Legislative Changes to Condo Law - Now Effective July 1, 2009
On February 4, 2009, Governor Markell signed House Bill 45. This Act makes technical amendments to the Delaware Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (DUCOIA) statute and stays enforcement of the legislation for a brief period until July 1, 2009, in accordance with the original intent of the legislation. For the full text of HB 45, visit www.legis.delaware.gov. Legal Update to REALTORS® from Andrew P. Taylor, Cooch and Taylor On October 31, 2008, Governor Minner signed Senate Bill 273, the Delaware Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act (DUCIOA). This is a re-write of the Unit Property Act which has been Delaware's condominium law for decades. Senator Amick and others worked on this for more than 10 years. This new law covers more than just condominiums; it covers communities with common space such as condominiums, cooperatives, and communities with maintenance associations. There was supposed to be an effective date of March 2009, but unfortunately that was not done; therefore, this law is now in effect. For real estate professionals, the most important and immediate need is to make sure the sellers disclose the information required by DUCIOA. Attached is a form I prepared to use for disclosing this information. The real estate licensee should not be the one to complete this form. It is the sellers' responsibility to provide this information to the buyer no later than the time of signing the Agreement of Sale. Because the sellers will not know all of this information, the most practical approach is to have the form completed by a representative from the condominium council, cooperative board, or maintenance association. This is similar to the procedure in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Sellers or buyers should expect to pay a fee to the association for completing the form and providing copies of the many documents required to be made available to the buyers. I have suggested that this fee would be collected at settlement and be mailed to the association by the settlement attorney. An amendment is being prepared to hopefully delay the effective date until March, 2009, but until then you will need to have this form completed. For listing agents, I suggest taking this form to the person you think can complete the form and compile the information. Ask them to start working on the form now so it will be ready when you find a buyer. They might initially be surprised to see how much work it will be to put together the information, but once they have done it, it will be relatively easy to plug in the numbers for each sale after that. You can also tell them about charging for the form and copies. Based upon the volume of sales in their community they should set a fee which will eventually cover their time and expenses for providing this information. They should not expect to charge a large fee to the first seller to cover all of the upfront cost of gathering this information. They should realize they will recoup their cost over time and eventually the fee should help cover some of the overhead for the association. |
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