Overview

California HOAs rely on outside contractors to carry out the common area maintenance the Davis-Stirling Act and their CC&Rs require. Landscapers mow and fertilize the lawns, pest control companies treat the grounds, plumbers fix the common area pipes, sprinkler crews run the irrigation, and painters, roofers, and tree trimmers work on and around the buildings where homeowners live. When that work damages a home or the belongings inside it, homeowners want to know whether their HOA has to pay for the repairs and replacements or whether they’re stuck paying for damage they didn’t cause.

When homeowners report contractor damage, some HOAs tell them to take it up with the contractor. Others point out that homeowners maintain their own homes and insist that interior repairs and damaged belongings come out of the homeowners’ pockets. Homeowners have no contract with the HOA’s vendors, and their duty to maintain their own homes doesn’t make them responsible for damage someone else caused.

This Fact Sheet explains when California HOAs are responsible for damage their contractors cause to homeowners’ homes, upgrades, and personal property, including custom cabinetry, flooring, furniture, and family heirlooms. It covers the HOA’s own maintenance duties under the Davis-Stirling Act and the CC&Rs, and why HOAs can’t escape those duties by hiring contractors to perform them. It then addresses how the HOA’s liability changes when its contractor acts as the HOA’s agent, and when homeowners can hold the contractor itself directly responsible for its careless work. It also explains why the HOA, as the party that hired the contractor, should deal with the contractor directly. Finally, it lays out the steps homeowners should take when a contractor damages their home, including documenting the damage, demanding reimbursement in writing, and suing both the HOA and the contractor when the HOA refuses to pay.

Key Points

Who pays for contractor damage starts with the CC&Rs and Civil Code 4775, which divide maintenance responsibilities between HOAs and homeowners. From there, liability turns on how the damage happened, who controlled the contractor’s work, and whether the HOA met its own obligations in the common area. The points below cover the HOA’s duties, the contractor’s own liability, the agency question, damage to upgrades and personal property, and the steps homeowners should take to get reimbursed when their properties have been damaged by vendors hired by their HOAs.

• Civil Code 4775 makes HOAs responsible for maintaining the common area, even when they hire contractors to do the work. Unless the CC&Rs say otherwise, Civil Code 4775 requires HOAs to repair, replace, and maintain the common area, and it requires homeowners to repair, replace, and maintain their own separate interests (their condos or houses, as the CC&Rs define them). Lawn care, irrigation, tree trimming, and pest control on the common area grounds all fall on the HOA. In condominiums where the CC&Rs make building exteriors and roofs part of the common area, the same goes for painting and roofing. Courts treat the CC&Rs as a contract between HOAs and homeowners, and Civil Code 5975 lets homeowners enforce the CC&Rs against their HOAs. Hiring a contractor doesn’t excuse an HOA from performing its own maintenance obligations under the CC&Rs. So when a landscaper or pest control company damages homeowners’ property while doing the HOA’s maintenance work, homeowners can hold the HOA responsible for the damage as a breach of those obligations. HOAs can’t avoid that responsibility by directing homeowners to the contractor or by pointing to homeowners’ duty to maintain their own homes. [To learn more about how Civil Code 4775 divides repair costs, read my Fact Sheet, “Who Pays for California HOA Common Area Repairs? Understanding Civil Code 4775.”]
  • Homeowners can’t sue the HOA’s contractor for breaching its contract with the HOA because homeowners aren’t parties to that contract. Lawyers call that missing contractual relationship a lack of “privity.” It’s the reason that the HOA, as the party that hired the contractor, should deal with the contractor and recover the cost of the damage under its own contract. That said, the lack of privity doesn’t protect the contractor from a negligence claim. Homeowners can still sue the contractor directly for the damage its careless work caused, as explained below.
  • Civil Code 4775 makes HOAs repair contractor damage to patios, balconies, and other exclusive use common area. Civil Code 4145 defines exclusive use common area as the part of the common area that the CC&Rs set aside for the use of one or more homeowners, but not all of them. Unless the CC&Rs say otherwise, it includes fixtures that serve a single home but sit outside its boundaries, such as patios, balconies, porches, exterior doors, and windows. Civil Code 4775 splits responsibility for those areas. Unless the CC&Rs say otherwise, homeowners maintain their exclusive use common area attached to their homes, and the HOA repairs and replaces it. When an HOA’s contractor cracks a patio slab, breaks a window, or damages an exterior door, the fix is a repair or replacement, not maintenance, so Civil Code 4775 puts it on the HOA regardless of who caused the damage. That also means an HOA can’t bill homeowners for exclusive use common area repairs its own contractor made necessary.
• Homeowners can sue HOA contractors for negligence under Civil Code 1714. Civil Code 1714 makes everyone responsible for the harm their lack of ordinary care or skill causes to others. That rule applies to landscapers, pest control companies, sprinkler crews, and every other contractor or vendor working in an HOA’s common area, and it doesn’t depend on any contract between the contractor and the homeowners whose property it damages. If a landscaper’s mower throws a rock through a window, the landscaper owes the homeowner the cost of replacing it. The only exception Civil Code 1714 recognizes is damage that homeowners brought on themselves through their own carelessness. The point here is that homeowners don’t have to choose between the HOA and the contractor when it comes to filing a lawsuit. They can sue their HOA under contract theory, and they can sue the vendor directly under negligence theory. [One of our podcast listeners inspired this Fact Sheet by describing what happened to them. Apparently, their HOA’s pest control company ignored its own posted instructions to keep a treated lawn dry, and as a result of its negligent failure to follow its own instructions, tens of thousands of fire ants invaded the homeowner’s condo. The pest control company is liable to the homeowner for the cost of getting rid of them.]
• Civil Code 2338 makes HOAs liable for their contractors’ negligence when those contractors act as the HOA’s agents. Under Civil Code 2295, a contractor becomes the HOA’s agent when it represents the HOA in dealings with others. Being an independent contractor doesn’t stop a landscaper or pest control company from also acting as the HOA’s agent. Whether it does turns mainly on whether the HOA has the right to control how the contractor performs the work. When the HOA’s manager tells the technician which areas to treat, when to treat them, and how to coordinate with the sprinkler crew, those facts show the HOA controlling the work and make it more likely a court will find the contractor acted as the HOA’s agent. When the contractor chooses its own methods, products, and schedule, those facts make that finding less likely. Under basic agency theory, Civil Code 2338 makes the HOA responsible to homeowners for its agent’s negligence while doing the HOA’s business, and Civil Code 2343 makes the contractor personally responsible to homeowners for its own wrongful acts in the course of that work. Agency theory, therefore, gives homeowners a second claim against the HOA, separate from the CC&R/contract claim discussed above, and it keeps the contractor from avoiding personal liability for its own wrongful acts (such as negligence, trespassing onto a homeowner’s property, or intentionally destroying a homeowner’s belongings) by claiming it was only doing the HOA’s work.
  • Homeowners can still hold HOAs responsible when the contractor isn’t the HOA’s agent. The CC&R/contract claim discussed above doesn’t depend on agency at all. It rests on the HOA’s own obligation under the CC&Rs and Civil Code 4775 to maintain the common area, and that obligation stays the same no matter whom the HOA hires to do the work. Homeowners also have a strong argument that HOAs can’t hand off their responsibility for the common area to a contractor in the first place. California courts hold condominium HOAs to a landlord’s standard of care for the common areas they control, and they’ve held that property owners can’t escape their duty to keep their property in a safe condition by hiring contractors to do the work.
  • Homeowners can’t sue HOA managers for how they run the HOA, but they can hold the HOA responsible for its managers’ failures. Homeowners frequently ask whether they can sue the HOA’s management company (or its manager) for things going wrong in their HOAs. HOA managers and management companies work for their HOAs under management contracts, and the duties those contracts create are between the managers and the HOAs (and not the homeowners). When a manager ignores homeowners’ complaints, delays getting vendors out to repair homes damaged by problems that started in the common area, or mishandles notices of disciplinary hearings, the manager breaches duties owed only to the HOA, so homeowners have no direct individual claim against the manager. In other words, because homeowners aren’t parties to the management contract either, they typically can’t sue the manager for breaching it. The HOA will be held responsible for the manager’s failures in those situations because managers act as the HOA’s agents, and Civil Code 2338 makes the HOA responsible for its agents’ negligence in handling the HOA’s business. This is in addition to the HOA’s own obligations under the CC&Rs and the Davis-Stirling Act. [That being said, Civil Code 2343 creates an important exception. It makes agents personally responsible for their own wrongful acts, so homeowners can sue a manager who personally commits a wrong against them, such as ordering a landscaping crew onto a homeowner’s patio to tear out plants without authority.]
• HOAs must pay to repair the parts of a home their contractors damage, but they pay for homeowners’ damaged belongings only when the HOA is at fault. The law draws a line between a home and the things inside it. Walls, ceilings, floors, built-in cabinets, plumbing fixtures, and anything else permanently attached to the home count as real property, while the things homeowners can pick up and move, such as furniture, electronics, clothing, rugs, artwork, and heirlooms like a grandmother’s antique armoire, count as personal property. For the contractor in our examples above, that line makes no difference. Civil Code 1714 makes a contractor that does careless work (i.e., acts negligently) pay for everything it damages, so if a botched job cracks a homeowner’s drywall and ruins the armoire standing against it, the contractor is liable for both. The HOA’s obligations, on the other hand, are narrower. Under the CC&R/contract claim discussed above, the HOA has to fix the drywall. But it has to pay for the armoire in only two situations: (i) if the contractor acted as the HOA’s agent, since, as I explained above, Civil Code 2338 then makes the HOA pay for its agent’s carelessness; and (ii) when the HOA was careless itself. That happens, for example, when homeowners tell the HOA that its pest control company never has the sprinklers shut off after treating the lawns, and the HOA keeps using the company anyway without any investigation of the company’s negligence. If the company’s carelessness then results in damage to someone’s home, the HOA has to pay for whatever belongings that negligence damaged.
• If an HOA contractor damages your home, document everything and put your claim to the board in writing. Start by photographing the damage before you clean anything up. Write down what happened, when it happened, and anything the vendor/contractor or crew told you (such as the statement by the technician from my YouTube listener’s scenario who admitted that the crew had never shut the sprinklers off after a treatment). Then send the HOA board a written complaint that sticks to the facts and leaves out the emotion. Describe the damage, attach your photos along with receipts for every repair, replacement, and follow-up treatment you’ve paid for, and demand reimbursement. You should also show up at the next board meeting and raise the issue during open forum. Make sure to demand that the issue be included in the minutes for that meeting. If the HOA refuses to pay, you can sue both the HOA and the contractor. Civil Code 5975 awards attorneys’ fees to whoever wins a lawsuit to enforce the CC&Rs, which gives your HOA a strong reason to take a well-documented claim seriously.
• If your HOA’s contractor or vendor has damaged your home or belongings and your HOA refuses to pay for the repairs, call the HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman. Whether you can recover from the HOA, the contractor, or both depends on whether the contractor qualifies as the HOA’s agent, what your CC&Rs say about maintenance, and whether the HOA knew about the contractor’s careless practices before the damage happened. The HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman represent homeowners throughout California in disputes with their HOAs. We can evaluate your claim, identify everyone responsible for your losses, and press both the HOA and its contractor to pay for the damage they caused.

California HOAs can’t avoid paying for contractor damage simply because someone else did the work. Depending on the facts, homeowners can recover from the HOA, the contractor, or both, and what each one owes depends on the CC&Rs, the contractor’s relationship with the HOA, and whether the damage hit the home itself or the belongings inside it. Documenting the damage right away and putting the demand in writing gives homeowners the best chance of getting paid. And involving a homeowner-side HOA lawyer, like those at MBK Chapman, increases the odds that you’ll be able to do so without having to file a lawsuit.

FAQs

About Michael Kushner

Michael Kushner is a California attorney with over 30 years of experience representing homeowners in disputes with their HOAs. He is widely regarded as California’s leading homeowner-side HOA attorney, and has built one of the state’s most prominent law practices dedicated to holding HOAs accountable under the Davis-Stirling Act and California law.

In addition to his law firm’s work, Michael is a recognized lecturer, author, and the host of the hit HOA HELL podcast, where he provides homeowners living in HOA-governed communities with clear, practical strategies for dealing with bad HOAs. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, HOA HELL | California Homeowners’ Definitive Guide to Beating Bad HOAs, which has become a go-to resource for both homeowners seeking real-world solutions to their HOA disputes, as well as those good HOA board members who are interested in doing a good job.

About MBK Chapman Fact Sheets

Homeowners searching for answers online will often come across articles that appear authoritative, but are actually written as search-engine marketing content rather than by an experienced HOA lawyer. These pieces tend to prioritize keyword density over clarity, accuracy, or legal context, which often leaves homeowners more confused than informed.

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