Common Interest & TIC Disputes - Interview with Mediator Paul Merlyn
San Francisco home ownership is rife with complex ownership and financing arrangements. Combine these with the ridiculously high cost of real estate and it isn’t surprising to find disputes arising among home owners. Paul Merlyn of CID Resolution specializes in helping home owners find workable solutions to their disputes via mediation. Paul graciously took some time out of his day to chat with us about home ownership disputes and the role mediation can play.
What should home owners know about the Davis-Stirling Act?
The Davis-Stirling Common Interest Development Act (DSA) is the common name for a portion of the California Civil Code that begins with section 1350 and ends with section 1378. The DSA sets out California’s laws for the governance and operations of so-called common-interest developments (CIDs)—that is, apartment communities, condominium projects, and planned-unit developments like townhouse communities. The DSA complements the more specific Covenants, Conditions, and Restrictions (CC&Rs) that each community will have devised for its owners and residents. In cases of conflict between the DSA and a community’s CC&Rs, the DSA takes precedence. Likewise, the CC&Rs take precedence over any ad hoc rules that a homeowners association (HOA) may have enacted.
Specific topics addressed by the DSA include rights and responsibilities relating to ownership interests, insurance, assessments, architectural improvements, association meetings, and election of the board. Most relevant to my work are sections 1363 and 1369, which detail the procedures for dispute resolution that arise in CIDs. Basically, these sections require disputants to try to reach a resolution via mediation before duking it out in court. That’s generally good news for the over-crowded court system. It’s also good news for disputants because about 80% of the time, mediation results in a settlement. Insomniacs can find the full text of the DSA here.
