Windows (and Doors) of Opportunity

“People ask me what I do in winter when there's no baseball. I'll tell you what I do. I stare out the window and wait for spring.” Rogers Hornsby.

As established by the Condominium Act, Unit doors and windows are a Unit Owner's responsibility. But frequently the Declarant has changed this to give the Association control over the doors and windows. This is a good idea. One of the last things an Association wants is to give control to the Owners over doors. While doing so may sound fine it can leave to problems such as an association where there is a nice mahogany door, next to a hollow core plywood door, next to a metal door. One will be stained, another painted lime green and yet another not treated at all.

The same thing happens with windows.Having a window with panes that have four sections on each of the upper and lower halves of the window(from inserts called mullions), next to eight over eights, next to full pane windows, causes a problem as it just doesn't look nice. Combine that with the lime green door and the place starts to look just not nice enough to spur potential buyers to look elsewhere, causing the values to decrease.

What to do? Even if windows and doors are a Unit Owner's responsibility, Boards have the right and responsibility to control, size, shape, color and quality of materials. Language such as this should be adopted: “Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the Board maintains control over the size shape, quality and color of the doors and windows.”

Then comes the maintenance problem.

If the windows and doors are the responsibility of the Owner, and the Owner is taking care of them well, there can still be problems. For instance, an owner may wish to switch out old windows for energy efficient ones. If the contractor takes the windows out and sees rot in the wood near the window, the contractor has to notify Board of Directors before fixing it. (Leaving it rotting causes another whole set of problems, including the window falling out or not sealing properly and leaking, so it's rare the contractor won't notify the Owner as the contractor does not want to later get in trouble with the Owner for doing such a bad job that the window leaks.)

Otherwise, if the contractor just fixes the wood rot and bills the Owner, the Owner can request reimbursement from the Association. While the Board ultimately has to pay for the wood rot, it can conduct a hearing and fine the owner for work done to the Common Area and/or ask for a reduction in amount to be paid, especially since, volume-wise, an Association can get a better deal if it coordinated the window repair.

Saying this another way, this type of action by the Owner's contractor without communication with the Board deprives the Association of the ability to minimize costs and save money for owners by having work done in bulk as opposed to one window at a time.

Also, who determines the quality of the work? What if, despite best efforts, the contractor does a bad job on replacing the wood rot and it comes apart in the next year. The Association will have a hard time suing the contractor as the contract was not with the Association, but with the Owner. So the Board would have to sue the Owner, and things get worse from there.

What about window glass? The safest thing to do is make glass the responsibility of the Unit Owner. Glass breaks. Most often it is because of something that happened inside the Unit. Having the glass be an Association responsibility to fix may mean the Association will frequently have to fix broken windows. If it can show who caused the problem, it's easy to assess responsibility. But most of the time, it's not, even though more often than not the cause was the Owner or the Owner's guest or child. So the Association can be spending money it really should not have to.

Therefore, the simplest way to handle the situation, except in the very rare case where the documents say the window glass is the responsibility of the Association, is to amend the documents to state, “notwithstanding anything herein to the contrary, window glass is the responsibility of the Owner, but the Board maintains control over the style, type and quality of the glass.” This language allows the Board to disallow someone who wishes, for example, to put in stained glass windows.

“A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books.” Walt Whitman.

So make the windows look nice, so you can see nice things.