My Condo Association is requesting $50,000 from me need advice.

[Yavuz Bayram]

I apologize that this will be a little long read but bear with me. So i own a townhouse in New Jersey and we had closed on my house February 2014 with a real estate agent. I need advice from BP on an issue that has risen which was not informed to me by my agent at the time of the sale which will greatly effect the real estate value and my living conditions.

Apparently there was a litigation between the HOA of the property and the builders which started on 2008 (townhouses were built in 2003) at the transition period of the property to the HOA and during Common Elements engineering inspections it was found out that the buildings had numerous deficiencies in the construction such as improper construction of decks and deficiencies in the construction of the exterior cladding system stairs and stoops. The development company went out of business and the subcontractors and others were sued in 2008 in 2011-2012 there was a settlement of $1 million which was used to fix the decks because of their emergency due to their conditions. In 2014-2015 the board hired an engineering firm to inspect the remaining deficiencies and it is now reported to us that we must pay $50,000 per unit to fix the exterior of the buildings.

From my understanding there should have been some sort of disclose to a prospective buyer known material defects or conditions affecting the value of the property because even if i want to sell this property today i probably can't any longer as it will impact a reasonable buyer’s decision to purchase a property. The real estate firm who had sold few more properties in this complex before and my attorney did not warn me of these litigations. My attorney is claiming that i am looking for a scapegoat and should have reviewed the financial statements if i wanted to know that there was an assessment in the first place and its not his job.  Had i knows there were any deficiencies in the property or litigation matters as such i would have not purchased this property.

So ive listed it for sale for the price i bought (even though house prices have gone up and i spent little over $20K in renovations inside the house) but obviously everyone that comes to look at the house and loves it is turned off when they hear about the situation.  Is there anyone here who can give me some advice? I went to a different attorney who said you're out of luck you need to pay the fee and you cant sue anyone. 

I would appreciate any advice on this matter because i am definitely not in a position to pay $50,000 at the moment and i don't want to finance another $50K on top of my house thank you in advance.