If you rent a condominium, you pay rent to the owner of the condo, who is your landlord. The owner is probably required to pay a monthly condo fee to the building's condo association. If your landlord stops paying the monthly condo fee, or if she refuses to pay other one-time condo charges, called assessments, the condo association may, by law, ask you to pay your rent to the condo association instead of paying it to your landlord.22
Before it can collect rent from you, the condo association must wait until the landlord's condo fee payments are at least 25 days late. It must then send a notice to the landlord explaining that it intends to collect the rent for her unit. If the landlord does not respond to the condo association's notice within 10 days, or if she admits that she owes the association money, then the association is allowed to collect rent from you.
If a condo association asks for your rent, you should ask it to put the request in writing. You should also ask for copies of the notice the association sent to your landlord and any written response that your landlord gave to the association. If the landlord did not respond to the condo association's notice in 10 days, then the condo association can collect all or some of your rent each month until you have paid off the amount that the association claims the landlord owes. If your landlord did respond to the association's notice and admitted that she owed some but not all of the money, then the association can collect rent from you only until you have paid off the amount the landlord admitted was owed. If the landlord responded to the condo association in time but denied that she owed any money, then the condo association cannot collect rent from you. No matter what your landlord does, the condo association cannot ask you to pay more than your regular rent.
A landlord cannot evict you or retaliate against you for paying rent to a condo association under the law.23 To protect yourself, be sure to get receipts for any rent payments that you make to a condo association.
Produced by Esme Caramello Created July 2008
