If you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re loud, brash and give zero F’s about hurting bad contractors feelings.

A person reached out from Villa Moura HOA in San Clemente. You may have read about them in the news where the owners are facing a $26,000 special assessment that was branded as an emergency by the board for the replacement of roofs. I’ve been very vocal about the fact that the roofs are not an emergency in my opinion because a reserve study would have identified the roofs as needing repairs and replacement and the board of directors should have properly reserved for the repairs inspections and replacement of the roof underlayment.

So from what I have been told the board has passed the special assessment under an emergency basis despite residents very vocal protests. There is now a recall of the board going on and that will come up for a vote on December 1st I’m told.

In the meantime the board has signed a contract with Adco South Roofing company for approximately $5 million if I am correct in my understanding. Apparently because of the vocal outcry by residents contractor has inserted these two clauses into their contract and when I asked chat GPT about it it had a lot to say. Chat thinks that it violates multiple business and professions laws and likely violates cslb contract requirements.

There is also the curveball fact that the association board hired a consultant from San Ramon in the Bay area to perform some type of consulting work, it is not clear what. However they only referred Adco to the association and from what I’m told the board ignored other bidders bids. Which says to me that this is a setup.

Regardless of whether these allegations are true or not, if a client asked me to review their contract, I could not give them any legal advice but if I saw these clauses I would advise them that they should confer with counsel and decline to sign the contract with them in it. In fact I would go further and advise my client to dump the contractor immediately and find a better contractor with a much better contract.

There are many issues going on behind the scenes with Adco being a preferred vendor apparently for Keystone Property Management and that by itself raises red flags to me about the relationship that is probably not disclosed to HOA clients about what Keystone collects in cash from preferred vendors. There’s too many potential conflicts of interest and if there is even the illusion of a conflict of interest then the management company should be bowing out of the transaction and should be eliminating their preferred vendor program as it leaves vendors who are not preferred vendors in a disadvantaged position although they may be the best qualified bidder for the job. The manager would probably be pushing the board to accept their preferred vendor over non-preferred vendors.

Keystone and Adco, in my opinion, should be avoided like the plague.

If you want unbiased transparent advice and information from a waterproofing consultant then reach out to us for a free discussion on how we operate and how we ensure that we are completely transparent in every transaction we make.

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