Three practical rules for a New York association's collection file

1. A payment agreement replaces the bylaws unless you say otherwise. If your association settles arrears on paper, the paper is the contract. A bylaw fee provision that is not incorporated by reference does not come along, and a default under the agreement does not trigger a fee clause the agreement does not contain. The fix is one sentence in the settlement: incorporate the bylaws by reference, and add an express fees-and-costs provision triggered by default under the agreement itself.

2. Decide what “the full amount due” is, and say so, before you accept a payment. The association's problem in this case was accepting the full arrears “without objection.” If an association believes the redemption figure includes post-agreement publication costs and fees, that has to be asserted at the point of tender — in writing, with a stated figure — not afterwards. Accepting a cheque and then claiming more is the sequence that produced the waiver.

3. The sale is not a foregone conclusion once judgment is entered. A judgment of foreclosure and sale does not extinguish the equity of redemption. Any time up to the actual sale an owner may tender in full. A board budgeting on the assumption that a scheduled sale will happen is budgeting on an assumption New York law does not support.

Our New York collections and liens page covers what a New York association may add to a lien, and our foreclosure page covers the process.

The fee-proportionality problem is being noticed

Shorehaven is not the only 2026 New York decision in which an association's fee claim was the problem rather than the solution. In Seagate Court Homeowners Association, Inc. v Gardyn, 2026 NY Slip Op 50505(U), a Richmond County justice refused a homeowners association's default-judgment application in a lien foreclosure and ordered a traverse hearing, with the burden on the association. The court's framing is unusually direct:²

“This action, sounding in the foreclosure of a homeowners' association lien for alleged unpaid common charges, arises from a dispute that is, in its genesis, modest in monetary dimension but profound in its procedural posture. The Plaintiff seeks the extraordinary remedy of foreclosure against real property admittedly owned outright by Defendant Robert Gardyn, predicated upon alleged arrears comprised of maintenance charges, late fees, and substantial attorneys' fees.”

The numbers, as the court recited them: “approximately $2,900 in common charges, $1,500 in penalties, and approximately $15,000 in attorneys' fees.” And the owner's position: “Defendant does not dispute the legitimacy of reasonable common charges per se; rather, he challenges the proportionality and legitimacy of the additional charges, particularly attorneys' fees that eclipse the underlying principal obligation.”

The court also noted that the owner “avers, without contradiction in the record, that for approximately three decades he paid all homeowners' association common charges, frequently remitting such payments in advance,” and concluded: “Plaintiff seeks foreclosure, a remedy of the highest order, based upon disputed service and contested charges. The Court declines to grant such relief in the absence of clear jurisdiction and adjudicated liability.”

The contrast that shows where the line is

Service defects are not automatically fatal to an association. In Board of Managers of Rosedale Townhouse Condominium v Batson, 2026 NY Slip Op 04736, 251 AD3d 998, the Second Department affirmed a default judgment and order of reference in a common-charge foreclosure and denied the unit owner's jurisdictional cross-motion and request for a hearing — the headnote recording the point as “Process — Affidavit of Service — Rebuttal of Presumption of Proper Service.”³

Read against Seagate Court, the distinction is evidentiary. A bare denial of service does not rebut the presumption an affidavit of service creates. What defeated the association in Seagate Court was that its own filings were internally inconsistent — the court observed that service was “predicated upon two different addresses in two different states, utilizing two distinct statutory methods, each of which presupposes that the respective location constitutes Defendant's dwelling place or usual place of abode,” and that “The multiplicity of addresses and methods reflected in Plaintiff's own filings does not demonstrate diligence so much as uncertainty.”

Where this leaves a board

Before the next collection matter goes to counsel, settle three things internally: what the association's fee entitlement is and where it comes from; what the association's redemption figure is and how it will be stated; and whether the service address is a single, current, verified address. Those three items account for most of what went wrong in the cases above, and all three are cheaper to fix at the start of a file than at a hearing.

Our fining authority page covers the penalties side, and our assessment limits page covers the cost pressures producing the arrears. The trial-level decisions above are persuasive rather than binding, and none of this predicts how any particular collection matter would come out.