Condo Maintenance Responsibility Letter

T.S. from New Haven County writes:

Dear Mister Condo,

I have to write a letter to a condo resident asking him to stop going to the Maintenance Department and bothering them about fixing little items for him. Can you help me out on the letter?

Mister Condo replies:

T.S., sure thing, glad to help.

“Dear Unit Owner,

It has come to the attention of the Board that you have been making direct requests of the Maintenance personnel to make personal repairs within your unit. You may not be aware that the Maintenance personnel work directly for the association and cannot make personal repairs to your unit as those repairs are your responsibility and not those of the association. If you need to make repairs to items within your unit that you are personally responsible for, kindly hire your own repair service to do so. Further, the Board has instructed the association Maintenance personnel to not make any repairs to items that are not the Association’s responsibility. Thank you for your attention in this matter.

Very Truly Yours,

XYZ Association”

Of course, for this course of action to be effective you need also notify the Maintenance personnel that they are NOT to make any non-Association repairs to any unit. I would have them keep a copy of this letter handy so that they could present it any time a unit owner made an inappropriate request. If you have a Property Manager, I might also suggest that all repair requests go through the Property Manager. That way, the Property Manager could weed out inappropriate requests before they ever made it to the Maintenance personnel. Good luck!