February 3, 2025 • 36 mins
Marc Reich reveals how his HOA board tackled a drug house, bomb scares, and CC&R violations to restore community safety and harmony.
✅ Is a Reserve Study right for you? 👉 https://www.reservestudy.com/
HOA board hero Marc Reich shares his journey tackling a nightmare neighbor situation involving suspected drug dealing, a bomb scare, and persistent CC&R violations. Mack dives into his creative and legal strategies, which included leveraging fines, liens, and foreclosures to protect the community. See how Mark and his HOA board turned a volatile situation into a success story, replacing a troublesome property with a thriving family. This episode highlights the importance of board member dedication, discretion, and proactive solutions in HOA management.
Chapters From Today's Episode:
00:00 Removing Residents Dealing Drugs With Brown Grass HOA Violations?Â
03:09 Introduction to HOA Board Hero Marc ReichÂ
04:35 The Drug Neighbor ProblemÂ
06:34 How Marc Campaigned for his HOA BoardÂ
08:15 How Marc and his Board Removed the Drug Dealers With HOA ViolationsÂ
14:57 Ad Break - Association Reserves
15:29 The Bomb Scare Incident
 26:58 Could Anyone on the Board Tackled this Problem?
 29:28 What Keeps Marc on His HOA Board
 33:10 Marc's Advice for HOA Board Members
The views & opinions expressed in this program are those of the Hosts & Guests, intended to provide general education about the community association industry. The content is not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or organization. Please seek advice from licensed professionals.
Podcast Links:
Full Episode List
Watch On Youtube
Engage in the conversation!
Call our 24/7 voicemail line at (805) 203-3130 or send an email or voice memo to podcast@reservestudy.com
Nominate yourself or a Board Hero you Know!
Board Hero Nominations
Shop!
HOA insights now has its very own merch store! Our team has whipped up some hats, mugs, T-Shirts, & more that we think Volunteer HOA Boardmembers are gonna love. We also offer dozens of FREE zoom backgrounds. Available in our Boardmember Merch Store!
Connect with Hosts on LinkedIn
Julie Adamen
https://www.linkedin.com/in/julieadamen/
Kevin Davis, CIRMS
https://www.linked...
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Marc Reich (00:00):
I think anyone could have done it. It was, you had to
(00:04):
be a little bit creative,because the problem was, they're
selling drugs. There's potentialviolence. The problem wasn't
that their grass is brown, butthat was an easy thing to point
out. So maybe, being anattorney, I had a little more
creativity in terms of what canwe get these these people on
Announcer (00:26):
A regular highlight of the HOA insights podcast is
our board heroes feature, wherewe dedicate one episode each
month to celebrate theremarkable efforts of HOA board
members to us a board hero isone of the 2 million elected
volunteers who deserverecognition for excelling in a
role that often goes unnoticed.
Today, we're excited tospotlight one of these
(00:46):
exceptional board heroes andshare their inspiring story. If
you match our definition of aboard hero, or know someone who
does, please reach out to us.
Our contact details and those ofour sponsors are provided in the
show notes.
Robert Nordlund (00:59):
Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for
common areas. I'm RobertNordlund, and I'm here today for
episode number 91 with a specialguest, board hero. I learned of
our guest via a mutual friend,hearing the remarkable things he
was able to get accomplished forhis community. Just another
volunteer board member, but ahero to his community and all in
(01:21):
our podcast audience. I was soglad I was able to get a spot on
his calendar to record thisepisode for you so he could
share his story. Well, I hopeyou enjoyed last week's episode
number 90, with regular co hostand management consultant Julie
Adamen discussing trends weexpect you'll see in 2025 we
want you to be prepared for thechanges that are coming. So if
(01:43):
you missed that episode or anyother prior episode, you can
find them on our podcastwebsite, Hoa insights.org, on
your favorite podcast platform,or on our YouTube channel, but
better yet, subscribe to thepodcast. In order to get every
episode delivered right to yourphone or mobile device. Well,
those of you watching on YouTubecan see the custom mug that I
(02:07):
have here that I got from ourmerchandise store, which you can
browse through from ourHOAinsights.org website or the
show notes. And you'll find wehave specialty items like this
and free board member zoombackgrounds and as a special
promotion, go to the merchstore, browse through the items
and pick a mug you'd like tohave, and if you're the 10th
(02:29):
person to emailpodcast@reserves.a.com
mentioning episode 91 muggiveaway, then we'll give that
mug out free of charge to you,shipping and all well, we enjoy
hearing from you, and mostepisodes are in response to a
topic that you've recommended.
So do stay in contact, lettingus know what questions you have
(02:50):
or topics that you'd like tohear more about. Leave us a
voicemail at 805-203-3130, leavea comment on a YouTube video or
send us an email atpodcast@reservestudy.com but
back to today's episode, I onlyknow our guest today, board
member, Mark Reich, by thereputation shared by a homeowner
(03:13):
in his community, a friend ofmine, so today, I'll be learning
along with you about Mark andthe things that he's done for
his community, Majorcamaintenance Corporation. It's a
50 home development of singlefamily homes in a nice section
of town in Southern California.
They don't have a lot of commonareas there. It's just pretty
(03:35):
much mailboxes, an irrigationsystem and some landscaping
assets, but lots of interestingthings going on. So Mark,
welcome to the program. Robert,thank you. A pleasure to be
here. Well, tell me how long?
Tell me where the story starts.
How long have you lived atMallorca? Well, I've lived here
for 22 years. Okay, and tell memore. Is it professionally
(03:58):
managed?
Marc Reich (03:59):
It is professionally managed. Power Stone, property
management, who has been with ussince 2015 and who I like a lot.
Robert Nordlund (04:08):
Okay, great. So good management company,
professional management. What'syour day job? Or are you
retired?
Marc Reich (04:15):
I am an attorney. I have my own law practice, a
small partnership with two otherlaw partners
Robert Nordlund (04:22):
got it. Okay, so, homeowner, attorney, single
family home in a nice section ofSouthern California. What got
you interested in being on theboard? Okay, so,
Marc Reich (04:35):
one very, very nice introduction. I appreciate the
hero comment, but I'm no hero,but I did step up when we had a
problem neighbor. So we had aneighbor who appeared to be
selling drugs out of theirhouse. We would have cars that
would drive up in the middle ofthe night, midnight, 1am stop
(04:57):
for a minute. Someone would comeout of the house. House, there
would be an exchange of somematerials. The car would drive
away, and that would happenseveral times a week. I was not
on the board at that time, but Icontacted our association
property manager, and because,in addition to this suspicious
activity, and also we would havestrange people who would stay
(05:21):
overnight, sometimes seedylooking people. But in addition
to that, they weren'tmaintaining their house. They
had a broken window in theirgarage door. Their grass was
brown. They had dents in theirstucco, so they were violating
CCN arms. Some neighbors hadcome to me, because I'm an
(05:43):
attorney, saying, What can we doabout this? Can we had read
about other homeowners filingSmall Claims actions against
hoarders that for under nuisancetheories and being successful,
getting judgments and thenleaning the house and then
foreclosing. So some neighborscame to me, said, Can we do
that? And I said, Well, yeah, wecan, but really, the association
(06:05):
can, can do it for us. So let mecontact the property manager.
The property manager wasn'tdoing anything, and the existing
board wasn't doing anything. Sowe had an election coming up. We
have five positions on theboard. So every year there's two
openings, and the other yearthere's three openings, because
it's a staggered term I like. Soso that year there were two
(06:28):
positions open. So one of theneighbors who was concerned
about this, and I, we ran forthe board.
Robert Nordlund (06:34):
So I hear lots of people run for the board on
the platform of we're going tofix the roof, or we're going to
lower the homeowner assessments,or something like that. What was
your political campaign? We'regoing to get rid of the drug
house at 12345, Main Street. Youknow? How do you how do you say,
well,
Marc Reich (06:55):
there were, there were, there were two aspects of
it. One was, you submit awritten statement of your
qualifications, and the writtenstatement was, was a vanilla I'm
I've lived in the community forblah, blah, blah. I'm an
attorney. I'm an accountant. Ithink those experiences will
allow me to be a positivecontribution to the board
playing vanilla. But as you mayknow, you know, when people get
(07:19):
the ballots, most people throwthem out, they don't turn them
in. You don't get quorum at themeeting, right? So what I did is
I had the property manager giveme 20 or 30 blank ballots, and I
went door to door with the blankballots, and that's what I said,
Hey, we got a problem here. Theboard's not doing anything. Me
and my buddy Dan down thestreet, we're going to get
(07:40):
elected. So here, sign here, putour names in, and then here, and
I'll put in the envelope for youwithout deliver it to the
property manager. So we stuffthe ballots, and we did that,
but it was, yeah, it waslegitimate. So that's how the
two of us got elected to theboard. And so now there's five.
We don't control the board, butwhen we were board members, we
(08:02):
were able to turn one of theboard members, their attitude
was, we're not going to botherwith them, because we're never
going to collect. We're going tospend a lot of money, extra
money with the property manager,with legal fees, so we're not
going to bother with that.
Robert Nordlund (08:15):
In addition to the house and the front yard,
I'm imagining being indisrepair. Were they also
delinquent?
Marc Reich (08:23):
Not at that time, okay, but when we start leaning
them in retaliation, theystopped paying their dues, which
was fine. That was great, so weattacked them on the three
violations. One, it appearedthey were having non family
members stay there. And the ccnrsaid, if you're going to rent to
somebody, you have to provide acopy of the lease to the to the
(08:46):
association. They didn't provideus with a copy of any lease. So
we said, that's that's aviolation, the holes in the
stucco or the debts in thestock, well, that was a
violation. The broken window inthe garage door was a violation,
and their brown grass was aviolation, and then also our CCR
said that we could double thefines after every infraction. So
(09:07):
what we started doing, westarted we will normally meet
four times a year, but westarted having meetings every
two weeks so we can double thefines when they didn't cure the
violation. Interesting.
Robert Nordlund (09:19):
Okay, so you found a pressure point. The
pressure point was a financialyou had some you could apply
some financial pain to see ifyou could push them out. Yeah.
And
Marc Reich (09:32):
so eventually, and then we, we started the Lien
process and the foreclosureprocess. And there's a number of
months you have to do a greenlien letter, then you do the
lien, then you initiate theforeclosure proceedings. If you
do it a non judicialforeclosure, that's a four month
process, if things go smoothly.
So we started down that road,and eventually they put the home
(09:55):
on the market and they moved.
Out, and everything was fine,although we did have that bomb
scare that I told you aboutoffline before they left.
Robert Nordlund (10:09):
All right, so you've got a peaceful, 50 home
community in a nice subdivisionSouthern California, and all of
a sudden you have a bit of aneyesore home. And in addition to
it being a bit of an eyesore,you have odd traffic. And we're
not talking about Amazon vans orUPS fans. You're talking can I
(10:31):
use nefarious, suspiciouscharacters? Yes, at all times of
the day or night. And you'rethinking, this is not what this
community is about. What can wedo? You got an ally. You not
only ran for the board, you didyour kissing babies,
(10:51):
politicking, knocking on doors.
And that reminds me of megetting on the board of my
association and passing ourspecial assessment. I was Knock,
knock, knock on the boards. Doyou know about this? You should
vote yes, those kinds of things.
And you got yourself elected.
Okay, let me, let me wind itback, because I think there's
got to be this entire secondphase of the story. But so you
(11:12):
got on the board, and you weretwo out of five. You developed
an ally, and you overcame theobstacle of the management
company that wasn't we helping.
Marc Reich (11:26):
We fired that management company. We replaced
them with another managementcompany.
Robert Nordlund (11:30):
Okay, what was your role on the board? Were you
designated tiger or president?
Or did they say, Okay, we'll runthe association. You just take
care of the bad house. Uh,
Marc Reich (11:45):
no, this is a five person board. I don't, I don't.
We do have titles. We have asecretary or president, a vice
president. The titles really aremeaningless. You have a one
fifth vote on whatever problemsand issues that have to be
addressed. I was focused on onthis problem, and so we very
aggressively attacked it. Nowthat's kind of opposite of what
(12:08):
my general attitude is, becausegenerally, I think as an
association and board memberswield a lot of power, and I
think you have you one should bevery careful you mentioned, and
we might talk about the four C'slater, but I have a fifth C, and
that's read carefully. If youread your CC and R, there's a
(12:32):
lot of things that would be aviolation that really should not
be a problem. I think in ourassociation, it's a violation if
you leave your garage door openmore than momentarily Well, or
if you have your basketball hoopand you leave it on the sidewalk
so the kids can play in thestreet. And those are the kinds
of things I don't want to beenforced. Okay? So I think in
(12:55):
general, yeah, show a lot ofdiscretion when there is a need,
because there really is adanger, like in this situation
or someone is not paying theirdues, then I think you have to
act aggressively. So this is oneof the exceptions to my rule of
(13:15):
show restraint, in which weacted very, very aggressively
and we went against them forthese cosmetic CC and R, but
that's because we reallycouldn't prove they were selling
drugs or that they were plantingbombs, which, yeah, wait,
Unknown (13:32):
wait, that's part two.
That's part two. But no, I
Robert Nordlund (13:35):
really like what you're saying, because the
board needs to function as agroup. You don't need to be
unanimous, but you need to beunited in what's best for our
community, and so you don't wanta I'll be careful, crazy board
member off making life hard onpeople for the minor
infractions. So I'm glad thatthey had you there to, let's
(13:58):
say, spearhead this effort, butit was a unified board, and all
five of you got together.
Instead of four times a year,you got together as necessary to
start to attack this realproblem and to find your your
leverage point, your pain point.
And you started where you couldwith the cosmetic things and who
(14:20):
was the famous bad guy that gottripped up,
Marc Reich (14:25):
Al Capone. There you go Chicago in the 1920s or 30s.
He probably murdered hundreds ofpeople, but he was ultimately
put in jail for tax evasion.
Okay, well,
Robert Nordlund (14:37):
to our audience, this may give you
whiplash, but we're going to gofrom murdering and putting in
jail for tax evasion to taking aquick break to hear from one of
our generous sponsors, afterwhich we'll be back to hear more
of Mark's story, and I want tohear about bomb scares too on
today's HOA insights podcastepisode. Are you
Paige Daniels (14:58):
part of a homeowners association?
Association or condominiumboard, making the right
financial decisions for yourcommunity's future is crucial.
At Association reserves, we'reproud to serve communities
nationwide, specializing inreserve studies tailored to your
community's unique needs. Ourexpert team helps you accurately
assess your property's assets,forecast future expenses and
(15:19):
develop a solid funding plan,whether you're a small HOA or a
large condominium association,we've got you covered. Visit
reserve study.com, to learn moreand get a proposal for your
association,
Robert Nordlund (15:30):
and we're back.
Well, Mark you tempted us rightbefore the break about the bomb
scare. So if it's not enough totalk about a drug house, is this
a new story or a different partof the drug house story. This is
part of the
Marc Reich (15:43):
drama. So on on Monday morning, August 4, 2008
police was ascended on my cul desac, evacuated houses because
they had received a tip that theresidents of the, what we call
the drug house, had plantedbombs in their backyard. It,
Robert Nordlund (16:09):
it's gone now from suspicion to now you're
you're pressing the pain points.
You have some financialleverage, you and the board, and
all of a sudden, now it's apolice problem.
Marc Reich (16:20):
So, yeah. So at this point in time, I had gotten on
the board. My neighbor, who wasconcerned, had gotten on the
board. We had replaced theproperty manager that was had
been reluctant to do anythingwith a property manager that was
being very aggressive. We hadfined them multiple times. We
had doubled we had Rupe thefines. We had leaned the house,
(16:44):
and we had not yet startedbefore closure proceedings. But
it was in that time frame thatthere was this anonymous tip
that they had bomb makingmaterials or bombs, and so the
SWAT unit came on, shout, speed,evacuated the houses, including
my house, and raided the houseand dug up their backyard and
(17:08):
went into the slope, the commonslope, the association property
behind their house, and foundwhat appeared to be plastic
explosives.
Robert Nordlund (17:17):
Geez. Louise, yes, yes. Okay, I am fortunate
to not know what plasticexplosives look like, but I'm
glad we have SWAT teams thatknow, and they can take care of
that.
Marc Reich (17:30):
So if one would Google 2008 Rancho Santa
Margarita bomb, you'll Yeah,which I did this morning. I
came, I found three articles,two from the Orange County
Register and one from the LATimes. So that was august 2008
and it was in the fall that theyput their home on the market.
(17:53):
And it was the fall that weinitiated the foreclosure
proceedings, and they they sold.
And one of the concerns of theexisting board members was they
didn't want to go down thisroute, because we had to hire a
law firm, and we incurredexpenses for this, but they had
equity in their house, so in theend, we submitted a bill to
(18:13):
escrow. We got paid back everycent of what on what we had
leaned them. So we actuallymade, yeah, a profit from the
fines we put on their house, butwe were not out of pocket
anything which satisfy theconcerns of the fiscally
conservative people thatweren't, which I respect but,
but they lost sight of what'simportant when you have a
(18:35):
situation that it poses adanger, a danger to the safety
of homeowners. It's worthspending money to cure that.
They lost sight of that, but inthe end, and cost us any money
in the end, yeah, he got rid ofa danger, a danger in our
community. Yeah,
Robert Nordlund (18:57):
again, I'm thinking about this imagining I
live on a quiet cul de sac in anice, planned community myself,
and it's one thing to have a fewextra cars, maybe in the middle
of the night, which I may noteven know about, because I I
sleep in the middle of thenight, and maybe tolerating the
nurse who lives down the streetwho works in the middle of the
(19:20):
night, Coming and going to somedegrees. You want to be a good
neighbor, but you also want tomake sure that when there's
suspicious and bad lookingthings going on, that you do the
right things. And we talk aboutthe four C's of being a good
board member, being that youcare, that you're curious what
is indeed going on. You havecourage to do the right thing.
(19:42):
And you got on the board, youlet go of the management
company. You got a newmanagement company, and you
communicated what was going on.
You got the rest of the board onyour on your side, but boy, that
really tips the energy a wholenever direction when the SWAT
team rolls in. And you'rethinking about a little drugs on
the side, compared to we'reblowing up the neighborhood, so
(20:04):
that kind of raises the stakes.
So they found the plasticexplosive. Am I just naive? Or
are plastic explosives relatedto selling drugs being
Marc Reich (20:20):
they're related to selling drugs? But, but what one
is a criminal, and in oneaspect, maybe they're criminals,
and other aspects, so what youknow? Why? Why did they? Yeah, I
had heard two different storiesabout the bomb making materials,
because ultimately, they weren'tarrested for that. And one, one
story was that one of the onestory was that the son of the
(20:46):
homeowners had bought what hethought was plastic explosives,
but he was hoodwinked what hebought was really plastic
explosives. So when the policeseized the materials, they
couldn't, I think they initiallyarrested, but they couldn't make
charges stick, because the it'snot a crime to buy what you
(21:07):
think is plastic explosives whenit's not. But in looking at one
of the three news articles Ifound this morning when I was
doing my research for thispodcast, one of them reported
that that the police, the policebrought a bomb truck, and so
they put the explosives, or whatappeared to be explosives, in
(21:30):
the bomb truck, and then theyexploded it, and that destroyed
it. So the sparkle said theycouldn't be charged because they
didn't have any remnants of theevidence.
Robert Nordlund (21:41):
Yes, she's always okay. 2008 was that a day
you were at work? And did yousay I'm glad I'm at work? Or did
you want to run home and seewhat the heck was going on?
Marc Reich (21:53):
Well, I remember that because I went to work, but
my wife, it was the summer, andI was taught three kids weren't
in school, and she had arrangedto go with another parent with
their kids, and they, I believe,they went to using either
Disneyland or not. So I so wehad some discussion. So they
left early in the morning to dothat. And I can't remember if we
(22:16):
were home when we were evacuatedor not home when we were but my
wife would be half cats anddogs, so my wife could was
concerned about the pets, sothere was discussion. I tried to
come home from work to get thepets. What if the the cul de sac
blows up? What's gonna happen toour pets? And I was thinking,
Well, if it blows up, you wantme in the house trying to save
the pets? But
Robert Nordlund (22:38):
yeah, how do you answer your wife when she
says, can you go rescue Fido?
And yes, you say, I love Fidotoo, but I'm not ready to give
my life for Fido.
Marc Reich (22:47):
Well, actually, it was Sierra, and the Sierra was
an incredible golden retrievernight. Oh, excuse me, not Fido,
but a golden retriever. Or forSierra, I would have risked my
life because that was okay, butas a practicality, I don't think
the police will let me in to getthe Beatles. So, yeah, help me
with that
Robert Nordlund (23:05):
timeline here.
Okay, so in the 2008 I'mthinking, wasn't that the
economic meltdown?
Marc Reich (23:10):
Oh, yeah, you're right, but I can't remember what
month the meltdown came. WhatI'm thinking came in the fall,
so the meltdown was about tocome by. Okay, so
Robert Nordlund (23:20):
you got the house foreclosed, and it sounds
like you got a new owner inthere that I want to say was a
normal homeowner assessment,paying member of the community.
Marc Reich (23:33):
Lovely family, four young kids now, three of the
kids are in college, once ingraduate school, they have one
remaining kid who's a junior inhigh school, and then they're
going to join me as emptynesters, and in a couple of
years, yes, we so we replacedthat the drug house with with a
wonderful family
Robert Nordlund (23:53):
good and were there ever arrests made, or was
it just that you said, this isnot the place for you?
Marc Reich (24:00):
If you go to the Orange County Superior Court
website and you plug in the lastname of those homeowners, you
will see that the Son has beenarrested. Well, at at that point
in time, he had been arrested, Iwant to say to two to four
times, but since then, he's beenarrested. Well, since then,
there's been another 30 or socriminal proceedings brought
(24:22):
against him. And the mother ofthe house also had at least two
criminal proceedings against herbefore they moved out, as had
several more criminalproceedings against her since
she moved out. So
Robert Nordlund (24:36):
where there's smoke, there's fire, yes, okay,
all right. And then timeline.
How long was this process? I youknow, before this conversation,
I don't think I was aware thatthis was, what, 15, 1616, years
ago or so. What was the process?
The timeline betweenunderstanding that you have a.
(25:00):
Problem at the associationrunning to get on the board, and
then August, when you finallygot them out, how long of a was
that months? Was that a coupleyears?
Marc Reich (25:07):
I think it's probably a couple of years,
because it's slowly degraded andit and over time, the residents
start acting weirder andbringing in outsiders to stay
their house, or who would driveby for a short period of time or
(25:27):
hang out in their house. Iremember my neighbor who wanted
to do these small claims,neusance actions. He also was in
pretty good shape. So he wouldsometimes sit and he was next
door to the drawing house. Hewould sometimes sit out on his
property with a baseball bat,glaring at the people who would
go in. And I thought that's abad idea, because, well, he has
(25:49):
a baseball bat. They might haveknives and
Unknown (25:52):
guns. So
Marc Reich (25:53):
I thought that. But so I want to say probably is
2006 or so when we becameconcerned. I live in a sub
Association The so there's amaster Association, but it's I
contacted them also, but theyweren't. Neither of them were
really doing much. So and thenit was in the fall of of 2007
(26:15):
where we were having theelection. I submitted my
candidacy statement, and I thinkit was probably a January 2008
where we, I got elected to theboard, and we gave the three
month notice to the existingproperty matter, because I went
back to my records and I saw thetermination letter, which so
they were terminated at the endof April 2008 and the the bomb
(26:37):
scare was August of 2008 and theforeclosure proceedings began in
September of 2008 but we had todo this lein pre lein process,
and leins and and so I think itwas probably on the fall of 2008
where they put the home on themarket and they voluntarily sold
to avoid the foreclosure
Robert Nordlund (26:58):
process. Got it okay. So a couple year process,
a few months of intensive work,I got to ask, could someone else
have done this, meaning anotherboard member, or did it require
someone like you with a attorneybackground who just knows
things? I
Marc Reich (27:17):
think anyone could have done it. It was you had to
be a little bit creative,because the problem was, you
know, they're selling drugs,there's potential violence. The
problem wasn't that their grassis brown, but that was an easy
thing to point out. Asenforcement the city, CNRS, yes,
(27:37):
it probably is a violation to beoperating an illegal business
out of your house, I would just,I would think so, yeah, but to
prove that is difficult. Whenthe brown is the grass is brown
or not, that's just an easything. The window being broken,
that's an easy thing. So maybe,being an attorney, I had a
(28:00):
little more creativity in termsof what can we get these these
people on, and then also havinga novel once they don't pay,
whether they don't pay theirdues or they don't pay these
fines, we have the ability tolean and foreclose. I would
think a properly a savvyproperty manager. And we have
professional property managers,both at the master Association
(28:22):
and at our small subAssociation, they should have
figured that out. This was knownas a problem drug house and then
why someone else didn't think ofthis earlier. Instead, the
reaction seemed to be, Let's notmess it with these people,
either, because they mightretaliate. Or two, is going to
cost the association a lot ofmoney, and we don't want to
(28:43):
spend money that we're not goingto recover. Yeah, which was a
fallacy, because it was equityin the house, so it was really
plenty of money to recover.
Robert Nordlund (28:52):
Yeah. Well, I like hearing that again. The
Four C's started with youcaring, started out with you
being curious. What is theproblem here? Being courageous,
applying that. I like hearingthat it could have been someone
else going through those steps.
I like hearing that sometimes,when the management company
doesn't see it as their problem,you took it on as your problem,
(29:14):
and you made things you madethings happen. So tell me, now
that we have a story arc, areyou still on the board? I am
still on the board. Yes, okay,yes, to solve one problem in
2007 or so and you're still onthe board. What keeps you on the
board?
Marc Reich (29:35):
Well, we have 50 homeowners with really no common
area. We have slopes behind thehouse, so we hired a landscaper
to maintain the slopes. Wemaintain the mailboxes this.
There's not a lot to do. We meetfour times a year, so it's a
good group. So I stay on theboard, because I think it can't
(29:56):
hurt to have a say on this, thisbody. That has could happen. A
lot of that it does have a lotof authority, really, to keep
things reasonable and in checkand not to overreact to things.
So you talk about communication,sometimes we have homeowners
that. One example is that onehome was having auto bill paying
(30:21):
service pay for the associationdues. But something went awry
with that, and they stoppedpaying their dues. But they
didn't know about that. Well,the property manager goes on
autopilot and they send out aform letter, but these people
don't open the letters from theassociation. Why? Because they
know their their dues are beingpaid, so they on autopilot. They
(30:43):
go four months without paying,and now they're, yeah, they're
getting fines they don't knowabout because they're not only
in the mail. We get a boardpacket. We meet once every three
months, we get a board packet. Iget wind of it because I see the
delinquency in the board packet.
But I know these people, soyeah, I give them a call. Hey,
Laurie, do you have any ideathat you haven't been paying
your dues? No, we pay it on weuse it's auto paid. And I said,
(31:05):
Well, something happened. Youhaven't been Oh, my God, I'll
take care of it. And then that'sthat solves the problem. So I
think being on the board allowsme to intervene, to stop issues
before they become issues,because most of the times the
these things can be corrected ifyou use little common sense and
(31:26):
a little in a little commoncourtesy. So maybe it doesn't
mess a sixth C, we could raise acourtesy. These contacts are
going
Robert Nordlund (31:37):
to get longer and longer if we're going up to
Marc Reich (31:41):
six C's. So it's really an easy job. We don't
have a lot of issues, but ifthere is a top issue, I think
it's helpful to be there to tryto solve the tough issue. And we
had one other tough issue in my15 or so years on the board,
which, yeah, we may not want toget into right now. Yeah,
Robert Nordlund (31:59):
we're I'm trying to bring this in for a
landing. Yeah, I like hearingthat you knew when to be firm
and when to give grace. Itreminds me of we had some very
good friends, and the husbanddied of a sudden heart attack,
and I knew where they lived. Iknew the management company, and
(32:21):
I literally called up themanagement company. I said, you
know that the husband in thishouse just died. Is there any
way you can put them on pauseand give the widow grace for a
few months to get her financialaffairs squared away? They got
enough problems going on rightnow with the loss of the Father,
and they were wonderfullyconsiderate, and they did
(32:43):
exactly that. And there's a timeto give grace, there's a time to
be to build community, to be agood neighbor, and then there's
a time when, in the bestinterest of the association, you
are a good neighbor by squashingthe bug that's in the community.
So I I like that. Well, Mark, Iwant to thank you for taking the
(33:03):
time to join us on today'sprogram, as we regularly do with
our board heroes. In closing, Iwant to ask what advice you have
for the board members in ouraudience. I
Marc Reich (33:13):
think maybe a 7c is could be compassion. If you live
in an association, some peopletake the attitude it's me and
them, and they're coming down onme and they're being unfair, but
they are you. It is. So I thinkone point of advice is, get
involved. Don't be afraid to runfor the board, and don't be
afraid to knock on doors,because otherwise no one while
(33:35):
this to read the ballots and noone fills it out. So you don't
have quorum, and then just moreand more problems, and then
you're right. So I think don'tbe scared to get involved. It's
easy for me to say, because Ihave a very easy association of
only 50 homes with thatpractically no common area to
maintain. And number two, onceyou do get involved, realize you
(33:58):
wield a lot of power. So use itsparingly, with discretion and
with good judgment, right? Ilike that was be my advice,
Robert Nordlund (34:09):
too. Bad judgment is not another C, or
would be up to eight, yeah,well, think of a word right
after we close, yes, we want topublicly acknowledge mark for
performing a thankless job welland compliment the entire board
of directors at Mallorcamaintenance Corporation for
taking their responsibilityseriously to act in the best
interest of their association.
Well, we hope you gain some HOAinsights from Mark's story, and
(34:31):
that it helps you bring commonsense to your common area. Now
remember, if you match ourdefinition of a board hero, or
know someone who does, pleasereach out to us. Our contact
details are provided in the shownotes. Thank you for joining us,
and we look forward to anothergreat episode next week.
Announcer (34:52):
You've been listening to Hoa insights, common sense
for common areas, if you likethe show and want to support the
work that we do. You can do soin a number of ways. The most
important thing that you can dois engage in the conversation.
Leave a question in the commentssection on our YouTube videos.
You can also email yourquestions or voice memos to
podcast at reserve study.com orleave us a voicemail at
(35:15):
805-203-3130, if you gain anyinsights from the show, please
do us a HUGE favor by sharingthe show with other board
members that you know. You canalso support us by supporting
the brands that sponsor thisprogram. Please remember that
the views and opinions expressedin this program are those of the
hosts and guests with the goalof providing general education
(35:37):
about the community, associationindustry, you want to consult
licensed professionals beforemaking any important decisions.
Finally, this podcast wasexpertly mixed and mastered by
Stoke Light, video and marketingwith Stoke Light on your team,
you'll reach more customers withmarketing expertise that
inspires action. See the shownotes to connect with Stoke
Light
I think anyone could have done it. It was, you had to
(00:04):
be a little bit creative,because the problem was, they're
selling drugs. There's potentialviolence. The problem wasn't
that their grass is brown, butthat was an easy thing to point
out. So maybe, being anattorney, I had a little more
creativity in terms of what canwe get these these people on
Announcer (00:26):
A regular highlight of the HOA insights podcast is
our board heroes feature, wherewe dedicate one episode each
month to celebrate theremarkable efforts of HOA board
members to us a board hero isone of the 2 million elected
volunteers who deserverecognition for excelling in a
role that often goes unnoticed.
Today, we're excited tospotlight one of these
(00:46):
exceptional board heroes andshare their inspiring story. If
you match our definition of aboard hero, or know someone who
does, please reach out to us.
Our contact details and those ofour sponsors are provided in the
show notes.
Robert Nordlund (00:59):
Welcome back to Hoa insights, common sense for
common areas. I'm RobertNordlund, and I'm here today for
episode number 91 with a specialguest, board hero. I learned of
our guest via a mutual friend,hearing the remarkable things he
was able to get accomplished forhis community. Just another
volunteer board member, but ahero to his community and all in
(01:21):
our podcast audience. I was soglad I was able to get a spot on
his calendar to record thisepisode for you so he could
share his story. Well, I hopeyou enjoyed last week's episode
number 90, with regular co hostand management consultant Julie
Adamen discussing trends weexpect you'll see in 2025 we
want you to be prepared for thechanges that are coming. So if
(01:43):
you missed that episode or anyother prior episode, you can
find them on our podcastwebsite, Hoa insights.org, on
your favorite podcast platform,or on our YouTube channel, but
better yet, subscribe to thepodcast. In order to get every
episode delivered right to yourphone or mobile device. Well,
those of you watching on YouTubecan see the custom mug that I
(02:07):
have here that I got from ourmerchandise store, which you can
browse through from ourHOAinsights.org website or the
show notes. And you'll find wehave specialty items like this
and free board member zoombackgrounds and as a special
promotion, go to the merchstore, browse through the items
and pick a mug you'd like tohave, and if you're the 10th
(02:29):
person to emailpodcast@reserves.a.com
mentioning episode 91 muggiveaway, then we'll give that
mug out free of charge to you,shipping and all well, we enjoy
hearing from you, and mostepisodes are in response to a
topic that you've recommended.
So do stay in contact, lettingus know what questions you have
(02:50):
or topics that you'd like tohear more about. Leave us a
voicemail at 805-203-3130, leavea comment on a YouTube video or
send us an email atpodcast@reservestudy.com but
back to today's episode, I onlyknow our guest today, board
member, Mark Reich, by thereputation shared by a homeowner
(03:13):
in his community, a friend ofmine, so today, I'll be learning
along with you about Mark andthe things that he's done for
his community, Majorcamaintenance Corporation. It's a
50 home development of singlefamily homes in a nice section
of town in Southern California.
They don't have a lot of commonareas there. It's just pretty
(03:35):
much mailboxes, an irrigationsystem and some landscaping
assets, but lots of interestingthings going on. So Mark,
welcome to the program. Robert,thank you. A pleasure to be
here. Well, tell me how long?
Tell me where the story starts.
How long have you lived atMallorca? Well, I've lived here
for 22 years. Okay, and tell memore. Is it professionally
(03:58):
managed?
Marc Reich (03:59):
It is professionally managed. Power Stone, property
management, who has been with ussince 2015 and who I like a lot.
Robert Nordlund (04:08):
Okay, great. So good management company,
professional management. What'syour day job? Or are you
retired?
Marc Reich (04:15):
I am an attorney. I have my own law practice, a
small partnership with two otherlaw partners
Robert Nordlund (04:22):
got it. Okay, so, homeowner, attorney, single
family home in a nice section ofSouthern California. What got
you interested in being on theboard? Okay, so,
Marc Reich (04:35):
one very, very nice introduction. I appreciate the
hero comment, but I'm no hero,but I did step up when we had a
problem neighbor. So we had aneighbor who appeared to be
selling drugs out of theirhouse. We would have cars that
would drive up in the middle ofthe night, midnight, 1am stop
(04:57):
for a minute. Someone would comeout of the house. House, there
would be an exchange of somematerials. The car would drive
away, and that would happenseveral times a week. I was not
on the board at that time, but Icontacted our association
property manager, and because,in addition to this suspicious
activity, and also we would havestrange people who would stay
(05:21):
overnight, sometimes seedylooking people. But in addition
to that, they weren'tmaintaining their house. They
had a broken window in theirgarage door. Their grass was
brown. They had dents in theirstucco, so they were violating
CCN arms. Some neighbors hadcome to me, because I'm an
(05:43):
attorney, saying, What can we doabout this? Can we had read
about other homeowners filingSmall Claims actions against
hoarders that for under nuisancetheories and being successful,
getting judgments and thenleaning the house and then
foreclosing. So some neighborscame to me, said, Can we do
that? And I said, Well, yeah, wecan, but really, the association
(06:05):
can, can do it for us. So let mecontact the property manager.
The property manager wasn'tdoing anything, and the existing
board wasn't doing anything. Sowe had an election coming up. We
have five positions on theboard. So every year there's two
openings, and the other yearthere's three openings, because
it's a staggered term I like. Soso that year there were two
(06:28):
positions open. So one of theneighbors who was concerned
about this, and I, we ran forthe board.
Robert Nordlund (06:34):
So I hear lots of people run for the board on
the platform of we're going tofix the roof, or we're going to
lower the homeowner assessments,or something like that. What was
your political campaign? We'regoing to get rid of the drug
house at 12345, Main Street. Youknow? How do you how do you say,
well,
Marc Reich (06:55):
there were, there were, there were two aspects of
it. One was, you submit awritten statement of your
qualifications, and the writtenstatement was, was a vanilla I'm
I've lived in the community forblah, blah, blah. I'm an
attorney. I'm an accountant. Ithink those experiences will
allow me to be a positivecontribution to the board
playing vanilla. But as you mayknow, you know, when people get
(07:19):
the ballots, most people throwthem out, they don't turn them
in. You don't get quorum at themeeting, right? So what I did is
I had the property manager giveme 20 or 30 blank ballots, and I
went door to door with the blankballots, and that's what I said,
Hey, we got a problem here. Theboard's not doing anything. Me
and my buddy Dan down thestreet, we're going to get
(07:40):
elected. So here, sign here, putour names in, and then here, and
I'll put in the envelope for youwithout deliver it to the
property manager. So we stuffthe ballots, and we did that,
but it was, yeah, it waslegitimate. So that's how the
two of us got elected to theboard. And so now there's five.
We don't control the board, butwhen we were board members, we
(08:02):
were able to turn one of theboard members, their attitude
was, we're not going to botherwith them, because we're never
going to collect. We're going tospend a lot of money, extra
money with the property manager,with legal fees, so we're not
going to bother with that.
Robert Nordlund (08:15):
In addition to the house and the front yard,
I'm imagining being indisrepair. Were they also
delinquent?
Marc Reich (08:23):
Not at that time, okay, but when we start leaning
them in retaliation, theystopped paying their dues, which
was fine. That was great, so weattacked them on the three
violations. One, it appearedthey were having non family
members stay there. And the ccnrsaid, if you're going to rent to
somebody, you have to provide acopy of the lease to the to the
(08:46):
association. They didn't provideus with a copy of any lease. So
we said, that's that's aviolation, the holes in the
stucco or the debts in thestock, well, that was a
violation. The broken window inthe garage door was a violation,
and their brown grass was aviolation, and then also our CCR
said that we could double thefines after every infraction. So
(09:07):
what we started doing, westarted we will normally meet
four times a year, but westarted having meetings every
two weeks so we can double thefines when they didn't cure the
violation. Interesting.
Robert Nordlund (09:19):
Okay, so you found a pressure point. The
pressure point was a financialyou had some you could apply
some financial pain to see ifyou could push them out. Yeah.
And
Marc Reich (09:32):
so eventually, and then we, we started the Lien
process and the foreclosureprocess. And there's a number of
months you have to do a greenlien letter, then you do the
lien, then you initiate theforeclosure proceedings. If you
do it a non judicialforeclosure, that's a four month
process, if things go smoothly.
So we started down that road,and eventually they put the home
(09:55):
on the market and they moved.
Out, and everything was fine,although we did have that bomb
scare that I told you aboutoffline before they left.
Robert Nordlund (10:09):
All right, so you've got a peaceful, 50 home
community in a nice subdivisionSouthern California, and all of
a sudden you have a bit of aneyesore home. And in addition to
it being a bit of an eyesore,you have odd traffic. And we're
not talking about Amazon vans orUPS fans. You're talking can I
(10:31):
use nefarious, suspiciouscharacters? Yes, at all times of
the day or night. And you'rethinking, this is not what this
community is about. What can wedo? You got an ally. You not
only ran for the board, you didyour kissing babies,
(10:51):
politicking, knocking on doors.
And that reminds me of megetting on the board of my
association and passing ourspecial assessment. I was Knock,
knock, knock on the boards. Doyou know about this? You should
vote yes, those kinds of things.
And you got yourself elected.
Okay, let me, let me wind itback, because I think there's
got to be this entire secondphase of the story. But so you
(11:12):
got on the board, and you weretwo out of five. You developed
an ally, and you overcame theobstacle of the management
company that wasn't we helping.
Marc Reich (11:26):
We fired that management company. We replaced
them with another managementcompany.
Robert Nordlund (11:30):
Okay, what was your role on the board? Were you
designated tiger or president?
Or did they say, Okay, we'll runthe association. You just take
care of the bad house. Uh,
Marc Reich (11:45):
no, this is a five person board. I don't, I don't.
We do have titles. We have asecretary or president, a vice
president. The titles really aremeaningless. You have a one
fifth vote on whatever problemsand issues that have to be
addressed. I was focused on onthis problem, and so we very
aggressively attacked it. Nowthat's kind of opposite of what
(12:08):
my general attitude is, becausegenerally, I think as an
association and board memberswield a lot of power, and I
think you have you one should bevery careful you mentioned, and
we might talk about the four C'slater, but I have a fifth C, and
that's read carefully. If youread your CC and R, there's a
(12:32):
lot of things that would be aviolation that really should not
be a problem. I think in ourassociation, it's a violation if
you leave your garage door openmore than momentarily Well, or
if you have your basketball hoopand you leave it on the sidewalk
so the kids can play in thestreet. And those are the kinds
of things I don't want to beenforced. Okay? So I think in
(12:55):
general, yeah, show a lot ofdiscretion when there is a need,
because there really is adanger, like in this situation
or someone is not paying theirdues, then I think you have to
act aggressively. So this is oneof the exceptions to my rule of
(13:15):
show restraint, in which weacted very, very aggressively
and we went against them forthese cosmetic CC and R, but
that's because we reallycouldn't prove they were selling
drugs or that they were plantingbombs, which, yeah, wait,
Unknown (13:32):
wait, that's part two.
That's part two. But no, I
Robert Nordlund (13:35):
really like what you're saying, because the
board needs to function as agroup. You don't need to be
unanimous, but you need to beunited in what's best for our
community, and so you don't wanta I'll be careful, crazy board
member off making life hard onpeople for the minor
infractions. So I'm glad thatthey had you there to, let's
(13:58):
say, spearhead this effort, butit was a unified board, and all
five of you got together.
Instead of four times a year,you got together as necessary to
start to attack this realproblem and to find your your
leverage point, your pain point.
And you started where you couldwith the cosmetic things and who
(14:20):
was the famous bad guy that gottripped up,
Marc Reich (14:25):
Al Capone. There you go Chicago in the 1920s or 30s.
He probably murdered hundreds ofpeople, but he was ultimately
put in jail for tax evasion.
Okay, well,
Robert Nordlund (14:37):
to our audience, this may give you
whiplash, but we're going to gofrom murdering and putting in
jail for tax evasion to taking aquick break to hear from one of
our generous sponsors, afterwhich we'll be back to hear more
of Mark's story, and I want tohear about bomb scares too on
today's HOA insights podcastepisode. Are you
Paige Daniels (14:58):
part of a homeowners association?
Association or condominiumboard, making the right
financial decisions for yourcommunity's future is crucial.
At Association reserves, we'reproud to serve communities
nationwide, specializing inreserve studies tailored to your
community's unique needs. Ourexpert team helps you accurately
assess your property's assets,forecast future expenses and
(15:19):
develop a solid funding plan,whether you're a small HOA or a
large condominium association,we've got you covered. Visit
reserve study.com, to learn moreand get a proposal for your
association,
Robert Nordlund (15:30):
and we're back.
Well, Mark you tempted us rightbefore the break about the bomb
scare. So if it's not enough totalk about a drug house, is this
a new story or a different partof the drug house story. This is
part of the
Marc Reich (15:43):
drama. So on on Monday morning, August 4, 2008
police was ascended on my cul desac, evacuated houses because
they had received a tip that theresidents of the, what we call
the drug house, had plantedbombs in their backyard. It,
Robert Nordlund (16:09):
it's gone now from suspicion to now you're
you're pressing the pain points.
You have some financialleverage, you and the board, and
all of a sudden, now it's apolice problem.
Marc Reich (16:20):
So, yeah. So at this point in time, I had gotten on
the board. My neighbor, who wasconcerned, had gotten on the
board. We had replaced theproperty manager that was had
been reluctant to do anythingwith a property manager that was
being very aggressive. We hadfined them multiple times. We
had doubled we had Rupe thefines. We had leaned the house,
(16:44):
and we had not yet startedbefore closure proceedings. But
it was in that time frame thatthere was this anonymous tip
that they had bomb makingmaterials or bombs, and so the
SWAT unit came on, shout, speed,evacuated the houses, including
my house, and raided the houseand dug up their backyard and
(17:08):
went into the slope, the commonslope, the association property
behind their house, and foundwhat appeared to be plastic
explosives.
Robert Nordlund (17:17):
Geez. Louise, yes, yes. Okay, I am fortunate
to not know what plasticexplosives look like, but I'm
glad we have SWAT teams thatknow, and they can take care of
that.
Marc Reich (17:30):
So if one would Google 2008 Rancho Santa
Margarita bomb, you'll Yeah,which I did this morning. I
came, I found three articles,two from the Orange County
Register and one from the LATimes. So that was august 2008
and it was in the fall that theyput their home on the market.
(17:53):
And it was the fall that weinitiated the foreclosure
proceedings, and they they sold.
And one of the concerns of theexisting board members was they
didn't want to go down thisroute, because we had to hire a
law firm, and we incurredexpenses for this, but they had
equity in their house, so in theend, we submitted a bill to
(18:13):
escrow. We got paid back everycent of what on what we had
leaned them. So we actuallymade, yeah, a profit from the
fines we put on their house, butwe were not out of pocket
anything which satisfy theconcerns of the fiscally
conservative people thatweren't, which I respect but,
but they lost sight of what'simportant when you have a
(18:35):
situation that it poses adanger, a danger to the safety
of homeowners. It's worthspending money to cure that.
They lost sight of that, but inthe end, and cost us any money
in the end, yeah, he got rid ofa danger, a danger in our
community. Yeah,
Robert Nordlund (18:57):
again, I'm thinking about this imagining I
live on a quiet cul de sac in anice, planned community myself,
and it's one thing to have a fewextra cars, maybe in the middle
of the night, which I may noteven know about, because I I
sleep in the middle of thenight, and maybe tolerating the
nurse who lives down the streetwho works in the middle of the
(19:20):
night, Coming and going to somedegrees. You want to be a good
neighbor, but you also want tomake sure that when there's
suspicious and bad lookingthings going on, that you do the
right things. And we talk aboutthe four C's of being a good
board member, being that youcare, that you're curious what
is indeed going on. You havecourage to do the right thing.
(19:42):
And you got on the board, youlet go of the management
company. You got a newmanagement company, and you
communicated what was going on.
You got the rest of the board onyour on your side, but boy, that
really tips the energy a wholenever direction when the SWAT
team rolls in. And you'rethinking about a little drugs on
the side, compared to we'reblowing up the neighborhood, so
(20:04):
that kind of raises the stakes.
So they found the plasticexplosive. Am I just naive? Or
are plastic explosives relatedto selling drugs being
Marc Reich (20:20):
they're related to selling drugs? But, but what one
is a criminal, and in oneaspect, maybe they're criminals,
and other aspects, so what youknow? Why? Why did they? Yeah, I
had heard two different storiesabout the bomb making materials,
because ultimately, they weren'tarrested for that. And one, one
story was that one of the onestory was that the son of the
(20:46):
homeowners had bought what hethought was plastic explosives,
but he was hoodwinked what hebought was really plastic
explosives. So when the policeseized the materials, they
couldn't, I think they initiallyarrested, but they couldn't make
charges stick, because the it'snot a crime to buy what you
(21:07):
think is plastic explosives whenit's not. But in looking at one
of the three news articles Ifound this morning when I was
doing my research for thispodcast, one of them reported
that that the police, the policebrought a bomb truck, and so
they put the explosives, or whatappeared to be explosives, in
(21:30):
the bomb truck, and then theyexploded it, and that destroyed
it. So the sparkle said theycouldn't be charged because they
didn't have any remnants of theevidence.
Robert Nordlund (21:41):
Yes, she's always okay. 2008 was that a day
you were at work? And did yousay I'm glad I'm at work? Or did
you want to run home and seewhat the heck was going on?
Marc Reich (21:53):
Well, I remember that because I went to work, but
my wife, it was the summer, andI was taught three kids weren't
in school, and she had arrangedto go with another parent with
their kids, and they, I believe,they went to using either
Disneyland or not. So I so wehad some discussion. So they
left early in the morning to dothat. And I can't remember if we
(22:16):
were home when we were evacuatedor not home when we were but my
wife would be half cats anddogs, so my wife could was
concerned about the pets, sothere was discussion. I tried to
come home from work to get thepets. What if the the cul de sac
blows up? What's gonna happen toour pets? And I was thinking,
Well, if it blows up, you wantme in the house trying to save
the pets? But
Robert Nordlund (22:38):
yeah, how do you answer your wife when she
says, can you go rescue Fido?
And yes, you say, I love Fidotoo, but I'm not ready to give
my life for Fido.
Marc Reich (22:47):
Well, actually, it was Sierra, and the Sierra was
an incredible golden retrievernight. Oh, excuse me, not Fido,
but a golden retriever. Or forSierra, I would have risked my
life because that was okay, butas a practicality, I don't think
the police will let me in to getthe Beatles. So, yeah, help me
with that
Robert Nordlund (23:05):
timeline here.
Okay, so in the 2008 I'mthinking, wasn't that the
economic meltdown?
Marc Reich (23:10):
Oh, yeah, you're right, but I can't remember what
month the meltdown came. WhatI'm thinking came in the fall,
so the meltdown was about tocome by. Okay, so
Robert Nordlund (23:20):
you got the house foreclosed, and it sounds
like you got a new owner inthere that I want to say was a
normal homeowner assessment,paying member of the community.
Marc Reich (23:33):
Lovely family, four young kids now, three of the
kids are in college, once ingraduate school, they have one
remaining kid who's a junior inhigh school, and then they're
going to join me as emptynesters, and in a couple of
years, yes, we so we replacedthat the drug house with with a
wonderful family
Robert Nordlund (23:53):
good and were there ever arrests made, or was
it just that you said, this isnot the place for you?
Marc Reich (24:00):
If you go to the Orange County Superior Court
website and you plug in the lastname of those homeowners, you
will see that the Son has beenarrested. Well, at at that point
in time, he had been arrested, Iwant to say to two to four
times, but since then, he's beenarrested. Well, since then,
there's been another 30 or socriminal proceedings brought
(24:22):
against him. And the mother ofthe house also had at least two
criminal proceedings against herbefore they moved out, as had
several more criminalproceedings against her since
she moved out. So
Robert Nordlund (24:36):
where there's smoke, there's fire, yes, okay,
all right. And then timeline.
How long was this process? I youknow, before this conversation,
I don't think I was aware thatthis was, what, 15, 1616, years
ago or so. What was the process?
The timeline betweenunderstanding that you have a.
(25:00):
Problem at the associationrunning to get on the board, and
then August, when you finallygot them out, how long of a was
that months? Was that a coupleyears?
Marc Reich (25:07):
I think it's probably a couple of years,
because it's slowly degraded andit and over time, the residents
start acting weirder andbringing in outsiders to stay
their house, or who would driveby for a short period of time or
(25:27):
hang out in their house. Iremember my neighbor who wanted
to do these small claims,neusance actions. He also was in
pretty good shape. So he wouldsometimes sit and he was next
door to the drawing house. Hewould sometimes sit out on his
property with a baseball bat,glaring at the people who would
go in. And I thought that's abad idea, because, well, he has
(25:49):
a baseball bat. They might haveknives and
Unknown (25:52):
guns. So
Marc Reich (25:53):
I thought that. But so I want to say probably is
2006 or so when we becameconcerned. I live in a sub
Association The so there's amaster Association, but it's I
contacted them also, but theyweren't. Neither of them were
really doing much. So and thenit was in the fall of of 2007
(26:15):
where we were having theelection. I submitted my
candidacy statement, and I thinkit was probably a January 2008
where we, I got elected to theboard, and we gave the three
month notice to the existingproperty matter, because I went
back to my records and I saw thetermination letter, which so
they were terminated at the endof April 2008 and the the bomb
(26:37):
scare was August of 2008 and theforeclosure proceedings began in
September of 2008 but we had todo this lein pre lein process,
and leins and and so I think itwas probably on the fall of 2008
where they put the home on themarket and they voluntarily sold
to avoid the foreclosure
Robert Nordlund (26:58):
process. Got it okay. So a couple year process,
a few months of intensive work,I got to ask, could someone else
have done this, meaning anotherboard member, or did it require
someone like you with a attorneybackground who just knows
things? I
Marc Reich (27:17):
think anyone could have done it. It was you had to
be a little bit creative,because the problem was, you
know, they're selling drugs,there's potential violence. The
problem wasn't that their grassis brown, but that was an easy
thing to point out. Asenforcement the city, CNRS, yes,
(27:37):
it probably is a violation to beoperating an illegal business
out of your house, I would just,I would think so, yeah, but to
prove that is difficult. Whenthe brown is the grass is brown
or not, that's just an easything. The window being broken,
that's an easy thing. So maybe,being an attorney, I had a
(28:00):
little more creativity in termsof what can we get these these
people on, and then also havinga novel once they don't pay,
whether they don't pay theirdues or they don't pay these
fines, we have the ability tolean and foreclose. I would
think a properly a savvyproperty manager. And we have
professional property managers,both at the master Association
(28:22):
and at our small subAssociation, they should have
figured that out. This was knownas a problem drug house and then
why someone else didn't think ofthis earlier. Instead, the
reaction seemed to be, Let's notmess it with these people,
either, because they mightretaliate. Or two, is going to
cost the association a lot ofmoney, and we don't want to
(28:43):
spend money that we're not goingto recover. Yeah, which was a
fallacy, because it was equityin the house, so it was really
plenty of money to recover.
Robert Nordlund (28:52):
Yeah. Well, I like hearing that again. The
Four C's started with youcaring, started out with you
being curious. What is theproblem here? Being courageous,
applying that. I like hearingthat it could have been someone
else going through those steps.
I like hearing that sometimes,when the management company
doesn't see it as their problem,you took it on as your problem,
(29:14):
and you made things you madethings happen. So tell me, now
that we have a story arc, areyou still on the board? I am
still on the board. Yes, okay,yes, to solve one problem in
2007 or so and you're still onthe board. What keeps you on the
board?
Marc Reich (29:35):
Well, we have 50 homeowners with really no common
area. We have slopes behind thehouse, so we hired a landscaper
to maintain the slopes. Wemaintain the mailboxes this.
There's not a lot to do. We meetfour times a year, so it's a
good group. So I stay on theboard, because I think it can't
(29:56):
hurt to have a say on this, thisbody. That has could happen. A
lot of that it does have a lotof authority, really, to keep
things reasonable and in checkand not to overreact to things.
So you talk about communication,sometimes we have homeowners
that. One example is that onehome was having auto bill paying
(30:21):
service pay for the associationdues. But something went awry
with that, and they stoppedpaying their dues. But they
didn't know about that. Well,the property manager goes on
autopilot and they send out aform letter, but these people
don't open the letters from theassociation. Why? Because they
know their their dues are beingpaid, so they on autopilot. They
(30:43):
go four months without paying,and now they're, yeah, they're
getting fines they don't knowabout because they're not only
in the mail. We get a boardpacket. We meet once every three
months, we get a board packet. Iget wind of it because I see the
delinquency in the board packet.
But I know these people, soyeah, I give them a call. Hey,
Laurie, do you have any ideathat you haven't been paying
your dues? No, we pay it on weuse it's auto paid. And I said,
(31:05):
Well, something happened. Youhaven't been Oh, my God, I'll
take care of it. And then that'sthat solves the problem. So I
think being on the board allowsme to intervene, to stop issues
before they become issues,because most of the times the
these things can be corrected ifyou use little common sense and
(31:26):
a little in a little commoncourtesy. So maybe it doesn't
mess a sixth C, we could raise acourtesy. These contacts are
going
Robert Nordlund (31:37):
to get longer and longer if we're going up to
Marc Reich (31:41):
six C's. So it's really an easy job. We don't
have a lot of issues, but ifthere is a top issue, I think
it's helpful to be there to tryto solve the tough issue. And we
had one other tough issue in my15 or so years on the board,
which, yeah, we may not want toget into right now. Yeah,
Robert Nordlund (31:59):
we're I'm trying to bring this in for a
landing. Yeah, I like hearingthat you knew when to be firm
and when to give grace. Itreminds me of we had some very
good friends, and the husbanddied of a sudden heart attack,
and I knew where they lived. Iknew the management company, and
(32:21):
I literally called up themanagement company. I said, you
know that the husband in thishouse just died. Is there any
way you can put them on pauseand give the widow grace for a
few months to get her financialaffairs squared away? They got
enough problems going on rightnow with the loss of the Father,
and they were wonderfullyconsiderate, and they did
(32:43):
exactly that. And there's a timeto give grace, there's a time to
be to build community, to be agood neighbor, and then there's
a time when, in the bestinterest of the association, you
are a good neighbor by squashingthe bug that's in the community.
So I I like that. Well, Mark, Iwant to thank you for taking the
(33:03):
time to join us on today'sprogram, as we regularly do with
our board heroes. In closing, Iwant to ask what advice you have
for the board members in ouraudience. I
Marc Reich (33:13):
think maybe a 7c is could be compassion. If you live
in an association, some peopletake the attitude it's me and
them, and they're coming down onme and they're being unfair, but
they are you. It is. So I thinkone point of advice is, get
involved. Don't be afraid to runfor the board, and don't be
afraid to knock on doors,because otherwise no one while
(33:35):
this to read the ballots and noone fills it out. So you don't
have quorum, and then just moreand more problems, and then
you're right. So I think don'tbe scared to get involved. It's
easy for me to say, because Ihave a very easy association of
only 50 homes with thatpractically no common area to
maintain. And number two, onceyou do get involved, realize you
(33:58):
wield a lot of power. So use itsparingly, with discretion and
with good judgment, right? Ilike that was be my advice,
Robert Nordlund (34:09):
too. Bad judgment is not another C, or
would be up to eight, yeah,well, think of a word right
after we close, yes, we want topublicly acknowledge mark for
performing a thankless job welland compliment the entire board
of directors at Mallorcamaintenance Corporation for
taking their responsibilityseriously to act in the best
interest of their association.
Well, we hope you gain some HOAinsights from Mark's story, and
(34:31):
that it helps you bring commonsense to your common area. Now
remember, if you match ourdefinition of a board hero, or
know someone who does, pleasereach out to us. Our contact
details are provided in the shownotes. Thank you for joining us,
and we look forward to anothergreat episode next week.
Announcer (34:52):
You've been listening to Hoa insights, common sense
for common areas, if you likethe show and want to support the
work that we do. You can do soin a number of ways. The most
important thing that you can dois engage in the conversation.
Leave a question in the commentssection on our YouTube videos.
You can also email yourquestions or voice memos to
podcast at reserve study.com orleave us a voicemail at
(35:15):
805-203-3130, if you gain anyinsights from the show, please
do us a HUGE favor by sharingthe show with other board
members that you know. You canalso support us by supporting
the brands that sponsor thisprogram. Please remember that
the views and opinions expressedin this program are those of the
hosts and guests with the goalof providing general education
(35:37):
about the community, associationindustry, you want to consult
licensed professionals beforemaking any important decisions.
Finally, this podcast wasexpertly mixed and mastered by
Stoke Light, video and marketingwith Stoke Light on your team,
you'll reach more customers withmarketing expertise that
inspires action. See the shownotes to connect with Stoke
Light
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com