HOA season is just around the corner. It is that time of the year when you’ll discuss with your fellow neighbors how your homeowners’ association will be administrated in 2017 and who will be in charge of this administration. This discussion will take place at your annual homeowners’ ordinary meeting. The Mexican law requires for this ordinary meeting to take place during the first trimester of the year. At this ordinary meeting, specific issues should be addressed and voted on. It is extremely important that the result of the voting and the resolutions are properly reflected in the minutes from your homeowners’ meeting. If this is not the case, you can then have problems trying to enforce the resolutions from your homeowners’ ordinary meeting.
So what should the minutes from an homeowners’ ordinary meeting include?
The Civil Code for the State of Jalisco establishes that a homeowners’ ordinary meeting should deal with the following items:
- The general financial report on the condominium for the previous year,
- The election of the members of the Board of Directors,
- The appointment of the Administrator, and
- The approval of the income and expense budget for the following year.
In the minutes, the full names of the members of the Board of Directors should be included. The same applies for the Administrator since these two bodies will have the legal representation of the HOA. It is also extremely important that the income and expense budgets are included on a spread sheet as an annex to the minutes. This way you’ll be able to prove how much a homeowner is obligated to pay in dues for the following year and how much the Administrator was allowed to spend.
So my homeowners’ ordinary meeting took place and I have the minutes, what’s next?
The minutes should be in Spanish and they should be signed by whoever acted as President and Secretary at the meeting. Then the minutes should be Notarized and recorded in the Public Registry of Property. Once you have concluded this last part, your minutes are totally legal and can be enforced against any homeowner, the Administrator or a third party.
Having an organized HOA is not easy, there are many interests involved and reaching a consensus is a very difficult task. This is one of the reasons why the resolutions from your HOA meeting s should be clearly written and notarized. This way they can be legal, and you can have some peace of mind in case a homeowner tries to challenge a resolution from the meeting.
