Florida Homeowners Association Terror

At some point in 2023, Vista Palms HOA went from HOA Board-occupied-by-residents-in-control to property management-controlled. Seemingly, after our original HOA president moved, everything went to hell. I don’t know why we hired a property management group, namely Unique Property Services, Inc. But I do know that property management groups allow HOA Board members to act like they are not responsible for the bad things that happen as a result of “the property manager’s decisions”.

When the Unique Property Services, Inc.—aka the property manager—took over this community, he booted out all of the homeowners previous automatic payment arrangements. In my case, I had had ACH set up for at least 6 years so that my monthly assessments went from my bank straight to the HOA. This was the best thing for me. Prior to that, I used to use payment coupons that we got in the mail to mail in the dues. That was very archaic.

How were homeowners originally notified of this new situation? I don’t know…A Board meeting? The Facebook page (which was also full of various neighborhood rumors and accusations)? I didn’t attend meetings and I didn’t do social media. What I do know is that I was never mailed anything and no one ever directly informed me. I live in this neighborhood 365 days a year. I discovered it by happenstance one day when I checked my miscellaneous email address searching for some old TECO account information. This was more than six months later. Eight-hundred and sixty-seven dollars later, to be exact.