Henderson proposes law to make HOAs fix walls

By Jeremy Twitchell

Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 | 4:09 p.m.

Henderson plans to ask the Nevada Legislature next year to pass a bill that would require homeowners associations to maintain the block walls around the neighborhoods they represent.

At present, city officials say, many communities have no clear guidelines on whether that responsibility falls on the association or individual homeowners whose homes abut the wall.

"As our city ages, some of those walls have started to deteriorate, and we've found that it has been difficult to determine who is responsible for that maintenance," said Terri Barber, Henderson director of intergovernmental relations.

The City Council voted 4-0 on last Monday to authorize the city attorney's office to submit a draft bill to the Legislative Counsel Bureau, which handles legal matters for the Legislature. It was one of two bill drafts the city plans to submit when the Legislature convenes next February. The other approved draft would allow cities to create alternative sentencing programs in their municipal court system.

Barber said most homeowners associations take care of the perimeter landscaping around their neighborhoods. The bill would include perimeter walls as part of that responsibility.

"I don’t think anybody foresaw that (the walls) would require maintenance," she said. "I don’t think anyone realized how fast they would deteriorate because of sprinklers and the sun."

Kevin Wallace, president and chief executive of RMI Management, the largest homeowners association management firm in Nevada, said most of the associations he's familiar with have defined the responsibility for exterior wall maintenance. As a general rule, he said, the outward facing part is the responsibility of the association, while the inward facing part is the responsibility of the homeowner whose yard it faces.

Interior walls — the ones between homes — are the responsibility of the homeowners, he said.

"That's the way it is most of the time, so I don't think (the proposed legislation) is going to affect a lot of homeowners associations, except maybe some of the older ones," Wallace said.

If a wall needs to be replaced, he said, that would generally be done by the association out of its reserve fund — the portion of association dues that are set aside for major maintenance projects — unless it can be shown that the homeowner did something to cause the wall to deteriorate. Wallace said he has seen some situations in which a homeowner put irrigation lines near a wall, and the water caused the wall to crumble.

Most of the associations created in the last eight to 12 years have defined the wall maintenance responsibilities, Wallace said, but said he thinks the city may be looking at older associations in the Green Valley area that were created before those regulations were commonplace.

"Associations were just getting going and so there wasn't a lot of understanding of what was going on," he said. "(Wall maintenance) may not even be mentioned in the (governing documents)."

Jeremy Twitchell is a reporter for the Home News. He can be reached at 990-8928 or [email protected].