By Steve Alexander
July 10, 2009

To All:

After a fine late evening and early morning in Dover on June 30, the Senate passed HB 156 & 183 at 1:05 & 1:09 am on "Must Pass List 3," based on the many fine efforts of several of our members and our representatives from SCAOR & DAR. For those of you who don't know, these bills are the pieces of legislation that change the Delaware Uniform Common Interest Ownership Act & the Unit Property Act. These bills were both signed into law by the Governor on July 2, 2009 and will go into effect 90 days thereafter.

These bills will ultimately get us back to having our sellers provide condo documents and the condo questionnaire, in conjunction with the property management companies, and to do both of these things prior to final signatures on contracts. At the same time, these bills have standardized many aspects of the prior versions, such as:

• limiting the fees which property management companies can charge to no more than $250 ($200 for the form completion and the extra $50 if paper copying must be done),
• limiting the time of response from property management groups to 10 days or no fee can be charged,
• increasing the dollar amounts of condo or HOA fees to $500 annually as a threshold for compliance with condo questionnaire, etc.,
• increasing the number of units from 12 to 20 for mandatory inclusion under this law, and
• allowing for a 90 day period from the Governor's signature to effectiveness of this bill.

These new sections of the State code become effective on October 1^st, 2009 so it is important to start boning up on the changes that are coming.

I hope that these 90 days will see several efforts at education and explanation of how these bills affect each of us and our customers and clients. I would strongly encourage you to participate in at least one session on this to understand its impact, not just on our day-to-day practices but to the whole of the common ownership world. Both SCAOR & DAR will be providing courses on this subject for both the public and our REALTOR^® members. A FREE Legislative Update class instructed by Andy Taylor on these changes is offered by SCAOR for our REALTOR^® members on Tuesday, August 4. Sign up quickly. If any have any questions, I, or those at the Board office, are more than happy to try to help answer them - whether I can come up with an answer or pass you along to someone that really knows the answer.

Shameless plug - July 1^st was the date on which either the new bills' provisions would become effective or we would revert back to the old bill. Technically because the Governor hadn't signed the bills, we were under the terms of the original piece of legislation until his signature on the 2^nd.

I would suggest to you that the efforts to get these bills passed at the 11^th hour and our ability to get them on the list to get passed, finally just after 1 am on the last day of session, is due to the relationships that we have in Dover as an Association, both locally and on the State level. These bills were on the must pass lists and then off the must pass lists (must pass lists are lists of bills that are important to pass prior to the end of the session - if you miss these, your next chance is in January). There was no certainty that either would be considered by the Senate prior to the end of the session. Through the efforts of many talking to the power brokers in both the House and Senate, we were able to get these pieces of legislation on the third of what probably grew to 7+ Must Pass Lists and get them passed by the Senate just in time.

These relationships are as strong as they are because we have REALTORS^® who get involved and because we have REALTORS^® who give to RPAC (REALTOR^® Political Action Committee). RPAC, amongst other things, allows us to continue to support those in the legislature who continue to support us as an industry. Getting this condo bill passed and removing some of the grayness, some of the cumbersome elements, and the uncertainty from the previous version was done for each of us who practices real estate in Delaware and was based upon our relationships and our investment in our leaders. Another example of the strength of these relationships and a testament to the strength of our voices when used as one, is HB 188 - the Rental Tax Initiative, which was left on the table in committee and was not resurrected by the last night or morning of session. I strongly urge you to either get involved with your time or get involved with your checkbook, but please do get involved.

Thanks,

Steve Alexander
2009 Sussex County Association of REALTORS^® President