Question on a Loft Expansion

icey

Active member
Hi all,

We?re in an attached condo with 2 neighbors on either side and looking at expand a 2nd floor loft.

HOA gave us a ?conditional? approval but looks like we have some red tape and liability being attached. Our concern is having a hard time reselling later due to these restrictions.

We have another resident who did an expansion like this although they had a different floor plan. We will contact them and see if they had the same experience.

Anyone know what this language means or can consult on this one? (Or has a contact we can consult with?)

?????

?(2) Owner must agree to and pay all legal and recording fees for the recordation of a maintenance and indemnity agreement against the property. This agreement will require that the current and all future owners carry insurance and that they agree to indemnify the association for any damages caused as a result of the loft addition.?
 
Is this an indoor expansion like loftcrafters or a literal construction of a 2nd story area?  I?d be surprised if the condo HOA gave you approval on actual construction (building a 2nd floor on top of existing) without checking structural integrity, building footings, sheer walls, etc.

For the legal jumbo jumbo, it sounds like they want you to draw up a legal agreement (probably have it notarized and pay for it he whole thing) that removes their liability for any issues that occur after your construction completes.

So if you do this and a condo wall caves is 18 months later, you are responsible for this fix.  If you sell the property you have to get the buyers to agree that this is now their responsibility as well. 

About the insurance part, you?ll have to call your homeowners insurance and tell them that they need to upgrade your policy to include structural damage as a result of the loft construction -then prove the policy change to the HOA, so expect an increase there.

PS im not a lawyer, this is just my interpretation.
 
icey said:
?(2) Owner must agree to and pay all legal and recording fees for the recordation of a maintenance and indemnity agreement against the property. This agreement will require that the current and all future owners carry insurance and that they agree to indemnify the association for any damages caused as a result of the loft addition.?

typically with an attached condo, the association maintains insurance and is responsible for the structure and everything outside the interior walls of your unit (roof, exterior walls, plumbing in many cases, etc.). as a condo homeowner, you usually just carry what is called an HO6 policy, which is "walls in" (flooring, cabinets, toilets, showers, etc.).

what the association is saying here is that you must pay for the county recording costs of adding additional square footage and the legal costs to draft and enter into an agreement (likely perpetual) with the association that ensures that anyone who owns your unit will agree to maintain all exterior portions of the addition (roof, exterior walls, etc.) to the community standards (if the association deems you need to paint the exterior, you will paint the exterior, the windows must match the community style, etc.). further, any damages to your unit (and likely any other unit) as a result of this addition (maybe the roof leaks) will be the owner's (your) responsibility and you agree to indemnify (not hold accountable) the association.

if you're not adding any additional exterior structures and you're just adding interior square footage (i.e. if your loft is open to the bottom and you're just extending it and closing it off to the bottom) then that would be significantly less risk to you and future buyers. 

i would ask the other resident which legal counsel they used because they clearly have an agreement already in place that was approved by the association, so your legal costs going back and forth with the association could be lower as a result of your neighbor's past work.
 
Thanks everyone for the info.

This seems to be a pretty tough condition to add on. Even if we satisfy the condition, it seems like it will hurt the resale ability of the unit by saddling the next owner with the same burden. Maybe worth if if we were staying here for the very long term, but I can't see us staying here past 5 years.

My other concern is any of the neighbors or HOA can use the expansion as a catch all for anything that goes wrong and just blame the work on it, when it had nothing to do with it. For example, I know another neighbor had plumbing issues in the past with leaking water everywhere.

I'll see if the other guy who did his expansion went through this. We had a management change and maybe they were more lenient in the past.


>Is this an indoor expansion like loftcrafters or a literal construction of a 2nd story area?  I?d be surprised if the condo HOA gave you approval on actual construction (building a 2nd floor on top of existing) without checking structural integrity, building footings, sheer walls, etc.

This is an indoor expansion like loftcrafters. There's already a second floor, it's just expanding the floor space. The loft overlooks the first floor, this would close the overlook and take the floor all the way to the other wall.
 
Update: Our HOA is pretty intransigent here, so we've decided to not go with the expansion. I am sure we could get this through but it would be a long and costly negotiation, leaving us and future owners with open-ended liability issues pretty much forever.
 
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