As regular as clockwork, the Community Associations Institute, CAI, comes out with an annual survey, that, incredibly, year after year confirms their assertion that homeowners in condos, HOAs and co-ops are overwhelmingly happy with their lot in life.  Now, I don’t doubt that many homeowners are pleased and think they got a great deal but I have always questioned CAI’s numbers.  We know there are major issues and problems that grab the headlines, yet these problems fail to make a dent in these annual surveys.  When owners become homeless through no fault of their own, are they likely to be tickled pink with the association?  So many things do not add up.  So, what is really going on in the homes of American homeowners?  Are they really as happy and thrilled as we are led to believe they are?  Are the problems just “isolated incidents” and not worth worrying about?  To find out how homeowners really feel about their HOA housing, the Coalition for Community Housing Policy in the Public Interest (CHPPI) a not for profit, independent organization without a vested interest in HOAs, decided to ask them.  

Please take the survey. 

Sara Benson and Deborah Goonan join us On The Commons.  Sara is a real estate broker in Chicago and the co author of the book “Escaping Condo Jail: The keys to navigating risks and surviving perils of the “carefree” community lifestyle”.  Deborah is a very active blogger and a seemingly tireless researcher on all the latest news and events taking place in association controlled housing.  Her blog is called Independent American Communities.  We talk to Sara and Deborah about the survey and the reason for having another one.  We talk about the need to find out what really is going on.  We are following up on the responses from the last survey CHPPI took.  Based on the responses it seemed prudent to dig in a little deeper and find out just how much homeowners really know and understand about the association they live in and are financially responsible for.  It is fascinating to start putting the pieces of the puzzle together and to perhaps find the missing pieces.  Tune in and please take the survey, send it to your friends and relatives who live in associations and please ask them to also reply to the survey. 

Sara Benson

Deborah Goonan