Being on the Belle­vue and Kirk­land condo prowl with one of my val­ued clients, I was reminded again how dif­fi­cult it can be to find out all the facts before mak­ing an offer. One of the list­ing men­tions some “pos­si­ble future assess­ment” and the list­ing agent pro­fesses not to know any­thing more specific.

What to do?

Call the man­age­ment com­pany. I am still wait­ing for a call back but I’m not hold­ing my breath. Scour the web, look­ing for “name of condo + law­suit” or sim­i­lar, but to no avail.

You want the infor­ma­tion? Make an offer!

To get this elu­sive infor­ma­tion the buyer must make an offer and the seller needs to accept the offer — i.e., the two par­ties must reach mutual agree­ment. Only then will the buyer receive the RESALE CERTIFICATE (from the con­do­minium asso­ci­a­tion or autho­rized agent) The buyer will have a spec­i­fied num­ber of days to review it. Based on the review the buyer can decline to move for­ward with the pur­chase (and get the earnest money back).

What is a Resale Certificate?

Con­trary to what some condo own­ers, condo asso­ci­a­tions and even condo man­age­ment com­pa­nies believe, the Resale Cer­tifi­cate is much more than a form con­sist­ing of a few ques­tions and state­ments. Accord­ing to the Revised Code of Wash­ing­ton (RCW 64.34.425), it is to include among other information:

“A state­ment set­ting forth the amount of the monthly com­mon expense assess­ment and any unpaid com­mon expense or spe­cial assess­ment cur­rently due and payable from the sell­ing unit owner and a state­ment of any spe­cial assess­ments that have been levied against the unit which have not been paid even though not yet due…”

“A state­ment of any antic­i­pated repair or replace­ment cost in excess of five per­cent of the annual bud­get of the asso­ci­a­tion that has been approved by the board of directors…”

“A state­ment of any unsat­is­fied judg­ments against the asso­ci­a­tion and the sta­tus of any pend­ing suits or legal pro­ceed­ings in which the asso­ci­a­tion is a plain­tiff or defendant;”

For my clients and your con­ve­nience I’ve pre­pared a PDF file of the com­plete Resale Cer­tifi­cate require­ments as pub­lished on the Wash­ing­ton State web­site. Answers about con­do­minium laws and rules and much more can be found on this Wash­ing­ton State Labor and Indus­tries web­site.

Tags: condominium association, condominium resale certificate, revised code of washington, special assessment

This entry was posted on Friday, February 8th, 2008 at 12:04 am and is filed under Buyers Corner, Condo Courtyard. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.