“It’s not a matter of $25,” Silva said. “I spent more money fighting this than the $25. They should have said, ‘You know what? This is ridiculous. This is our fault.’ But they want to pursue it because they want to maliciously and intentionally take my home. There’s no other way of looking at it.”
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Condo enforcement: Pay $25 late fee or… lose your home
WEST PALM BEACH — David Silva’s condo faces foreclosure because of a $25 late fee.
Silva, a resident at Ventura Greens at Emerald Dunes since 2007, was having his bank make automatic payments of the monthly maintenance fee for his three-bedroom, 2½-bath townhouse on the outskirts of West Palm Beach just west of Florida’s Turnpike. But the 70-unit development changed property managers in 2014 without advance notice and his payment was never rerouted to the condo association, he said.
By the time he learned of the problem and sent a payment to the new property manager, the association had charged him a $25 late fee. While he disputed the fee, which he insisted was the association’s fault, the association tacked on late fees, attorney fees and interest charges — and in 2015, the association filed a foreclosure suit that threatens to take away his home.
Neither association President Vic Bally, nor Cory Kravit, the association’s Boca Raton collections lawyer who filed the foreclosure suit, would comment for this story. The association vice president, Geoffrey Bourne, called Silva “unbelievably difficult” and said association rules must be enforced.
Bourne defended Bally’s hard line on community rules. “If you drive into Ventura Greens, it’s beautiful,” Bourne said. “If you’re president of it, you keep the rules or the place falls apart.”
“The whole thing has built up into just monstrous folly, absolute folly,” Bourne said. “I just wish David Silva had been a little more mature,” he said, adding that Silva should have paid his fine and ended the matter years ago.
Silva, 52, a retired New York state trooper, countered that Bourne doesn’t know the facts, only what Bally tells him.
“It’s not a matter of $25,” Silva said. “I spent more money fighting this than the $25. They should have said, ‘You know what? This is ridiculous. This is our fault.’ But they want to pursue it because they want to maliciously and intentionally take my home. There’s no other way of looking at it.”
Rest here…
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Same sh*t, different day.