Foreclosed homes leave remaining owners to pick up the tab [Central Florida]
Tom Beard knew that he would be paying homeowners association dues when his family moved into a new Tivoli Village town house in east Orlando.
But he never thought he would be footing the dues owed on dozens of empty homes, most in the process of foreclosure.
“Our dues have spiked up by 15 percent,” said Beard, 43, a Winter Park High School teacher. “The reason is that so many of the other homes are in arrears, those of us who are left have to carry the burden for the whole. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.”
Beard, and thousands of other Floridians like him, is suffering from an unexpected consequence of the housing bubble that burst
.