Over the past several years, condominium development has exploded across the country. Our firm's involvement has been in assisting the new association upon turnover. We have declined audits and related services for developers since we want to be free of any conflict of interest situations. Also, our opinion is that a developer audit can be an unnecessary expense if upon turnover the new owner run board of directors want an independent approach to the financial turnover. In addition to the normal audit procedures, we focus on these additional areas:
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Developer Assessments; determining if all were received by the Association.
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Initial expenses of the association; we concentrate on ascertaining if these were the Association's or the Developer's responsibility.
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Any upfront Reserve Closing Assessments; we determine if all of the closing assessments, (if any), were received by the Association.
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Reviewing all capital expenditures to determine if they were actually the Association's or the Developer's responsibility.
These four additional procedures have lead to additional developer reimbursements to the recently turned over associations we have audited.
Developer laws are better formulated in Florida than in Illinois. In Illinois, the laws are vague and are being decided in the courts. If you have a developer issue, we encourage you to contact the condominium committee of the Chicago Bar Association as well as community Associations Institute's Legislative Action Committee. If enough complaints are logged, maybe we can get better designed laws to protect unit owners in the future.
