For those who own real property in Nassau County, Florida, you may use the hot link below to check out your tax account and get information from the tax collectors office.

http://www.nassautaxes.com/

This is a site devoted to a wide ranging discussion of issues important to members and managers of home owners, and condominium owners associations.

You are welcome to post comments, and we will do our best to answer your questions related to ownership or management of these associations.

For 30 + years I taught a series of courses at the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University, including one on condominium management, and even as the original enabling

legislation was still being written and perfected in the various states, in 1978, I helped with the development of one of the earliest textbooks on the subject of the management of condominiums. "The Management of Hotel & Motel Condominiums" Gunnar & Burkhart-Cornell University, (1978)

Federal interest in condominiums, which began as early as the 1950's, was more fully expressed by the Securities & Exchange Commission in their Release # 5347 in 1973 , stemming from the US Supreme Court findings in the famous W. J. Howey, et al "Orange Grove" cases. That finding made the sale of condominiums, when accompanied by a required rental management contract, a rental pool, or limited owners access, one that was to be considered to be the offering of a security, and thus subject to the registration requirements of the SEC.

Subsequent developments in recent years, including the adoption of condominium time sharing in its various forms; fractional ownership arrangements, usually involving clubs and/or resorts and several other variations on this theme, have made for a complex and often difficult tangle of issues involving financing, insurance, ownership, management, franchising, and hotel operations.

Following my retirement in 2003, my wife and I moved to & live in a deed restricted

development in Florida, that is governed by a home owners association. The HOA, which is an archetypical organization of volunteer home owners, is required, as are all their brethren, to struggle with the daily vicissitudes of the dynamics of self-governance, and the need to fill the role of fiduciary stewards of their association assets.

In watching our HOA board struggle with the day-to-day details of governance, I am reminded of the words of the Roman playwright and poet, Plautus, who once cautioned in a slightly different context that, "It is better to profit by a horrible example than to be one"