Green signs new laws aimed at providing financial relief to condo owners, residents

HONOLULU (HawaiiNewsNow) – Gov. Josh Green signed a series of bills into law Thursday that’s aimed at addressing housing challenges for Hawaii condominiums.

Raelene Tenno, Education Chair for the Hawaii Council of Community Associations, said she and many other owners are scrambling to pay huge insurance increases.

“We’ve already planned our budgets for the for the next year and then we get this notice that it went up that high, so it just kind of blew the budget out of whack,” said Tenno.

”Even for my condo that I own, the maintenance fees are almost equal to the rent that you collect.”

But help is on the way, thanks to several bills signed by the governor on Thursday.

One offers government loans to help condo buildings make improvements such as fire sprinklers and pipe replacement.

House Speaker Scott Saiki said condos were a priority this legislative session.

“One is because the loan is amortized, you avoid a large front-end assessment on unit owners,” said Saiki. “The second benefit is that the loan is repaid by individual unit owners in the building.”

“So if a unit owner sells the unit and moves, the new owner will assume that obligation, so it goes from owner to owner over a period of time.”

Another bill lets individual condo owners invest in a fund to finance solar, rooftop panels and batteries.

“For people who live in homes that can’t afford to pay for those systems, or who can’t even get conventional financing for those systems… The people who receive these rooftop improvements, will repay that loan over time through the real property through their electric utility bill,” explained Saiki.

Richard Emery works for the nation’s largest condominium management company, Associa.

He said about 70% of the condos in Hawaii are more than 40 years old.

“So, all of these components are starting to come due for need of replacement or upgrade and certainly the cost of energy is a major concern,” said Emery. “So, anything we can do to provide another tool for condos to use to refinance its capital components and lower its operating costs through energy reform is a good thing.”

“It’s going to be good in the long run especially when you use energy efficient projects like elevators where they have to do their elevator upgrades,” said Tenno. “It’s always gonna involve electrical upgrade.”

The other bills signed into law will streamline the paperwork for buying a condo and modernize procedures for condo meetings and voting process.

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