace the roof. You can't do that the community association, because people are not planning on that special assessment coming. They don't that view that, you know, we're all in this together, we're all sharing this together. If it's your own, you can do whatever you want. But if you're in a community association, there's a reason it's called the community. Right?

Robert Nordlund: 26:24

Well, the homeowners are imagining that the board is carrying their home value in their hands, and they're doing good, they're imagining inspecting the board is doing a good job of it. And so they don't have to worry about they just do their good job of paying the monthly assessments on time. Being a great owner, and they're trusting that the board is planning appropriately. In our industry, we talk about reserve legislation has nothing to do with building costs, because the roof will fail, the asphalt will fail. The paint will need to be repainted all these kinds of things, whether you reserve or not. The only question is, do you pay a little bit at a time every month? Or do you wait 15 years and pay a big special assessment? The cost is still there. So it's not it does not increase the cost of homeownership? And that's a

David Ramsey: 27:12

great point. And that's exactly the point we made to legislators. It's not the legislation that's causing the cost, right. It's deterioration of, you know, material goods, blaming

Robert Nordlund: 27:23

on Mother Nature, get mad at them Don't get mad at the board, the board is just doing their job to budget. Tell us in New Jersey, do most governing documents require the board to pay for the expenses at the association or just adjust empower the board to pay for the expenses? Yeah,

David Ramsey: 27:42

of course, the documents will always contain a provision that mandates that every owner has to pay their share of the expenses, right, and it creates a lien for those payments. Right? If you don't pay, it's like taxes, you know,

Robert Nordlund: 27:56

your forcement protocol.

David Ramsey: 27:58

Yeah, and a total enforcement protocol. And you know, at least in my state, and I think in most states, there's almost always a provision in the bylaws, usually in the bylaws that says, you have to maintain, you have to have a reserve account. It doesn't typically go into any detail, though, about how you have to fund it. But you have to get a reserve study doesn't go into any of that. So this legislation really fills in those missing pieces that aren't in most governing documents, right.

Robert Nordlund: 28:25

How you get from as a board member, having a responsibility to collect funds to the point where you are handing it off a year or two or five years later to the next board members will then carry the association successfully into the future.

David Ramsey: 28:41

That's right. That's right. And, you know, another point on this that we told legislators is, listen, we're very mobile society, we tend to, you know, sell homes. I think the average time people live in a particular home is something like seven years, eight years. So if I've lived there for my seven or eight years, I haven't paid my share of the reserves, maybe unknowingly, I didn't know I wasn't paying my share, I sell my home. My buyer comes in and all of a sudden gets hit for a special assessment for improvements that basically I used while

Robert Nordlund: 29:16

right by you used it up. Yep. When I bought

David Ramsey: 29:19

in maybe it was brand new, I got a brand new roof, a brand new this brand new everything but I didn't pay for my shares time went by those people who really get hurt is the new buyers,

Robert Nordlund: 29:29

David, I do a lot of traveling. And so when I landed at airport, grab a rental car, I do my site inspections, my meetings, whatever. And I fill up the rental car on the way back to the airport. And what you're talking about is the board members who over the years, basically run that gas tank dry and then turn it over to someone else to say good luck to you. If that is just not the responsible way to be doing things. David, do you know of other states that now have new New Jersey legislation on the radar because I liked that combination of structural and reserves, talking about getting that structural expertise, getting the reserve study, which is you described it as the budget plan. And then wrapping in the maintenance, making sure that you're maintaining it along the way. Do you know of other states that have New Jersey legislation on the radar? Well,

David Ramsey: 30:21

we know for sure that, you know, different states deal with legislation differently. In some states, the county can establish significant legislation. So we know that in I'm pretty sure it was Delaware, yes, Delaware, they had one county that has already. In fact, they adopted it sooner than we did. But they basically use the same model that used for their legislation. I also know from speaking to fellow attorneys who happen to serve on their legislative action committees, that there are other legislative action committees that are currently working on legislation like this, and not surprisingly, in those states, particularly that tend to have mid and high rise buildings. Because you know, when you got the structural integrity, that's, that's where that, you know, becomes a big issue. Right.

Robert Nordlund: 31:11

And then I think high density also in high density happens in our country to be on the coasts, where you have salt air environments. Since this is a podcast for board members. What advice would you give them to be more effective as a board member?

David Ramsey: 31:28

So it's to, boy, that could be a whole program on its own,

Robert Nordlund: 31:33

we might have to have you back.

David Ramsey: 31:35

So one of the most important things boards do every year, of course, is their budget process. And it's planning for the future, and you're supposed to be planning for the foreseeable expenses going into that future. That's what a budget is all about. Now, there's all sorts of elements to that budget. And you know, there's insurance premiums. And frequently boards don't fully understand what kind of insurance they're buying, what limitations there are, but then you get into the reserve portion of the budget, which is, you know, can be a very significant part of the budget. It's almost like the US government, you know, when you really look at it, you know, there's four components that make up 80 90% of the total federal government budget, it's similar in community associations, you've got your reserve component, you've got your insurance component, you usually have a landscaping component. And then, you know, some maybe general building, building maintenance, that's what's going to make up most of your expenses. It's a lot of discretionary spending. It's a weapon.

Robert Nordlund: 32:36

There's no magic fat to cut. Exactly,

David Ramsey: 32:39

exactly. That's not to say that you shouldn't be diligent getting bids on contracts and checking out, you know, whether you're getting good deals on things. But it's really that process. And you know, so often boards get tied up in being reactive, you know, to the problem of the day. And sometimes they're trivial problems. Sometimes they're very serious problems. But they're dealing with reacting to issues, rather than projecting into the future how to best manage this community,

Robert Nordlund: 33:10

right thinking, I'm a leader at this community, the homeowners have entrusted the care of their home into my hands. How can I lead this community forward? David, I'm looking at the time, I want to thank you for taking your time to join us on today's program. Any closing thoughts to share? Well,

David Ramsey: 33:28

the only closing thoughts I would have is I hope that on a national basis, as I said earlier, and I know you agree, our goal in the community association world is to make sure that we're we're good stewards of the housing stock that is in our control to some degree, okay, those of us who are in affiliated professions, we're trying to provide boards with the tools to best keep that housing stock in good condition. And unfortunately, we've all seen situations where it hasn't happened, and it's declined. But I think all of these efforts that we're seeing going forward now, are really driving in that direction. And when you already know that there's affordable housing issues, there's homelessness problems, we can't afford to lose any housing stock that we already have.

Robert Nordlund: 34:17

Yep. Well, fantastic. We're here to help. That's why we have the podcast here to encourage to inspire to affirm board members and all that you're doing to do your part of keeping the community association housing stock in this country, and your home, particularly in good shape. Well, we hope you'll learn some HOA insights from our discussion today that helps you bring common sense to your common areas. We look forward to having you join us for another great episode next week.

Announcer: 34:49

You been listening to HOA Insights: Common Sense for Common Areas, you can listen to the show on our podcast website, Hoainsights.org, or subscribe on any of the most popular podcast platforms. You can also watch the show on our YouTube channel. Check the show notes for helpful links. If you like the show and want to support the work we do, you can do so in a number of ways. The most important thing that you can do is engage in the conversation. leave a question in the comment section on our YouTube videos. You can also email your questions or voice memos to podcast@reservestudy.com Or leave us a voicemail at 805-203-3130. If you gained any insights from the show, please do us a HUGE favor by sharing the show with other board members that you know. You can also support us by supporting the brands that support this program. Please remember that the views and opinions expressed by the podcast do not constitute legal advice. You'll want to consult your own legal counsel before making any important decisions. Finally, this podcast was expertly mixed and mastered by Stoke Light Video & Marketing. With Stoke Light on your team. You will reach more customers with marketing expertise that inspires action. See the shownotes to connect with Stoke Light