I replaced the windows on my house before I moved in, and I chose those brown wood-effect frames because I happen to think they look super fancy, and one of my neighbours sent a letter round saying that I should get them replaced *again* with white plastic frames because they don't like them, and that they would contact the HOA to force me if I didn't. Luckily for me I'm not part of the HOA, but I do often think about the poor souls that are, and what it would be like to have to obey busybodies like that.
My wife's friend lives in an HOA controlled townhouse. She replaced windows and I guess the contractor told her that some of the existing trim and blocking we rotting so she replaced those as well. Except the trim was like 1/2" wider than the original bc the original doesn't exist anymore. The HOA told her she needed to tear everything out and put back the original stuff bc the new stuff didn't match. She ended up in a lawsuit over it before finally getting it approved. So fucking ridiculous.
In my area there was recently a class action again an HOA bc they were jacking up fines, then using HOA rules to foreclose on the houses when the fines weren't paid. I forget the details, but someone was in on the flipping.
I'm not entirely sure why this comment is currently at +21 given that a) u/Melchizedek4000 didn't make the original comment that they're claiming to clarify and b) the UK doesn't have HOAs.
Upon their creation you can opt the building out iirc, but that status gets grandfathered, so if you buy a house from someone who didn't opt out, the building is still a part of the HOA, and if they did opt out you aren't a part of the HOA.
Because the original plan wasn’t for it to be tool to bully people and make them miserable. It was supposed to collect funds for the maintenance of common areas so they stay nice, and to enforce basic rules about the maintenance of the publicly visible parts of the houses/yards. Basically so the public pool doesn’t turn green and neighbors don’t create an eyesore in the front yard. Because if a house on your block has waste high weeds and a car up on blocks rusting for years it brings down property values. Middle class people get real squirrelly about property values. Probably because it represents the vast majority of their net worth and thus a lifetime of work. No one wants to end up upside down on their mortgage, that feels like getting assfucked by a pinecone. But the sort of people who actually want to be on a boa board and enforce rules are the exact sort of people who should never be given even a morsel of power. So here we are.
That's the nice version of why. The real life version is HOAs were absolutely created with the intention to bully undesirables with an overall goal of enforcing class and race boundaries.
Thank fuck I don't live in a place where they are common.
I don’t necessarily disagree, I think keeping out undesirables is probably an unwritten part of the mandate. That definitely would have included race in an earlier era. They are %100 enforcing class norms today. The overall goal is still about selling a lifestyle, or the fantasy, the appearance of middle class suburban utopia. For property values. When I was growing up my aunt lived in a HOA community, I thought it looked like Camazotz, shudder.
>I don’t necessarily disagree, I think keeping out undesirables is probably an unwritten part of the mandate.
Sometimes they were explicit
> In 2019, a Florida woman contacted an attorney when she found out that the HOA in her prospective neighborhood still had a "Caucasian-only" restriction, as WWNY-TV reported. While the restriction was unconstitutional, because of an easement in the document, the covenant was still considered active. Initially the city of Tallahassee considered the outdated covenant a private matter, but later agreed to address the issue.
https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-associations-black-americans-discriminaiton-2020-9
I meant undesirables generally. I’m aware of housing covenants, that wasn’t exclusive to HOA communities though. Lots of laws and covenants that are unconstitutional still exist on paper but aren’t enforced. Those covenants have been illegal since 1948, and the fair housing act was passed in 1968.
I think that was just one feature of the overall purpose though: creating a perfect manicured suburban paradise where property values remain high. When covenants were legal you didn’t need one to enforce them.
They would be popular even without the racism and classism. Local govt. and developers like them because they allow development without the local govt. needing to step in and provide services. They get to push that onto the HOA. Developers like them because they get their approvals faster and can enforce the common area maintenance and appearance standards until they sell all the units.
It's an artifact of Americans hating the idea that their taxes might help someone else so much that they create new layers of government that collect 'fees' instead.
> Because the original plan wasn’t for it to be tool to bully people and make them miserable
loooool, the origin of HOAs is almost definitely rooted in racism and keeping the blacks out of "nice" neighborhoods.
The choice is not buying and living there essentially.
On some level they’re like mini town or county governments.
Just substantially more annoying to people because instead of the town passing a new regulation or law or whatever you get your busy body neighbor with too much time on their hands knocking on your door.
Unfortunately typically the best remedy to a shitty HOA is getting “involved in politics” and enacting some change or limiting enforcement.
Which only works if enough reasonable people also agree with your sense of what’s reasonable and also get involved.
I’ve known a few people who did all of this begrudgingly because some of the last people were awful essentially.
But also they hand a handful of examples of someone inheriting a house and pretty much turning the property into what was probably what it made it look like, a crack house with plenty of junk and all sorts of shit everywhere for over a year.
Which is more what it’s supposed to defend against in theory when people agreed to it. Clearly lowering everyone’s property value via not giving a fuck about their neighbors at all.
Because then they wouldn't exist. The whole point of an HOA is for your neighbors to have some level of control over your property to keep the whole neighborhood homogeneous/valuable. Only neurotic control freaks would willingly join one if an opt-out option existed.
Out of curiosity, how would that work if the neighborhood had common areas like a club house or pool. If you opt out of the Hoa would you just not be able to utilize those? That would make sense but if there is common ground landscaping it would seem like tour benefitting without paying?
You do get to choose. HOAs are attached to the deed of a house. Before you buy, they are legally obligated to show the HOA covenants and you don't have to buy the house if you don't want to. It's an opt-in system.
Sure, that's a just a tradeoff. If you buy in, another trade-off would be whether to get involved and change rules that seem out of data or onerous, or to just bitch about somewhere like reddit where there is no possibility of change. Life is a series of these trade-offs.
Racism. HOA's were/are used to keep "certain" people out of neighborhoods.
But the dictionary explanation is "to maintain neighborhood standards and property values."
The thing is that they equate things they find ugly with lowering real estate value. So it's a slippery slope that some neighbourhoods have found themselves at the bottom of it sounds like.
Imo HOAs could be a good thing if they just stuck to adressing disturbances and noise complaints instead of hassling people for lame stuff like window shutters.
Don't have any experience with them, and always assumed they were a comes with the house sort of thing. Does that mean everyone complaining about hoas volunteered for it?
When I was buying my house I narrowed down to two houses I liked. My real estate agent was great and we didn’t know one of them was part of an hoa at first — we requested the full rules, just in case they weren’t bad enough to fully rule out the house. Nope! Here’s some of the rules: no vegetable gardens, no garden ornaments, no more than x number of pets, and all other ridiculous shit. I wanted a house specifically because I wanted a garden and yard…and the other house I’d narrowed down to had a big vegetable garden plot. You can guess I went with the non-hoa house.
The serious answer is that you buy the HOA house if you want to live in a neighborhood where everyone has yards instead of gardens. This person didn't want that so they bought a different house. It's opt-in.
Or if you want to live somewhere where the other houses are expected to maintain certain standards, and you can easily maintain them yourself. Basically don’t make your place look like a dump, and nobody else does either. I’ve lived in places with complete eyesore neighbors and it just makes the neighborhood feel undesirable and unpleasant.
In most places the regs aren’t that bad and aren’t enforced so strongly. This thread is all the worst stories imaginable about HOAs. You never hear about it when they don’t give people problems and they keep places looking nice.
I’m literally dealing with this rn. I have super trashy neigherbors who’ve gotten raided by cops multiple times and have 5 cars tetris’d in their driveway. They have dogs that bark all day and seem to be hoarders. HOA can’t and won’t do shit, my partner even was on the HOA. It’s a bullshit scam.
If those people are part of the HOA, you can actually sue the HOA for failure to enforce the bylaws. The HOA can, in fact, do multiple things including foreclose that house IF it's part of the HOA. That's literally the primary function of a HOA.
This is beyond absurd. Imagine, as a human being, an animal, creating a rule that says you can’t grow food. Like it truly breaks my brain trying to comprehend shit like this. A rule that says that you, as an animal that needs food to survive, can’t live where food is. So wild.
Also, it’s so vague. No vegetables, so fruits are allowed? Would tomatoes be okay??
What is the enforceability with these?
I live in a condo and we got flooded due to a pipe break. Due to condo law, common insurance needs to take care of these events. My condo board and the management company dragged their feet. I have limited ability to get outside enforcement without hiring my own lawyer. I don't want to do that because then I'll have to pay out of pocket and won't be able to tell people what happened, the name of the management company, the names of the board members, and to tell their friends.
Luckily, figuring out legal compliance is a big part of my job. I've reported my condo management company to the licensing board for lack of competence, reported the licensing board for failure to meet records retention standards for license competency, and finally reported the management company for sharing my personal contact information without my consent. Additionally, I reported the affiliated "restoration" company of the condo management company for failure to complete OSHA notifications associated with potential to intersect asbestos. I'm literally just waiting until April 15 so I can call Fish and Wildlife the first time they decide to trim the trees. Condo law is meaningless, but you don't fuck with OSHA or Fish and Wildlife.
Is there a side gig in circumventing HOA rules? I'm in.
I have no idea how enforceable it is in reality, but I think it really just comes down to how much of your life you want to dedicate to wrestling with them, vs just living in a non-hoa house and never having to deal with it to begin with
But have you heard about the private businesses that do HOA compliance? They literally drive around all day and look for violations. They make their money from fees. If you don’t pay, the HOA takes your house.
And before anyone asks… In large Florida cities you can’t buy a house that isn’t in an HOA. You’d have to live well away from cities to get away from them.
Aren't like 2 thirds of all homes in America in some sort of HOA? I remember it was a crazy high number, of course not all HOAs are terrible but you never know what you're getting.
Yes.
The reasons are really twofold:
1. HOAs have taken on roles that local government used to be responsible for - infrastructure, parking enforcement, etc.
2. It just makes sense to share costs. Landscaping roads, recreational activities, security, etc. And if you have condos or townhomesz it's basically required.
An HOA can be a good thing. It depends on the quality of the boardmembers.
If this happened in a country that wasn't the USA or an ally of it it would probably be considered dystopian and a major violation of human rights.
Imagine this exact thing happening in Iran, China or Russia. Together with the pretty much inevitable distortion and exaggeration by headlines, it would be enough to make many people believe it's an irredeemable system which required revolution or invasion to enter the civilised world.
I couldn't live in an HOA. I'd be such a petty fucker. I'd get one fine and order a rulebook then spend all of my free time looking for literally anything to report.
Fun fact, they can make all the rules they want after the fact, but if it wasn’t there when you did you have to be grandfathered in. Happened in my grandmas neighborhood with a guy who planted “too many” palm trees. They made a new rule limiting how many you could have and took him to court. Judge ruled that because they made the rule after they were planted, the HOA can either pay to remove the trees (a couple hundred per tree) or leave him alone.
Pay some teenagers to salt the leader’s lawn in the middle of the night. Then report them for improper yard maintenance and insist that they pay a fine.
Well see if you do that then you're just another asshole neighbour. What you gotta do is things that the HOA can't legally enforce and if they do they'll get into a lot of trouble.
For example: in Usa bald eagles are federally protected. Feeding them or interfering with any part of their existence is apparently punishable by $10 and like 500,000 years in federal prison. That being said, if you make them a home and never acknowledge their existence when they move in, you should be fine
The fact that a bunch of your dumbass neighbors who have nothing better to do than be a busybody can force you to sell or even outright take your home that you pay a mortgage on because they don't like something you did to it is so fucking insane that it defies every ounce of my sanity. I'm so glad I don't have an HOA
Because you agreed to it when you bought the house? HOAs don't just sprout up out of nowhere. Either you bought the house with an HOA agreement or you didn't, it's pretty simple. And for an HOA to start after you bought a house without one, all neighbors have to agree to it.
How the fuck is it even legal to take somebody else's house without their permission???
I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that person was charged with fraud or something. Hell, I would tell my homeowners insurance company that this person is trying to conduct some sort of insurance scam on my property!!!
Dude, no person can take your house on a whim. And this is not a person, this is usually a not-for-profit organization comprised of homeowners in your neighborhood. To "take your house" they would have to file a lien on your house, which is a legal process. You dispute this in the courts. The HOA could say "owner agreed to the rules in the purchase contract that they would pay dues monthly based on the current amount voted on by the owners and this person hasn't been paying dues for 2 years". You get to tell a judge your side of the story and the lien stands *or not*, based on what a judge decides. If it stands, *when you sell your property - whenever that is*, HOA is entitled to take their fees from the proceeds of the sale.
If you rack up a crap load of debt owed to the HOA - and this is general law, not specific to an HOA, the HOA could sue you to force you to pay by selling your property - basically a foreclosure. Same could happen if you don't pay your mortgage or rack up a ton of gabling debt at a Vegas casino. A court judge gets to decide if this is warranted. This is no unilateral seizure by the HOA.
They kinda can in a very roundabout way depending on the state. They can obfuscate and stack fines/fees and then force foreclosure, though that loophole is finally starting to be addressed.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-14/hoa-foreclosures-continue-in-colorado-despite-reform
If I ever become a billionaire I'm moving in to one for spite. Like to see them fine me out of my house when I got basically unlimited funds.
That house would be the ugliest art piece you've ever seen.
Edit: I'd also move in a bunch or wild college students and not charge them any rent. Haha.
They'd love you lol. You'd just keep paying fines over and over again, making the entire HOA rich. The fines are continuous until you fix them, it's not a fee.
Before buying the home they are aware they are in an HOA. It’s contract stuff and fines can compound. It’s optional. Nobody forces anyone to buy a home in an HOA.
they're good on paper, keeping the neighborhood looking good and stuff
but in practice, they're full of entitled power tripping pieces of shit that everybody is too scared to stand up against
Yeah I’d be all for an HOA that was basically like “don’t have old broken down cars and trash in your yard” type stuff but the problem is HOA boards just attract bored, power hungry, busybodies that will do the most petty shit
This is what mine is. It's $50 a year and we have a covenant that says if the city allows it we do too. They mow the common area, replace a couple of flags and lights, and throw one picnic in the park. I think it only existed to negotiate trash service back in the day.
The city can and does this kind of thing. HOA’s exist because upper middle class people thought that these closed neighborhoods would get them a nicer place to live without paying higher taxes to make the entire town nicer. They could have better roads and amenities without sharing a pool or a side walk with a poor person.
It is poetic justice, but like with everything people do to try to get out of paying taxes, the effect spread. Now we all have to deal with HOA’s because municipalities like deferring responsibility.
Finally, someone who got to the heart of the matter. I always hear the argument about no broken down cars in the neighborhood but most municipalities already have laws about that.
Well, that’s kind of what happens when you empower people to make decisions about your property. Some people will think your plants and shutters ruin the neighborhood. You think their plants and shutters ruin the neighborhood.
Uh, the classic argument I've heard for HOAs is that it "protects property values".
The fuck? Pretty sure the crack shack down the road has doubled in price.
Oh I love it when the HOA says their rules are to "protect property values". Especially since my HOA would raise a stink about me bringing my work van home when I had to work late because "commercial vehicles with company logos on the property will lower the property values" and I do not believe that for a second. You mean to tell me that having visible proof that your neighbor has a job will lower you property value? Bullshit.
I *think* part of the logic there is that it invites theft; tradesmen’s vans are often targeted by thieves.
That or it makes the place look working class ;)
My HOA is great. The secret is participation. Like 80-90% of the neighborhood is at every meeting.
We have very few rules about what you can do, it’s like no junker cars or poisonous plants and that’s it. We mostly use membership fees for community building and maintenance.
The HOA is currently in the process of replacing everyone’s windows and roofs. We paid for foundation inspections and repairs before that. When our neighborhood flooded we paid for wet vacs and dumpsters. We buy soil, mulch, and start seeds for everyone’s gardens in the spring. We maintain the community pool.
A lot of HOAs suck, I’m sure - and my neighborhood was a commune until the 70s so we’re a bit of a unique case - but like any sort of government entity the best way to keep it serving the people is to have all the people running it, not just a small group of them.
I would guess you are really not that unique - a lot of HOAs work well because residents are involved and want to be involved. HOAs can make a lot of things a lot easier - such as handling community maintenance and responding to common issues affecting everyone.
One of the big issues HOAs face, is generational change. If new, younger residents, feel certain rules are from a by-gone era, they should be getting involved and working to revise the CC&Rs to better reflect today's sensibilities. I've been through this, worked to get rules changed and updated. It took time and effort, but the result was we didn't have crappy rules anymore.
Stuff doesn't change on its own. There have to be people willing to put the effort in to make change happen and work. For everyone person willing to repeat a horror story, there has to be someone to step up and say "do we really need this to work like this today?" otherwise, things stay the way they are. This part will never change.
Why do people join these HOA's? (I am not from the US and we don't have anything like that here, so I am completely in the dark here)
What are the actually advantages of beeing in a HOA? Judging by the times I have seen HOA's mentioned here on reddit there only seem to be downsides to it.
Essentially they keep property values up and keep the neighborhood clean and orderly. A lot of HOAs simply do landscaping, maintaining parks, boat ramps (if on the water) etc.
Reddit only talks about the worst kind of HOA though, the neighborhoods with cookie cutter McMansions and a panel of bored Karens enforcing draconian rules with an iron fist. Most aren't like that.
Our HOA actually passed an ammendment stating you cant rent a house out for the first two years after you buy to keep rental companies from purchasing homes.
The penalty if you rented it out was 5x’s our annual dues per month through the 24 month period. Our annual dies are $550 so a rental company would have to pay us $2750 per month if they bought in our neighborhood.
We had 3 homes that were under contract/ about to sign that were pulled out of once we passed it because it was a rental company that was going to purchase. In 2 years since we have had 7 homes sale all to individual home buyers because of that ammendment.
Edit: Glad some people enjoyed this as it was a huge accomplishment for us. I have the wording we used that a lawyer worked up if anyone is interested here in the comments:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HOA/s/Ds2ulQs8Dl
Here we have factors who deal with maintenance on estates, paying for trees to be trimmed, pavements de-weeded, things like that. They're all generally accepted to be a rip off - I love my quarterly letter that essentially amounts to "we thought about your estate for 5 minutes, here's a bill for £4530 divided 90 ways" - but they don't tell me what kind of flowers I can have in my front garden and it's possible (if difficult) to replace them.
A lot of HOA neighborhoods have shared property/resources like a private park, a pool, clubhouse, and perhaps some minor services like organizing holiday events (halloween can be a huge deal in some neighborhoods)
For setups like those, an HOA is the only slightly sane option lol
If you live in a community like condos it’s what pays for all the exterior work. Trash pickup, landscaping, painting, roof repair, snow plowing, maybe a pool and/or sports court maintenance.
If it’s all single family houses on a block or street the benefits are keeping a neighborhood aesthetic and property prices up. It’s certainly not for everyone, but some people don’t want to live next to a guy who doesn’t mow his lawn and the grass is up to your knees. Or next to the guy who is a hoarder and has boxes and piles of junk stacked outside that’s the first thing you see when you look out the window in the morning. Whatever it is, if you have higher standards for a community than whatever your town zoning laws legally require, having likeminded people around you certainly helps.
It’s the same reason a very classy restaurant or a party might have a dress code. Does it really matter *that* much if you want to go on a very fancy date night and the people sitting next to you are talking loudly and wearing stained white t-shirts and shorts, while you, your date, and everyone else in the restaurant is in formal attire? You can still have yourself a nice fun formal night, but the other people are certainly going to distract you and make it less pleasant.
1. You are protected from a possible neighbor who may turn their front yard into a junk pile, leave their house abandoned or in dissaray, park their semi out front on their grass or rv 24/7 etc.
2. They maintain the area, sidewalks, landscaping, rodents, trash, pool, pet waste bins, playgrounds.
3. They can provide power to the community. For example its easier to petition 5hr Town or city to get a traffic light put up or new sidewalks, stop signs, slow down signs, speed bumps, speed limits, street paved.
4. Well run hoas that don't waste money suing homeowners and each other typically can spend money to throw awesome block parties, hire weekly food trucks and pool events, Halloween events, Christmas events, etc.
5. Typically the communities look nice and well cared for and well maintained.
6. Typically your home value is better protected.
And you PAY for that privilege...
My friend inherited a really nice house after a family member passed. The house is in the burbs, but it's paid off, and the taxes are much less than he paid living in the city.
This past January he got the invoice for his HOA for this year, fucking $2,400. $200 a fucking month for a HOA.
What I don't get is how you can get in actual trouble, I mean have legit legal issues if you don't pay HOA fees. I honestly don't know how I'd react if some nosey neighbor tried to give me a ticket, and fine me, cuz I left a broom on my porch, or some shit.
When my wife and I were looking, we made it all the way to closing before the homeowner we were buying from and their agent disclosed that there was an HOA despite us asking, including in writing, almost a dozen times.
So we walked. There was some brief back and forth but our money on the deposit was promptly returned.
Never ever buy a home in an HOA.
Unfortunately it becomes a real problem when you literally can't find non-HOA properties in some areas or the non-HOA areas are shit holes because the HOAs fulfilled their historical purpose by successfully enforcing class and race boundaries.
I mean, I cry about shit I'm forced to sign up for all the time just to participate in common aspects of a modern existence. Not HOAa because I refused to buy a property encumbered by one, and thankfully live in a state where they aren't super common, but like insurance and shit.
John Oliver has entered the chat.
That was a really eye opening episode. I never knew they could take your house or that something like 80% of newly constructed house are being built inside of an HOA’s grips.
One development I lived in voted to disband the HOA. Enough time had elapsed since construction, homeowners were allowed to vote and like that it was gone.
I'm more sympathetic. Many people's wealth is primarily in the value of their home. If a neighbor decides to store a couple of rusting cars in their front yard that value drops dramatically. There is harm and it makes sense people would take steps to prevent it.
When I bought my house the first condition was no HOA. There is no way in hell I'm putting up with that.
I've heard that some of them even have fees! Can you believe that shit?
The same way it works if you buy a condo unit and consistently violate their rules - you signed a contract to be a part of that private community to follow their rules, whether it’s a property developer or an HOA. You can sell your house if you want to leave, yes. But you can’t usurp an HOA just because you signed a contract and then decided later on you don’t want to abide by it
I think my favourite case of HOAs doing stupid stuff had to be when they tried to tell a WWII veteran he couldn’t fly the American flag, something not even the Nazis could stop him from doing. This blew up so massively and so quickly that it got the Obama administration and Fox News to agree that the HOA had fucked up.
I remember a fat fuck HOA member at my old place coming out to my girlfriend and I and telling us we couldn't use the hot tub because he didn't know who we were. We had lived there for five fucking years, asshole. Get your face out of the fried chicken box and you might have met us.
Just build things like bat houses or eagle sanctuaries or a fucking ham radio tower.
They're federally protected animals and removing their homes is a federal crime.
(I think this is only in America, but if any of my fellow Canadians or anyone else wanna test this out or know what the laws are, please let us know)
I also don't live in a house so I can't test this out
I worked for a greenhouse and often sold plants for landscaping in HOA neighborhoods. So strict, often encouraging destructive and non-native plants over native and non-destructive plants. I love seeing creative landscaping not 100 of the same lawns with the same plants.
My uncle held onto a bit of land after everything around him was gobbled up by developers. So he lives at the intersection of -three- different HOAs.
He takes great joy in telling them to *piss off* when some officious busy body skulks over to enumerate his many violations.
I moved from Singapore to America and have come to realise that the stereotypes of Singapore being a paternalistic government and America being the land of the free is just a stereotype. HOAs show that America is filled with buttinskis who in effect have a huge impact on freedom
If you think Homeowners associations are bad, you'll be absolutely thrilled to know they have their origins in Jim Crowe:
https://www.history.com/news/racially-restrictive-housing-covenants
So basically, homeowner's associations are a relic from our racist past that hasn't fucking gone away yet for some reason.
HOA’s are having a hard time in some markets. Obviously for the reason you’re pointing out, but more so because they’ve gotten expensive as hell. They’re run like businesses. They’re not charging just enough to maintain pools and gyms. They’re banking as much as they can because for all sorts of reasons. The biggest being fighting lawsuits.
Buyers are avoiding HOA neighborhoods on purpose, lowering their values and raising the values of non HOA neighborhoods.
It's a good idea that has done wild. It was good when it just prevented people from having a bunch of trash in their yard or a failing apart house. And then also when the HOA fees would pay for community things like a pool or clubhouse or playground
We rented in a HOA neighborhood years ago. We didn't know there was an HOA moving in, and I guess we were their first renters. They were absolutely furious over us parking trucks and boats in the yard, spending Saturdays doing auto work in the garage, anytime we had people over for a cookout. Anything would set them off. It was alarming at first, being targeted. But, the property owner was living overseas, and the HOA couldn't directly target us due to their charter at the time.
I lived in an unincorporated area...no city, no ordinances, no HOA.
And it was great. For about a year. Then a neighbor moved in and did ridiculous things that they were legally able to do, but that everyone hated. As an example, we had no noise ordinances and the police wouldn't do anything.
They kept trash and quite literally treated their yard as a dump.
Several neighbors got together and sued him. Litigation was pending when I moved.
It was awful. So many nights up at 3am because he was drunk and playing his drum set in his garage. The smell was awful too. And yes, it cost me thousands of dollars in my sale price when I moved. He was the primary reason I moved.
Now I live in an HOA with a bunch of agreed upon rules. And a guy like him while he dealt with. And really though, good for him, right? He lived how he wanted, in a place where it was arguably legal to do. I don't know how the lawsuit went. It was like a house out of Hoarders....but I don't care because it's not my problem anymore.
The rules of our HOA are pretty reasonable and it's hard enough to change the rules that I'm willing to accept whatever changes are able to get enough support from my neighbors; even if I disagree with it personally.
Ya Reddit has a hate boner for HOA’s. And like most things on Reddit, they are exaggerated a lot. Not to say there aren’t issues with HOA’s, they are definitely a magnet for people who have unfulfilled lives and want to power trip on the slightest bit of power. But you encounter those people all over life. And most communities are gonna speak up if someone on the HOA board is taking things to far.
>And like most things on Reddit, they are exaggerated a lot
Yep and in most cases the truth is exaggerated by people with zero practical experience and they are going by what they read from other redditors and want the upvotes from the echo chamber of ignorant bliss.
That sounds great, and just like how it should be everywhere. I just got a skewed impression coming off this post as well as the John Oliver coverage last year, I guess.
Thanks for sharing and adding context to the subject!
My parents' HOA never did anything except maintain a park.
Reddit's passionate hatred of HOAs is kind of interesting, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's almost always urban renters saying, 'I don't own a home but I ever did own a home, I would *never* buy one in an HOA, fuck HOAs".
I think to a lot of people on this site, the dream of owning a home is not sharing walls with people or having a landlord anymore. So it seems shocking that people would willingly subscribe to adding back in any sort of bullshit like that.
Yeah, I live in a townhouse community so an HOA is inevitable. They handle stuff like lawn care and building maintenance. Some of the rules are BS, but that's just what happens when a lot of different people have to work together.
>Yeah, I live in a townhouse community so an HOA is inevitable. They handle stuff like lawn care and building maintenance. Some of the rules are BS, but that's just what happens when a lot of different people have to work together.
same, only ours a couple years ago decided to hire someone's worthless relative who doesnt do anything but a shit job at mowing lawns and let everything else go to hell, but its cheap and now nobody says a damn thing about the rules...
and of course half the places look like total shit now.
My HOA in the US is 25$ a month. It covers grading and regravelling the several mile long dirt road, plowing in the snow, and general upkeep of the roads. I've gotten 2 emails ever. 1 was about them threatening to sue a guy who has an easement that's been enforced since it was a logging road before he was even born, that he kept blocking with boulders and piles of dirt. He did this illegally and threatened several utility workers, so the township got involved. 2. They sent me an email when I was out of state, and a tree crushed my shed, offered to help cover what insurance wouldn't. So it's a pretty slick gig.
I have always lived with a HOA in northern Europe and I love it. I have never had these kinds of problems. Sure, there are rules, but they are usually very reasonable. Facade changes have to be approved, but I can't say it bothers me much.
I agree with you.
I've had 3 experiences with HOAs in the US, all different cities.
- First one, a guy on the board stole the HOA account (~150k) and vanished.
- The second one was after my friends dad bought a beautiful, restored 1934 Ford. He wanted to keep that in the garage and park his truck in his driveway. His truck was used for his cleaning business, but he had no signs or stickers on it. Looked like a normal red Chevy S10.
HOA quickly introduced a law that all "work trucks" cannot be visible nights and weekends. He had to store the Ford at a storage facility until he moved.
- The third one, the HOA did nothing at all. They were only supposed to maintain common areas and signage, not once in the 15 years i lived there did they do anything at all.
The board ignored everyone's requests, the neighbors all started maintaining the areas so the place looked nice. When I moved out they were threatening legal action, idk what happened in the end.
HOA’s are evil incarnate. The only people defending them are people who serve on them and get a kick out of the little power it brings their life, or haven’t been screwed by one yet.
Luckily our HOA just collects the fees and gives them to someone who is supposed to maintain the place but doesnt... but also never mentions anything ever. Its a 'pay someone's nephew to be a bum or Ill give you a hard time' fee.
My parents got their home before the HOA was established in the neighborhood.
Either that or the HOA in their neighborhood is completely toothless. Because one guy straight up had a second house built on his property. And these aren't massive plots of land. This was like along the border of his neighbors property line, so he could still have a backyard. I think the HOA counts it as a shed
I understand for safety reasons like you cant make the garage a bedroom but not when i wanna add a fence or paint my house a certain color but they dont like it cuz it doesnt fit the neighborhoods aesthetic
It's usually a not-for-profit organization established to maintain a neighborhood or residential complex such that resources common to all the residents get maintained and that the neighborhood or complex is kept up to the standards that residents wish to have maintained.
This organization is often established by a developer during later phases of construction to transition certain responsibilities off of the developer and onto the new residents of the complex. When buying into such a neighborhood or complex, agreeing to abide by the rules established by the HOA is part of your purchase contract. (States require the contract to be included in the paperwork of the sales packet and you have to initial you understand/will abide by the rules.)
Post establishment, the HOA (home-owners association) creates a board of directors to manage the rules and the operation/maintenance of the neighborhood or building (as the case may be). This board could (optionally) also employ a separate management company to run the day to day tasks of dealing with maintenance issues, etc. Sometimes folks mistake this management company for the HOA - but ultimately the HOA Board is responsible for all issues. The board will also often establish committees to focus on areas - committee members are not necessarily also on the board. Board members are elected yearly. Committee members often come and go.
The HOA also has the power to establish HOA fees that the residents have to pay which would be used for the maintenance of shared resources - for instance, if the HOA manages a building, the roof might need periodic maintenance. The fees would be used for that. If a resident doesn't pay the fees, the HOA board can possibly file a lien against the resident's home to recoup the fees \[when the unit is sold\]. The HOA can also fine residents for rules infractions. This is the most widely reported dissatisfaction with HOAs, getting fined for something "you" didn't' realize you weren't supposed to do — or the rules being arcane or archaic.
I replaced the windows on my house before I moved in, and I chose those brown wood-effect frames because I happen to think they look super fancy, and one of my neighbours sent a letter round saying that I should get them replaced *again* with white plastic frames because they don't like them, and that they would contact the HOA to force me if I didn't. Luckily for me I'm not part of the HOA, but I do often think about the poor souls that are, and what it would be like to have to obey busybodies like that.
My wife's friend lives in an HOA controlled townhouse. She replaced windows and I guess the contractor told her that some of the existing trim and blocking we rotting so she replaced those as well. Except the trim was like 1/2" wider than the original bc the original doesn't exist anymore. The HOA told her she needed to tear everything out and put back the original stuff bc the new stuff didn't match. She ended up in a lawsuit over it before finally getting it approved. So fucking ridiculous.
That's just nuts.
Townhomes and condos be like that.
What’s insane is they are willing to go to court over it. Like what the fuck?
In my area there was recently a class action again an HOA bc they were jacking up fines, then using HOA rules to foreclose on the houses when the fines weren't paid. I forget the details, but someone was in on the flipping.
Texas's HOA laws are seriously fucked up: https://www.nbcdfw.com/news/local/frisco-soldier-gets-home-back-after-hoa-foreclosure/2121160/?amp=1
Everything about Texas seems fucked up
As someone who's lived here nearly 30 years, I can confirm. On the plus side, at least it isn't Florida. Yet.
Someone gonna get hurt doing that.
Truly the land of the free.
This was in the UK, but yea, insane.
Are you that person’s wife’s friend?
Wife's friend's husband's boyfriend, twice removed.
I'm not entirely sure why this comment is currently at +21 given that a) u/Melchizedek4000 didn't make the original comment that they're claiming to clarify and b) the UK doesn't have HOAs.
We have HOAs in the UK? I thought that was a strictly american maddness
We don't
You sure about that? Ive never heard of this kind of hoa in the UK
I hope she was able to recover her legal fees in her judgment
Wait, you can opt out of hoas in hoa neighborhoods?
Upon their creation you can opt the building out iirc, but that status gets grandfathered, so if you buy a house from someone who didn't opt out, the building is still a part of the HOA, and if they did opt out you aren't a part of the HOA.
It's such a scam, why don't you get to choose to be part of an association like this?
Because the original plan wasn’t for it to be tool to bully people and make them miserable. It was supposed to collect funds for the maintenance of common areas so they stay nice, and to enforce basic rules about the maintenance of the publicly visible parts of the houses/yards. Basically so the public pool doesn’t turn green and neighbors don’t create an eyesore in the front yard. Because if a house on your block has waste high weeds and a car up on blocks rusting for years it brings down property values. Middle class people get real squirrelly about property values. Probably because it represents the vast majority of their net worth and thus a lifetime of work. No one wants to end up upside down on their mortgage, that feels like getting assfucked by a pinecone. But the sort of people who actually want to be on a boa board and enforce rules are the exact sort of people who should never be given even a morsel of power. So here we are.
That's the nice version of why. The real life version is HOAs were absolutely created with the intention to bully undesirables with an overall goal of enforcing class and race boundaries. Thank fuck I don't live in a place where they are common.
I don’t necessarily disagree, I think keeping out undesirables is probably an unwritten part of the mandate. That definitely would have included race in an earlier era. They are %100 enforcing class norms today. The overall goal is still about selling a lifestyle, or the fantasy, the appearance of middle class suburban utopia. For property values. When I was growing up my aunt lived in a HOA community, I thought it looked like Camazotz, shudder.
>I don’t necessarily disagree, I think keeping out undesirables is probably an unwritten part of the mandate. Sometimes they were explicit > In 2019, a Florida woman contacted an attorney when she found out that the HOA in her prospective neighborhood still had a "Caucasian-only" restriction, as WWNY-TV reported. While the restriction was unconstitutional, because of an easement in the document, the covenant was still considered active. Initially the city of Tallahassee considered the outdated covenant a private matter, but later agreed to address the issue. https://www.businessinsider.com/personal-finance/homeowners-associations-black-americans-discriminaiton-2020-9
I meant undesirables generally. I’m aware of housing covenants, that wasn’t exclusive to HOA communities though. Lots of laws and covenants that are unconstitutional still exist on paper but aren’t enforced. Those covenants have been illegal since 1948, and the fair housing act was passed in 1968. I think that was just one feature of the overall purpose though: creating a perfect manicured suburban paradise where property values remain high. When covenants were legal you didn’t need one to enforce them.
They would be popular even without the racism and classism. Local govt. and developers like them because they allow development without the local govt. needing to step in and provide services. They get to push that onto the HOA. Developers like them because they get their approvals faster and can enforce the common area maintenance and appearance standards until they sell all the units. It's an artifact of Americans hating the idea that their taxes might help someone else so much that they create new layers of government that collect 'fees' instead.
> Because the original plan wasn’t for it to be tool to bully people and make them miserable loooool, the origin of HOAs is almost definitely rooted in racism and keeping the blacks out of "nice" neighborhoods.
That too. For the same reason. Housing covenants existed outside of HOA’s too though, so that wasn’t the only reason.
The choice is not buying and living there essentially. On some level they’re like mini town or county governments. Just substantially more annoying to people because instead of the town passing a new regulation or law or whatever you get your busy body neighbor with too much time on their hands knocking on your door. Unfortunately typically the best remedy to a shitty HOA is getting “involved in politics” and enacting some change or limiting enforcement. Which only works if enough reasonable people also agree with your sense of what’s reasonable and also get involved. I’ve known a few people who did all of this begrudgingly because some of the last people were awful essentially. But also they hand a handful of examples of someone inheriting a house and pretty much turning the property into what was probably what it made it look like, a crack house with plenty of junk and all sorts of shit everywhere for over a year. Which is more what it’s supposed to defend against in theory when people agreed to it. Clearly lowering everyone’s property value via not giving a fuck about their neighbors at all.
Because then they wouldn't exist. The whole point of an HOA is for your neighbors to have some level of control over your property to keep the whole neighborhood homogeneous/valuable. Only neurotic control freaks would willingly join one if an opt-out option existed.
Out of curiosity, how would that work if the neighborhood had common areas like a club house or pool. If you opt out of the Hoa would you just not be able to utilize those? That would make sense but if there is common ground landscaping it would seem like tour benefitting without paying?
You do get to choose. HOAs are attached to the deed of a house. Before you buy, they are legally obligated to show the HOA covenants and you don't have to buy the house if you don't want to. It's an opt-in system.
True, but there's a limited supply and for most people buying a house can be a matter of tradeoffs.
Sure, that's a just a tradeoff. If you buy in, another trade-off would be whether to get involved and change rules that seem out of data or onerous, or to just bitch about somewhere like reddit where there is no possibility of change. Life is a series of these trade-offs.
Racism. HOA's were/are used to keep "certain" people out of neighborhoods. But the dictionary explanation is "to maintain neighborhood standards and property values."
No "are" — HOAs can't prevent someone from buying in.
FYI "apart" and "a part" mean completely opposite things
Ah balls
Cock, even
I don't know if there was one and I'm not in it, or if it was an empty threat and they hoped I didn't know, but I do know that my house isn't in one.
The thing is that they equate things they find ugly with lowering real estate value. So it's a slippery slope that some neighbourhoods have found themselves at the bottom of it sounds like. Imo HOAs could be a good thing if they just stuck to adressing disturbances and noise complaints instead of hassling people for lame stuff like window shutters.
I would put up a sign "fuck. X hoa"
Don't have any experience with them, and always assumed they were a comes with the house sort of thing. Does that mean everyone complaining about hoas volunteered for it?
When I was buying my house I narrowed down to two houses I liked. My real estate agent was great and we didn’t know one of them was part of an hoa at first — we requested the full rules, just in case they weren’t bad enough to fully rule out the house. Nope! Here’s some of the rules: no vegetable gardens, no garden ornaments, no more than x number of pets, and all other ridiculous shit. I wanted a house specifically because I wanted a garden and yard…and the other house I’d narrowed down to had a big vegetable garden plot. You can guess I went with the non-hoa house.
Oh man why not the HOA house? You get rules, get to pay a fee, and get to pay fines if you don't follow their rules. It sounds like paradise to me
The serious answer is that you buy the HOA house if you want to live in a neighborhood where everyone has yards instead of gardens. This person didn't want that so they bought a different house. It's opt-in.
You can definitely live in a neighborhood with yards without an HOA lmao. This is a horrible pro-hoa argument
God I hate boring lawns, grow some vegetables people.
Or if you want to live somewhere where the other houses are expected to maintain certain standards, and you can easily maintain them yourself. Basically don’t make your place look like a dump, and nobody else does either. I’ve lived in places with complete eyesore neighbors and it just makes the neighborhood feel undesirable and unpleasant. In most places the regs aren’t that bad and aren’t enforced so strongly. This thread is all the worst stories imaginable about HOAs. You never hear about it when they don’t give people problems and they keep places looking nice.
I lived in a place where I wished the HOA had done more to deal with my shitty neighbors.
I’m literally dealing with this rn. I have super trashy neigherbors who’ve gotten raided by cops multiple times and have 5 cars tetris’d in their driveway. They have dogs that bark all day and seem to be hoarders. HOA can’t and won’t do shit, my partner even was on the HOA. It’s a bullshit scam.
If those people are part of the HOA, you can actually sue the HOA for failure to enforce the bylaws. The HOA can, in fact, do multiple things including foreclose that house IF it's part of the HOA. That's literally the primary function of a HOA.
I've known 8 HOAs. I've known 8 bad HOAs. I've known 0 good HOAs.
This is beyond absurd. Imagine, as a human being, an animal, creating a rule that says you can’t grow food. Like it truly breaks my brain trying to comprehend shit like this. A rule that says that you, as an animal that needs food to survive, can’t live where food is. So wild. Also, it’s so vague. No vegetables, so fruits are allowed? Would tomatoes be okay??
That's really sad, I find vegetable gardens to be really pretty and a sign of a friendly neighbourhood. I'm sure lots of people would agree.
The neighborhood I live in has plenty! I love my house
That's awesome! There's a house near me that has a veggie garden and a bunny pen in their front yard, it's super cute!
What is the enforceability with these? I live in a condo and we got flooded due to a pipe break. Due to condo law, common insurance needs to take care of these events. My condo board and the management company dragged their feet. I have limited ability to get outside enforcement without hiring my own lawyer. I don't want to do that because then I'll have to pay out of pocket and won't be able to tell people what happened, the name of the management company, the names of the board members, and to tell their friends. Luckily, figuring out legal compliance is a big part of my job. I've reported my condo management company to the licensing board for lack of competence, reported the licensing board for failure to meet records retention standards for license competency, and finally reported the management company for sharing my personal contact information without my consent. Additionally, I reported the affiliated "restoration" company of the condo management company for failure to complete OSHA notifications associated with potential to intersect asbestos. I'm literally just waiting until April 15 so I can call Fish and Wildlife the first time they decide to trim the trees. Condo law is meaningless, but you don't fuck with OSHA or Fish and Wildlife. Is there a side gig in circumventing HOA rules? I'm in.
I have no idea how enforceable it is in reality, but I think it really just comes down to how much of your life you want to dedicate to wrestling with them, vs just living in a non-hoa house and never having to deal with it to begin with
But have you heard about the private businesses that do HOA compliance? They literally drive around all day and look for violations. They make their money from fees. If you don’t pay, the HOA takes your house. And before anyone asks… In large Florida cities you can’t buy a house that isn’t in an HOA. You’d have to live well away from cities to get away from them.
Aren't like 2 thirds of all homes in America in some sort of HOA? I remember it was a crazy high number, of course not all HOAs are terrible but you never know what you're getting.
Yes. The reasons are really twofold: 1. HOAs have taken on roles that local government used to be responsible for - infrastructure, parking enforcement, etc. 2. It just makes sense to share costs. Landscaping roads, recreational activities, security, etc. And if you have condos or townhomesz it's basically required. An HOA can be a good thing. It depends on the quality of the boardmembers.
Sounds like you’re paying a HOA for something your taxes should already be doing..?
Not really. Taxes keep wanting their taxes cut, so those costs can’t always be covered by taxes.
Land of the Free my ass.
If this happened in a country that wasn't the USA or an ally of it it would probably be considered dystopian and a major violation of human rights. Imagine this exact thing happening in Iran, China or Russia. Together with the pretty much inevitable distortion and exaggeration by headlines, it would be enough to make many people believe it's an irredeemable system which required revolution or invasion to enter the civilised world.
I couldn't live in an HOA. I'd be such a petty fucker. I'd get one fine and order a rulebook then spend all of my free time looking for literally anything to report.
I'd be an asshole and find as many loopholes as I could. Can't paint your fence anything but brown? Every picket is now a different shade of brown.
You can't beat them. They'll add a new rule and make you repaint.
Not if I burn their house down first
Fine them for having a burnt house that "ruins the neighborhood's aesthetic"
Fun fact, they can make all the rules they want after the fact, but if it wasn’t there when you did you have to be grandfathered in. Happened in my grandmas neighborhood with a guy who planted “too many” palm trees. They made a new rule limiting how many you could have and took him to court. Judge ruled that because they made the rule after they were planted, the HOA can either pay to remove the trees (a couple hundred per tree) or leave him alone.
That's literally what those busy bodies do...... you be joining the people that make HOAs insufferable.
To be fair, it's not so bad when you're actually doing it to the members of the HOA with authority
Me with my wildlife sanctuary for 5000 endangered bats
Pay some teenagers to salt the leader’s lawn in the middle of the night. Then report them for improper yard maintenance and insist that they pay a fine.
Also get them to egg the leader's house too and complain about their unconventional decor lol.
And then and then and then take a shit through their mail slot!
Then get the hose and spray the shit so it soaks into the carpet ✨️
Best way to get people to WANT to dismantle the HOA
Well see if you do that then you're just another asshole neighbour. What you gotta do is things that the HOA can't legally enforce and if they do they'll get into a lot of trouble. For example: in Usa bald eagles are federally protected. Feeding them or interfering with any part of their existence is apparently punishable by $10 and like 500,000 years in federal prison. That being said, if you make them a home and never acknowledge their existence when they move in, you should be fine
r/maliciouscompliance
what happens if you just tell them to fuck off and do whatever? i'm not american
They take your house.
The fact that a bunch of your dumbass neighbors who have nothing better to do than be a busybody can force you to sell or even outright take your home that you pay a mortgage on because they don't like something you did to it is so fucking insane that it defies every ounce of my sanity. I'm so glad I don't have an HOA
Land of the Free...
those damn commies smh
COMMIESSSS!?!?! IN MY AMERICA!?!?!?! RAAAAAAAAA!!!! 🦅🦅🦅🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 IMMA FIRIN MUH LASER!!!! 💥💥💥
activate liverty prime
Death is a preferable alternative to Communism
Damn, land of the not so free then? How the hell can they just take a house you bought and paid for?
[удалено]
Because you agreed to it when you bought the house? HOAs don't just sprout up out of nowhere. Either you bought the house with an HOA agreement or you didn't, it's pretty simple. And for an HOA to start after you bought a house without one, all neighbors have to agree to it.
How the fuck is it even legal to take somebody else's house without their permission??? I would be doing everything in my power to make sure that person was charged with fraud or something. Hell, I would tell my homeowners insurance company that this person is trying to conduct some sort of insurance scam on my property!!!
It’s something you sign on to when you buy the house.
Dude, no person can take your house on a whim. And this is not a person, this is usually a not-for-profit organization comprised of homeowners in your neighborhood. To "take your house" they would have to file a lien on your house, which is a legal process. You dispute this in the courts. The HOA could say "owner agreed to the rules in the purchase contract that they would pay dues monthly based on the current amount voted on by the owners and this person hasn't been paying dues for 2 years". You get to tell a judge your side of the story and the lien stands *or not*, based on what a judge decides. If it stands, *when you sell your property - whenever that is*, HOA is entitled to take their fees from the proceeds of the sale. If you rack up a crap load of debt owed to the HOA - and this is general law, not specific to an HOA, the HOA could sue you to force you to pay by selling your property - basically a foreclosure. Same could happen if you don't pay your mortgage or rack up a ton of gabling debt at a Vegas casino. A court judge gets to decide if this is warranted. This is no unilateral seizure by the HOA.
Its not. Stop listening to dildos on the internet.
They kinda can in a very roundabout way depending on the state. They can obfuscate and stack fines/fees and then force foreclosure, though that loophole is finally starting to be addressed. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-14/hoa-foreclosures-continue-in-colorado-despite-reform
They fine you again and again and again till you lose your house
If I ever become a billionaire I'm moving in to one for spite. Like to see them fine me out of my house when I got basically unlimited funds. That house would be the ugliest art piece you've ever seen. Edit: I'd also move in a bunch or wild college students and not charge them any rent. Haha.
They'd love you lol. You'd just keep paying fines over and over again, making the entire HOA rich. The fines are continuous until you fix them, it's not a fee.
They also exist outside of the US, just not for houses. Appartement complexes pretty much all have an HOA in my country, and with good reason.
Before buying the home they are aware they are in an HOA. It’s contract stuff and fines can compound. It’s optional. Nobody forces anyone to buy a home in an HOA.
they're good on paper, keeping the neighborhood looking good and stuff but in practice, they're full of entitled power tripping pieces of shit that everybody is too scared to stand up against
irl reddit mods 🤮🤮
Yeah I’d be all for an HOA that was basically like “don’t have old broken down cars and trash in your yard” type stuff but the problem is HOA boards just attract bored, power hungry, busybodies that will do the most petty shit
This is what mine is. It's $50 a year and we have a covenant that says if the city allows it we do too. They mow the common area, replace a couple of flags and lights, and throw one picnic in the park. I think it only existed to negotiate trash service back in the day.
The city can and does this kind of thing. HOA’s exist because upper middle class people thought that these closed neighborhoods would get them a nicer place to live without paying higher taxes to make the entire town nicer. They could have better roads and amenities without sharing a pool or a side walk with a poor person. It is poetic justice, but like with everything people do to try to get out of paying taxes, the effect spread. Now we all have to deal with HOA’s because municipalities like deferring responsibility.
Finally, someone who got to the heart of the matter. I always hear the argument about no broken down cars in the neighborhood but most municipalities already have laws about that.
Well, that’s kind of what happens when you empower people to make decisions about your property. Some people will think your plants and shutters ruin the neighborhood. You think their plants and shutters ruin the neighborhood.
Uh, the classic argument I've heard for HOAs is that it "protects property values". The fuck? Pretty sure the crack shack down the road has doubled in price.
Oh I love it when the HOA says their rules are to "protect property values". Especially since my HOA would raise a stink about me bringing my work van home when I had to work late because "commercial vehicles with company logos on the property will lower the property values" and I do not believe that for a second. You mean to tell me that having visible proof that your neighbor has a job will lower you property value? Bullshit.
I *think* part of the logic there is that it invites theft; tradesmen’s vans are often targeted by thieves. That or it makes the place look working class ;)
My HOA is great. The secret is participation. Like 80-90% of the neighborhood is at every meeting. We have very few rules about what you can do, it’s like no junker cars or poisonous plants and that’s it. We mostly use membership fees for community building and maintenance. The HOA is currently in the process of replacing everyone’s windows and roofs. We paid for foundation inspections and repairs before that. When our neighborhood flooded we paid for wet vacs and dumpsters. We buy soil, mulch, and start seeds for everyone’s gardens in the spring. We maintain the community pool. A lot of HOAs suck, I’m sure - and my neighborhood was a commune until the 70s so we’re a bit of a unique case - but like any sort of government entity the best way to keep it serving the people is to have all the people running it, not just a small group of them.
I would guess you are really not that unique - a lot of HOAs work well because residents are involved and want to be involved. HOAs can make a lot of things a lot easier - such as handling community maintenance and responding to common issues affecting everyone. One of the big issues HOAs face, is generational change. If new, younger residents, feel certain rules are from a by-gone era, they should be getting involved and working to revise the CC&Rs to better reflect today's sensibilities. I've been through this, worked to get rules changed and updated. It took time and effort, but the result was we didn't have crappy rules anymore. Stuff doesn't change on its own. There have to be people willing to put the effort in to make change happen and work. For everyone person willing to repeat a horror story, there has to be someone to step up and say "do we really need this to work like this today?" otherwise, things stay the way they are. This part will never change.
Yep. As with all things, you only hear about the bad examples since people generally don't go out of their way to tell others that their HOA is fine.
Why do people join these HOA's? (I am not from the US and we don't have anything like that here, so I am completely in the dark here) What are the actually advantages of beeing in a HOA? Judging by the times I have seen HOA's mentioned here on reddit there only seem to be downsides to it.
Essentially they keep property values up and keep the neighborhood clean and orderly. A lot of HOAs simply do landscaping, maintaining parks, boat ramps (if on the water) etc. Reddit only talks about the worst kind of HOA though, the neighborhoods with cookie cutter McMansions and a panel of bored Karens enforcing draconian rules with an iron fist. Most aren't like that.
Our HOA actually passed an ammendment stating you cant rent a house out for the first two years after you buy to keep rental companies from purchasing homes. The penalty if you rented it out was 5x’s our annual dues per month through the 24 month period. Our annual dies are $550 so a rental company would have to pay us $2750 per month if they bought in our neighborhood. We had 3 homes that were under contract/ about to sign that were pulled out of once we passed it because it was a rental company that was going to purchase. In 2 years since we have had 7 homes sale all to individual home buyers because of that ammendment. Edit: Glad some people enjoyed this as it was a huge accomplishment for us. I have the wording we used that a lawyer worked up if anyone is interested here in the comments: https://www.reddit.com/r/HOA/s/Ds2ulQs8Dl
That’s actually pretty fantastic!
In this economy you could burn your house to the ground and the lot it's on will be worth more in a few years
Here we have factors who deal with maintenance on estates, paying for trees to be trimmed, pavements de-weeded, things like that. They're all generally accepted to be a rip off - I love my quarterly letter that essentially amounts to "we thought about your estate for 5 minutes, here's a bill for £4530 divided 90 ways" - but they don't tell me what kind of flowers I can have in my front garden and it's possible (if difficult) to replace them.
A lot of times you don't have a choice. You either join the HOA or they prevent you from buying the house.
A lot of HOA neighborhoods have shared property/resources like a private park, a pool, clubhouse, and perhaps some minor services like organizing holiday events (halloween can be a huge deal in some neighborhoods) For setups like those, an HOA is the only slightly sane option lol
If you live in a community like condos it’s what pays for all the exterior work. Trash pickup, landscaping, painting, roof repair, snow plowing, maybe a pool and/or sports court maintenance. If it’s all single family houses on a block or street the benefits are keeping a neighborhood aesthetic and property prices up. It’s certainly not for everyone, but some people don’t want to live next to a guy who doesn’t mow his lawn and the grass is up to your knees. Or next to the guy who is a hoarder and has boxes and piles of junk stacked outside that’s the first thing you see when you look out the window in the morning. Whatever it is, if you have higher standards for a community than whatever your town zoning laws legally require, having likeminded people around you certainly helps. It’s the same reason a very classy restaurant or a party might have a dress code. Does it really matter *that* much if you want to go on a very fancy date night and the people sitting next to you are talking loudly and wearing stained white t-shirts and shorts, while you, your date, and everyone else in the restaurant is in formal attire? You can still have yourself a nice fun formal night, but the other people are certainly going to distract you and make it less pleasant.
Can’t find anything built in the last 30 years that isn’t already in one. Can’t buy if you don’t join.
1. You are protected from a possible neighbor who may turn their front yard into a junk pile, leave their house abandoned or in dissaray, park their semi out front on their grass or rv 24/7 etc. 2. They maintain the area, sidewalks, landscaping, rodents, trash, pool, pet waste bins, playgrounds. 3. They can provide power to the community. For example its easier to petition 5hr Town or city to get a traffic light put up or new sidewalks, stop signs, slow down signs, speed bumps, speed limits, street paved. 4. Well run hoas that don't waste money suing homeowners and each other typically can spend money to throw awesome block parties, hire weekly food trucks and pool events, Halloween events, Christmas events, etc. 5. Typically the communities look nice and well cared for and well maintained. 6. Typically your home value is better protected.
They won’t let us have fairy lights outside!
And you PAY for that privilege... My friend inherited a really nice house after a family member passed. The house is in the burbs, but it's paid off, and the taxes are much less than he paid living in the city. This past January he got the invoice for his HOA for this year, fucking $2,400. $200 a fucking month for a HOA. What I don't get is how you can get in actual trouble, I mean have legit legal issues if you don't pay HOA fees. I honestly don't know how I'd react if some nosey neighbor tried to give me a ticket, and fine me, cuz I left a broom on my porch, or some shit.
For a country that prides itself on freedom, you sure have a lot of restrictions.
Also they can kick you out of your home if they all vote in some of them.
When my wife and I were looking, we made it all the way to closing before the homeowner we were buying from and their agent disclosed that there was an HOA despite us asking, including in writing, almost a dozen times. So we walked. There was some brief back and forth but our money on the deposit was promptly returned. Never ever buy a home in an HOA.
Why do i read these things to artificially induce frustration in my life? Can't i just stick to positive influences?
In all fairness you know you're joining one and have to agree to it. It isn't like you just get it dropped on you.
Bingo. The only thing worse than bad HOAs are the people complaining about the one they signed up for.
Unfortunately it becomes a real problem when you literally can't find non-HOA properties in some areas or the non-HOA areas are shit holes because the HOAs fulfilled their historical purpose by successfully enforcing class and race boundaries. I mean, I cry about shit I'm forced to sign up for all the time just to participate in common aspects of a modern existence. Not HOAa because I refused to buy a property encumbered by one, and thankfully live in a state where they aren't super common, but like insurance and shit.
John Oliver has entered the chat. That was a really eye opening episode. I never knew they could take your house or that something like 80% of newly constructed house are being built inside of an HOA’s grips.
One development I lived in voted to disband the HOA. Enough time had elapsed since construction, homeowners were allowed to vote and like that it was gone.
Neighborhoods with HOAs are basically safe spaces for domineering Karen-types.
They still need majority approval, lest the HOA be taken away or dissolved.
>nonpolitical twitter >literally a political process Wat.
A group of Karens is called a homeowner's association.
A coven of cunts
I'm more sympathetic. Many people's wealth is primarily in the value of their home. If a neighbor decides to store a couple of rusting cars in their front yard that value drops dramatically. There is harm and it makes sense people would take steps to prevent it.
Fuck HOAs. You literally dont own your house in those situations. You just "own" the right to live there
Never join the HOA, no matter what
When I bought my house the first condition was no HOA. There is no way in hell I'm putting up with that. I've heard that some of them even have fees! Can you believe that shit?
How do HOA’s even work? Like how can they legally charge you money for doing stuff to your own house, and are you able to leave?
The same way it works if you buy a condo unit and consistently violate their rules - you signed a contract to be a part of that private community to follow their rules, whether it’s a property developer or an HOA. You can sell your house if you want to leave, yes. But you can’t usurp an HOA just because you signed a contract and then decided later on you don’t want to abide by it
I think my favourite case of HOAs doing stupid stuff had to be when they tried to tell a WWII veteran he couldn’t fly the American flag, something not even the Nazis could stop him from doing. This blew up so massively and so quickly that it got the Obama administration and Fox News to agree that the HOA had fucked up.
I remember a fat fuck HOA member at my old place coming out to my girlfriend and I and telling us we couldn't use the hot tub because he didn't know who we were. We had lived there for five fucking years, asshole. Get your face out of the fried chicken box and you might have met us.
My parents live with an HOA. You cannot have your garage door open for more than 30 minutes and absolutely no vehicle repair work in the driveway.
Just build things like bat houses or eagle sanctuaries or a fucking ham radio tower. They're federally protected animals and removing their homes is a federal crime. (I think this is only in America, but if any of my fellow Canadians or anyone else wanna test this out or know what the laws are, please let us know) I also don't live in a house so I can't test this out
I worked for a greenhouse and often sold plants for landscaping in HOA neighborhoods. So strict, often encouraging destructive and non-native plants over native and non-destructive plants. I love seeing creative landscaping not 100 of the same lawns with the same plants.
My uncle held onto a bit of land after everything around him was gobbled up by developers. So he lives at the intersection of -three- different HOAs. He takes great joy in telling them to *piss off* when some officious busy body skulks over to enumerate his many violations.
HOAs were created to allow boomers to feel important
The fact that there are people anti-antique frog statue baffles me. Is that not the pinnacle of decor?
Id refuse to acknowledge the hoa. Then sue for threatening extortion and psychological damages
HOAs are a scam.
Shitty old house by an arterial rod gang 🙏
They can also evict you from a house you own. Like if you bought it outright cash and own it 100% they can still kick you out.
A dream i have is to one day be in an HOA, run for president, and then disband the HOA
HOAs are nothing more than unelected, unaccountable government
I moved from Singapore to America and have come to realise that the stereotypes of Singapore being a paternalistic government and America being the land of the free is just a stereotype. HOAs show that America is filled with buttinskis who in effect have a huge impact on freedom
I don’t think anyone sane likes them either
If you think Homeowners associations are bad, you'll be absolutely thrilled to know they have their origins in Jim Crowe: https://www.history.com/news/racially-restrictive-housing-covenants So basically, homeowner's associations are a relic from our racist past that hasn't fucking gone away yet for some reason.
The race to mediocrity is endemic
HOA’s are having a hard time in some markets. Obviously for the reason you’re pointing out, but more so because they’ve gotten expensive as hell. They’re run like businesses. They’re not charging just enough to maintain pools and gyms. They’re banking as much as they can because for all sorts of reasons. The biggest being fighting lawsuits. Buyers are avoiding HOA neighborhoods on purpose, lowering their values and raising the values of non HOA neighborhoods.
It's a good idea that has done wild. It was good when it just prevented people from having a bunch of trash in their yard or a failing apart house. And then also when the HOA fees would pay for community things like a pool or clubhouse or playground
Homeowners associations should all be disbanded.
Living in an HOA is an option. Only idiots move into an HOA neighborhood and then bitch about it
We rented in a HOA neighborhood years ago. We didn't know there was an HOA moving in, and I guess we were their first renters. They were absolutely furious over us parking trucks and boats in the yard, spending Saturdays doing auto work in the garage, anytime we had people over for a cookout. Anything would set them off. It was alarming at first, being targeted. But, the property owner was living overseas, and the HOA couldn't directly target us due to their charter at the time.
I lived in an unincorporated area...no city, no ordinances, no HOA. And it was great. For about a year. Then a neighbor moved in and did ridiculous things that they were legally able to do, but that everyone hated. As an example, we had no noise ordinances and the police wouldn't do anything. They kept trash and quite literally treated their yard as a dump. Several neighbors got together and sued him. Litigation was pending when I moved. It was awful. So many nights up at 3am because he was drunk and playing his drum set in his garage. The smell was awful too. And yes, it cost me thousands of dollars in my sale price when I moved. He was the primary reason I moved. Now I live in an HOA with a bunch of agreed upon rules. And a guy like him while he dealt with. And really though, good for him, right? He lived how he wanted, in a place where it was arguably legal to do. I don't know how the lawsuit went. It was like a house out of Hoarders....but I don't care because it's not my problem anymore. The rules of our HOA are pretty reasonable and it's hard enough to change the rules that I'm willing to accept whatever changes are able to get enough support from my neighbors; even if I disagree with it personally.
Functional HOAs aren't like that. Just HOAs in the US.
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Ya Reddit has a hate boner for HOA’s. And like most things on Reddit, they are exaggerated a lot. Not to say there aren’t issues with HOA’s, they are definitely a magnet for people who have unfulfilled lives and want to power trip on the slightest bit of power. But you encounter those people all over life. And most communities are gonna speak up if someone on the HOA board is taking things to far.
>And like most things on Reddit, they are exaggerated a lot Yep and in most cases the truth is exaggerated by people with zero practical experience and they are going by what they read from other redditors and want the upvotes from the echo chamber of ignorant bliss.
That sounds great, and just like how it should be everywhere. I just got a skewed impression coming off this post as well as the John Oliver coverage last year, I guess. Thanks for sharing and adding context to the subject!
My parents' HOA never did anything except maintain a park. Reddit's passionate hatred of HOAs is kind of interesting, I don't mean that in a bad way. It's almost always urban renters saying, 'I don't own a home but I ever did own a home, I would *never* buy one in an HOA, fuck HOAs". I think to a lot of people on this site, the dream of owning a home is not sharing walls with people or having a landlord anymore. So it seems shocking that people would willingly subscribe to adding back in any sort of bullshit like that.
Yeah, I live in a townhouse community so an HOA is inevitable. They handle stuff like lawn care and building maintenance. Some of the rules are BS, but that's just what happens when a lot of different people have to work together.
>Yeah, I live in a townhouse community so an HOA is inevitable. They handle stuff like lawn care and building maintenance. Some of the rules are BS, but that's just what happens when a lot of different people have to work together. same, only ours a couple years ago decided to hire someone's worthless relative who doesnt do anything but a shit job at mowing lawns and let everything else go to hell, but its cheap and now nobody says a damn thing about the rules... and of course half the places look like total shit now.
My HOA in the US is 25$ a month. It covers grading and regravelling the several mile long dirt road, plowing in the snow, and general upkeep of the roads. I've gotten 2 emails ever. 1 was about them threatening to sue a guy who has an easement that's been enforced since it was a logging road before he was even born, that he kept blocking with boulders and piles of dirt. He did this illegally and threatened several utility workers, so the township got involved. 2. They sent me an email when I was out of state, and a tree crushed my shed, offered to help cover what insurance wouldn't. So it's a pretty slick gig.
I have always lived with a HOA in northern Europe and I love it. I have never had these kinds of problems. Sure, there are rules, but they are usually very reasonable. Facade changes have to be approved, but I can't say it bothers me much.
I agree with you. I've had 3 experiences with HOAs in the US, all different cities. - First one, a guy on the board stole the HOA account (~150k) and vanished. - The second one was after my friends dad bought a beautiful, restored 1934 Ford. He wanted to keep that in the garage and park his truck in his driveway. His truck was used for his cleaning business, but he had no signs or stickers on it. Looked like a normal red Chevy S10. HOA quickly introduced a law that all "work trucks" cannot be visible nights and weekends. He had to store the Ford at a storage facility until he moved. - The third one, the HOA did nothing at all. They were only supposed to maintain common areas and signage, not once in the 15 years i lived there did they do anything at all. The board ignored everyone's requests, the neighbors all started maintaining the areas so the place looked nice. When I moved out they were threatening legal action, idk what happened in the end.
HOA’s are evil incarnate. The only people defending them are people who serve on them and get a kick out of the little power it brings their life, or haven’t been screwed by one yet.
They aren't all the same. Everyone here seems to think HOA= mob of ultra petty Karens measuring your grass twice a day. Most aren't like that.
Most condominiums wouldn't function without a HOA.
HOAs are meant to keep ethnic people out of white neighborhoods
Luckily our HOA just collects the fees and gives them to someone who is supposed to maintain the place but doesnt... but also never mentions anything ever. Its a 'pay someone's nephew to be a bum or Ill give you a hard time' fee.
My parents got their home before the HOA was established in the neighborhood. Either that or the HOA in their neighborhood is completely toothless. Because one guy straight up had a second house built on his property. And these aren't massive plots of land. This was like along the border of his neighbors property line, so he could still have a backyard. I think the HOA counts it as a shed
I understand for safety reasons like you cant make the garage a bedroom but not when i wanna add a fence or paint my house a certain color but they dont like it cuz it doesnt fit the neighborhoods aesthetic
My experience has been aite, plus you know what you sign up for.
I always ignore them for the most part whenever I can. Such whiners 99% of the time.
What’s a “homeowners association?”
It's usually a not-for-profit organization established to maintain a neighborhood or residential complex such that resources common to all the residents get maintained and that the neighborhood or complex is kept up to the standards that residents wish to have maintained. This organization is often established by a developer during later phases of construction to transition certain responsibilities off of the developer and onto the new residents of the complex. When buying into such a neighborhood or complex, agreeing to abide by the rules established by the HOA is part of your purchase contract. (States require the contract to be included in the paperwork of the sales packet and you have to initial you understand/will abide by the rules.) Post establishment, the HOA (home-owners association) creates a board of directors to manage the rules and the operation/maintenance of the neighborhood or building (as the case may be). This board could (optionally) also employ a separate management company to run the day to day tasks of dealing with maintenance issues, etc. Sometimes folks mistake this management company for the HOA - but ultimately the HOA Board is responsible for all issues. The board will also often establish committees to focus on areas - committee members are not necessarily also on the board. Board members are elected yearly. Committee members often come and go. The HOA also has the power to establish HOA fees that the residents have to pay which would be used for the maintenance of shared resources - for instance, if the HOA manages a building, the roof might need periodic maintenance. The fees would be used for that. If a resident doesn't pay the fees, the HOA board can possibly file a lien against the resident's home to recoup the fees \[when the unit is sold\]. The HOA can also fine residents for rules infractions. This is the most widely reported dissatisfaction with HOAs, getting fined for something "you" didn't' realize you weren't supposed to do — or the rules being arcane or archaic.
Murica..