Greetings everyone. I'm the (unfortunate) president of a small (16 unit) condo association in Illinois. One of the units went into foreclosure a few months ago and is now up for sale. No assessments have been paid since July 2007. We're owed $2000+.

My question is this: In order to collect the monies owed us, should we file a lien, pro se; hire an attorney to file the lien; send a registered letter to the bank holding the mortgage, advising them of this situation; or wait until the association is contacted by a buyer's attorney for the "usual" documents required at closing to notify them of the situation?

FYI, each time a unit has been sold, prior to closing, one of the items requested by the buyer's attorney has been a document verifying that the assessments are paid up to a specific date.

Any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

There is a pretty good chance that you're not going to be able to recover the money.

You're going to have to carefully read your master deed and by-laws. Back when I was writing public offerings in NJ (10 years ago), there was a clause that was required to be in the master deed in order to get approved for FNMA loans. That clause stated that the condo association would not be entitled to collect any prior maintenance fees or special assessments from the lender or a purchaser at a foreclosure sale. Any fees that became due before the foreclosure had to be written off as a loss.

I don't know if FNMA still requires this clause today and I don't know if it's in your condo docs. So you'll have to read them carefully. If you don't see that clause, consider contacting your association's attorney to see if you have the right to go after those fees. But I doubt you can.

And I will add that even if it allowed a lien, Hardly ever does the foreclosure sale bring enough to even pay the first mortgage, which is paid first, so any other lien would normally never get paid.

So while you have full rights to try, most likely you can't file, and if you can, still won't get anything at the sale anyway.

Oh great... thanks, though.