Getting to Know Pia Trigiani

Michael Lee Pope of the Alexandria Gazette Packet interviewed Pia Trigiani, a prominent condominium and homeowner association attorney in the DC Metro area, on the problems and issues associations and their boards run into and how to deal with misconceptions. Click here for the link directly to the article.

Getting to Know … Pia Trigiani
By Michael Lee Pope Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Pia Trigiani graduated from Saint Mary’s College Notre Dame and received a law degree from the University of Richmond School of Law in 1983. She is a charter member of the College of Community Association Lawyers, and she currently serves as a member of the Board of Governors of the Virginia Bar Association, Virginia Board of Health Professions and Board of the Foundation for Community Association Research. Last year, she and David Mercer formed MercerTrigiani, a five-attorney firm provides corporate, litigation and public policy legal counsel to more than 350 condominium and property owners associations, real estate developers and individual owners located throughout Virginia and Washington, D.C.

Why did you decide to open a new firm in Old Town?
David and I have practiced together for more than 20 years. He is a native of Alexandria, and he was a football player at Hammond High School. He has been working in and around condominiums since he began his practice in 1973. I worked for the Virginia Real Estate Board until I came to Northern Virginia in the mid 1980s, and my work there was to regulate condominium sales in Northern Virginia. David and I started working together 20 years ago, and we have built this practice of representing condominium and homeowners associations. We probably represent about 400 different communities throughout Northern Virginia.

What kinds of problems do these groups run into?
Soup to nuts. It’s the full gambit of things that you’d expect a small business or a big business to address — from employment issues to contract negotiations, and then there are the special issues of how to conduct contract meetings. There are parts of the Condominium Act and the Virginia Property Owners Act that are very similar to the Freedom of Information Act. They require boards to meet in the open and to be transparent in their governance. There are due process procedures for rule enforcement and architectural violations. It really runs the gamut, and it’s pretty broad in scope.

What kind of challenges are presented by representing condominium associations?
It’s very akin to representing a town or a city and a small business. One level, these associations are businesses but they also have governmental characteristics. They have the authority to adopt and enforce rules and collect assessments. But they are also businesses. Condominiums are typically unincorporated associations, but the associations for property owners are incorporated as corporations. So they have the same challenges as a business. They have to develop a budget, hire employees and enter into agreements.

What kind of people become a part of a condo association?
Surveys have shown that people who live in community associations — condominiums and homeowners associations — are more invested in their community and tend to vote in greater numbers. So from a politician’s perspective they are a force to be reckoned with. They tend to vote more than people who don’t live in community associations. Most people purchase in a condominium association or a homeowners association because they like those restrictions. They know that it will protect their property values.

What’s the biggest misunderstanding about condo and homeowners associations?
There’s a commonly held view that condominiums are a bad thing because they are overly restrictive in what you can and cannot do in your unit and the common element. You see this all the time in the media. There was an episode of the "X Files" that talked about the crazy homeowners association president. Just this past season the "Desperate Housewives" had a homeowners association issue when a couple moved into the neighborhood and put in a tacky fountain that nobody liked. Homeowners associations and property-owner associations are often portrayed by the press as bad people, but I can tell you rule enforcement and protecting homeowners is important. Everybody likes the homeowners association when its time to get them to enforce a rule against their neighbor. But they don’t like it when it’s time to enforce the rule against them.