The best HOA story I've heard is where a wealthy man who was retiring moved into an HOA neighborhood and was told not to long after moving in that he was in violation of some nit-picky rule and he would be fined if he didn't comply. He tried to fight it and lost so he complied and set about fixing the HOA. Over the next several years, he hired or set up a management company and every time a property went up for sale, he bought it under that management company and rented them out. Eventually he had acquired enough properties that he was the majority owner. Then he purposely violated some rule and waited for the HOA to send him notice. He scheduled to go before the board to discuss his violation at the next meeting. The night of the meeting, after the board threatened him with whatever action they were going to take, he informed them that he was the majority owner in the neighborhood and as such he had the voting rights under the HOA bylaws to replace the board, which he did and then told the community that he was disbanding the HOA and everyone was free to enjoy their homes in anyway they see fit.
Got links? Great "they got what was coming to them" story. But sounds very urban legendish. Would love for it to be true, but seems too good to be true.
and who will be responsible for the clubhouse/pool /laundry room fences , roof, foundation repairs etc. You know , those joint owned parts of a townhome
I think that these corporate fascists should be charged with Sedition for assuming governmental powers and authority without any constitutional authorization.
When I was looking to buy several years ago, I saw a listing in which the realtor put in huge capital letters "NO HOA!!!". I guess she considered it a major selling point and I agree.
@@tuvelat7302 My HOA document is 4 pages definitions, 3 pages phase 1 that does, and 2 page of rules, a half page of obligations, and 4 pages of legal crap like signatures, stamps, survey registration, etc.
@@TheChoochooboy99 Mine is nice because we know each other. By name and personality, when I was in a condo I knew 2-5 people after 15 years and only 1 was a friend. One went insane, another has a stroke, one is still there and cooks some mean chicken, he is the only one I miss. I know more at my new location.
My buddy bought a home with an HOA. Apparently in Utah if you can prove the HOA doesn't doesn't provide services in the contract for 1 year, you can vote to disband it. Every day for a year he quietly documented the dead grass between the sidewalk and the road that the HOA was supposed to be taking care of. Then he rallied his neighbors and overthrew tyranny.
You don''t need to prove anything to vote to disband an HOA, you just have to have the votes. This is not going to be an easy thing to do, you will have a lot of legal hurdles to jump through and it will be quite a complex process. Of course,, the bigger the association the more difficult it will be.
It's not that easy to disband an HOA. If there is commonly owned property, someone has to take care of it, and that someone is the City/County or whatever. That's why, in most places, the entity taking over ownership (and maintenance) has to agree to do it. Also in most places it takes a huge majority to do it, usually at least 75%.
I used to get calls to "private" communities with HOA'S and they insisted that I, a sheriff enforce their rules. They said " they are parking on the street" I said "so what" they (they were two ladies with clipboards) I told them the streets were private and not subject to most traffic laws. They would also complain about someone not cutting a lawn or some other garbage. We had a situation here in Tucson where a family moved into their new home and within a few weeks received a letter demanding that they "remove the eyesore on their front door" the owner asked them what eyesore and they pointed out the 3 inch long and 3/8 wide tubular item with some writing on it. He told the HOA it was a Mezuzah and is a religious item containing the blessing on the home. They still insisted on him removing it. He refused and they fined him all sorts of fees and violations and even eventually put a lein on the home. they finally took him to court. The HOA had 5 people there all smug and the homeowner had himself and his lawyer, the sides presented their case and the judge addressed them and said he was dismissing the suit and was shocked at the boards actions and he was personally going to bring this case to the federal court to present it to the U.S. attorney to review for federal law violation on religious persecution.
Something like a lien on the home, it's time to go full scorched earth. Not only completely destroy the house, but then contaminate the property to the extent that cleanup greatly exceeds the cost of the property, then just stick them with it.
If one is Torah observant, we are commanded to put His Word on the doorposts of our house and upon our gates. The word used is Shall meaning that there is no option. Hopefully the courts will never try to over rules God’s Law.
@@CrippledEagle I have no interests in the Thora, but can you say something about the following idea. 1. Everyone can create his own religious believe in the USA ? 2. Religious believe trumps HOA rules ? Is that true?
The hoa where we used to live decided we could no longer park in front of our houses even though had been that way since neighborhood was built 20 years earlier! Was public road owned by city and taxpayers.
I read a story where a house was in a H.O.A. and they were trying to fine the owner for walking in their house naked. The homeowner refused to pay the fee and the HOA tried to foreclose on the house, the homeowner filed a stay of execution with the court and a judge granted said Stay. The homeowner then filed a lawsuit against the HOA for invasion of privacy and being a peeping tom. The Judge sided with the homeowner stating that windows were to look out and not for looking into. With that judgement in hand the homeowner then went to the other court and said that they had a bogus lawsuit and moved for dismissal. The lower court granted the homeowners request for dismissal and ordered the fines were illegally obtained via the higher court ruling. The homeowner then charges the HOA for 2.5 Million dollars for invasion of privacy, trespassing, and embezzlement the homeowner won the suit and the judge doubled the award.
If I’m understanding what you’re saying, the courts seem to have been an error. If this person is walking around naked with their windows open, then that’s a problem. Windows go both ways.
@@spankynater4242 The court said if they are walking naked in their home then the rule uses the windows are to see out, not for looking in because it is an invasion of privacy. Nothing about if the windows are open or closed, or if it was only a bay window as long as they were in their home. This was The Supreme Court ruling.
I had an HOA lawsuit back in the mid 1990’s. I had sold my condo, and exited the association legally, so I thought! For24 months after moving, the HOA, continued to come after me for violations dealing with my car and truck, that one was present at the condo at any given time. The violation was that my vehicles were older then 2 years old! So the HOA insisted that my vehicles were an issue of safety due to age and neglect ( keep in mind the car was 1 year old, and the truck was an antique parked at m father’s house) I was 23 at the sale of the condo, but was hauled into court over unpaid and unsubstantiated claims of the prior 1 year, a lean against my father’s property, and impounding of all our cars ( on his land and inside the garage at the time) until violations were paid! Solution, call brother-in-law (cop), lawyered up, both with civilian and military attorneys, applied for search warrants of HOA board members and all bylaws regarding said HOA documents (costing us thousands of dollars) entered the court, and the HOA claimed that I was responsible to live under their rules and regulations for a period 9 years after I moved out and sold the condo! Court ruling abolished this HOA, jailed several board members found their attorneys in contempt, and most of the violations were communistic money grabs, and the board members were also found to have embezzled several hundred thousands of dollars! All vehicles were returned, lean was removed from my father’s property, and restraining orders extended against the HOA!
@@howardbonds5106 Not quite...with capitalism, you still have the choice of if you want to consume it and buy it. Yes, capitalism is freedom to make profit, but that is only half of the story. With Communism, you get what you get...no choice.
@@bmuseoThe HOA Its a capitalist dystopia. You get to charge people in exchange for nothing. just like the medical system. Our country is full of this nonsense...there is a shill around every corner. The HOA is the half of the story we are talking about, correct? So you get your choice of HOA predator...or sleep outside. We live in a capitalist society and HOA is the worst side of it. I doubt the communists worry about HOA fees on top of their own misery's. While I am sure they have many faults HOA is our own mistake.
My little sister actually works full time picketing in front of an HOA in Bradenton, FL, sometimes there’s as many as 6 people! The HOA started fining her boss for parking his pick up outside the garage. After talking with others in the community it seems there’s a lot of petty policy enforcement going on. What the HOA didn’t know was how wealthy this guy is, he pays people $15/hr 7 days a week to harass board members. Additionally, he keeps filing lawsuits against the HOA for any thing he feels is unjust.
@@Bigbacon - Very tempting, yes, but running away from the problem doesn't help his neighbors and friends who are still stuck under the tyranny. Of course it's not an obligation, but it is admirable when people in power or privilege stand up for those who cannot afford or are not organized enough to defend themselves.
When I was young, I lived in a townhouse complex during my college years. One morning I discovered my car had a flat tire. While I was changing the spare, I had a middle aged lady and a very elderly man approach me demanding I stop since automotive repairs were against the rules. They advised I should have it towed to a shop. After telling them where to go wi their absurdity and how to get there, in great detail, I finished the tire change whilst they shuffled off muttering amongst themselves. Decades later, upon reflection, I have to admit they taught me a great life lesson: Never purchase property under an HOA.
@@MM-pr1wf not if you move into a house you intend to die in or your kids to inherit and live in. why is it you always have to plan to make money out of selling a house?
M M, you missed the joke. I think even if scout planned on selling the house in ten years, a neighbor's project car won't cause a loss. He was being sarcastic
If you can join an HOA, but no-one can ever leave, HOAs will continually grow. As an Australian, it's stunning to think "the land of the free" would tolerate this.
People tend to think of freedom as just a right, but it's also a responsibility. You're free to enter into a contract that binds you to an HOA, but you're also responsible for upholding your end of that contract, including fees and rules that you agreed to be bound by. It's also your responsibility to research what you're getting into and unfortunately most people don't. Or crooked people take over and try to do stuff like what happened in this story.
We have the right to contract with whoever per our constitution but you need to carry our your end of the deal and be smart about entering into contracts that dont benefit you. I personally would never move into one of these sub-division that hoa controls. Thus is like dystopian type vibes lol why woukd I want anyone to impede on my private property
A friend had a condo in a HOA that stopped doing any maintenance , drained the pool , locked the laundry ,and turned off the landscape maintenance . The HOA said they couldn't afford anything .The home oweners requested a aduit of the books and went to court .The court gave the HOA time to open the books . The day before the books were tobe opened the HOA managers moved .There were no books .
In my state the HOA is required to disclose everything about their finances each year, and show where all of your money is going. Id be surprised if that isnt true for every state
I guess you still don't get it. The HOA did not lose the case, all the homeowners lost the case and all those families have to pay with increased home owner dues.
@@richardcommins4926 I know, I don't see how someone can't see how stupid that was. "I'm going to sue a club I'm a paying member of and we're all going to get money from ourselves" (minus the lawyer fees)
I have been living in a home with an HOA for 30 years. If I ever buy another home the last thing I would want is an HOA. The pretext is that they are there to maintain property values. What you actually get if a bunch of people with control issues who turn your neighborhood into their little fiefdom.
Ditto - I'd rather live WAY outside a city than to ever deal with an HOA ever again. The last place we bought, we told the real estate agents "NO HOA" - turned out there supposedly was one (we didn't find out until closing and were more than a little pissed). After reading the rules, most of them were pretty reasonable (no pigs, for example) - and it turned out that the association was at least long dormant if not dead. All our neighbors felt the same way, so there was never any effort to get it re-started.
you only need a majority vote. It becomes a problem when one person or group of people have a majority vote in the hoa. You can even vote the hoa gone if enough people are on this side. (but there is a problem with communal property maintenance if you do.
@@scottcooper4391 IMHO, Linda is right. It may not be a problem now, but fast forward 10 years and it can become a big problem if it still exists. If it's dormant and nobody cares, it should be fairly easy to formally disband it now.
It isn't about you. It is your neighbors. You want THEM to be told they can't have their truck up on blocks for a month leaking oil. The main point is people are assholes and feel "if I'm allowed to do it, I will do it" and ruin the neighborhood resale value as a result. HOA neighborhoolds hold up value better than non.
We have a neighbor with an RV in front and another neighbor with out of control weeds. What we don’t have are snoopy Karens and out of control HOA fees. I’m good with this.
@@curtcollett2893 Until you go to sell your home, and can't get a good price for it. You sound like the anti-vaxers "I may die, but you can't tell me what to do"
@@erikbrandsberg3196😂 There are over 100 newer homes in multiple HOAs in our area and most are not even kept up to the standard at which our direct neighbors, w/o an HOA, do. For example, their matchbook sized lawns are full of dead grass, weeds and their flower beds filled w/ dead plants.
Last I knew, there was a nice little legal principle known as "easement" and it's based on the idea that a rule or a law cannot be applied selectively. If it is, then it can't be applied at all. If you're taken to court over something that was applied selectively, you need evidence that it's not being applied to other people and that this is consistent over a long period of time. If you can show that evidence in court, you should have a good case to claim Easement and that unless and until the rule is rigorously applied to everyone, it can't be applied to you. You then argue that to do otherwise violates the very principle of justice and that therefore ruling against you would tend to bring the court into disrepute.
Exactly. The people who are behind this horrid rotten to the core "HOA" total corruption are absolutely NOT the kind of people who are good neighbors. I would NEVER want to live anywhere near such jerks.
I lived in a HOA neighborhood once for 10 years and swore never again after we sold and left. Little people who like control over others end up on the board. I saw them use our funds to sue a neighbor whose high quality wood fence was an inch too high. I live on 38 acres now and need binoculars to see my neighbors.
HOAs are just miniature govsrnments. They can levy taxes, and arrest you and sieze your property for failing to pay those taxes. Taxation is extortion, and anyone practicing taxation should be shot.
Before I knew my husband, he lived in a retirement community in Florida where they tried to force people to have lights out by 10:00 p.m. and they weren't allowed to go out lol. The biggest mistake they made was going to my husband's place. They weren't met with any complying lol. There was nothing like that in the contract they just decided to make up their own rules as they went. After they met up with him, they never bothered anybody again. He had just moved in there.
@@VM-123sometimes it just takes a very confident individual to establish the personal boundaries with these HMO clowns. Great luck to you and your husband on your strong stance against those knot heads.
I'm currently looking to buy a home and the first thing I told my real estate agent is to not even bother showing me any HOA properties. I'll compromise on certain things such as if the basement is unfinished but a HOA is a guaranteed deal breaker for me regardless of the price of the home. I'll be damned if I'll spend that kind of money on a home only to have a bunch of Karen's and Ken's telling me what I can and can't do with my own property. I'm too frigging old, sick, and bitchy to deal with that kind of bullshit and I refuse to do so.
I don't live in america but they sound horrifying to me. why would americans tolerate them? All those things you have an HOA for ... we have a local council for (and pay rates too) but they can't tell us how to live as in you can't have XYZ color mail box or something. They just tell us off if we have like too many animals or a broken sewer that's spewing into the road. they also can't put liens on our houses and take them away.
I live a HOA with 466 condos and for years they never fixed things, they also kept the dues to low for too long because some of the board members were retired and and couldn't afford the higher dues then in 2018 they had emergency meetings about them implementing special assessments of $35,000.00+ depending on the square footage of your unit well I paid my assessment in 2018 and then they decided to do all the repairs in phases instead of doing all of the repairs on all the buildings at once like what we were promised would be done and now because of the super high inflation for the last 2 years I am pretty sure they are going to assess us again because of super high inflation. The board has failed the homeowners in a huge way
A friend of mine's favorite story about a HOA - he was installing satellite dish service and the HOA tried to prevent the homeowner from doing so. The owner contacted the FCC who showed up and told the HOA where to go.
You don’t fuck with the FCC. I watched someone learn that the hard way when they jammed my drone while I was working over a farm. They will get their way, whether you like it or not.
@@AllCentaur Drones are extra fun because you can get the FAA coming down on you too. They really aren't fond of people messing with aircraft manned or otherwise.
@@AllCentaur any federal agency is like that. It's easy to get away with stuff with state and local police. But the feds have a massive budget and all the time in the world. Someone is holding the case file and whenever they start digging their teeth in you're not getting out of it. They will eventually make their case. State / local cops are easy to fool because they don't spend so much time. Eventually they judt close out the case file
Ham radio. Put up ham radio tower in your yard. The FCC states you can not remove ham radio towers at all because it is a national security device and protected. Plus it will piss off the old hoa fuckheads.
Lmao the feds - ESPECIALLY the more "obscure" agencies like the FCC (not that they're necessarily obscure, but they're not the FBI getting all kinds of "action") are usually CHOMPING at the bit to justify their budget. That little bullet point they send to congress saying "the FCC prosecuted 10,438 cases of illegally tampering with a protected communication frequency this year" works a treat to make congress think there's an epidemic of pirate radio stations and possible terrorists interfering with our communications infrastructure, when in reality it's just an HOA getting rekt for forcing a homeowner to remove their satellite because it's not the correct "Morning Fog Gray" color from their approved color swatch. And i'm perfectly fine with that being what the FCC spends their budget on 😂
ONE of the previous HOA’s I lived in made me replace the mailbox with their “specific” box that could only be bought through the management company. It cost about &350. Three years later they came around and demanded I replace it again. After some research I discovered the brother-in-law of the board president was making the mailboxes.
Sweetheart deals between the HOA and contractors are par for the course. Our HOA told us to buy Behr paint from a specific store to repaint our garage doors. It is pretty clear why they tried to funnel all buyers to a specific store.
@@DovidM An HOA can require you to use a specific paint (i.e. Behr Red 2502), but they can not require you to purchase it from a specific vendor. That's a violation of FTC antitrust laws.
@@maxsdad538 thats what i never understood often when they are formed theres some connection with the landscaping and maintenance companies that get contracts with the developers like it a family run business.
An old coworker of mine was harassed by the hoa for not having plants in her pots on her front porch. She was going through a really tough time because her mother was literally in the hospital dying and she did not have time to worry about it.
I live in a community with an HOA in Florida but luckily the previous owner had already sued them and got a ruling saying he didn’t have to join, which later applied to me, then it came out that the HOA committee was collecting thousands a year, using a couple hundred to keep the community sign area mowed then going in expensive vacations with the rest. It was a huge scandal and quite comical.
"then going in expensive vacations with the rest. " That is often illegal all on its own. I only use mine for insurance, state registration fees, and gas for mowing (the labor is free), same for for tree trimming labor. Why do think our fees are about $8 a month.
I bought a house before an HOA was started and then they tried to bully me and my family saying we had no choice and they were trying to fine us. I told them to get off my property or else and they wouldn't and being very threatening so finally had enough and grabbed my phone called the police and reported them. Police came out and lucky sided with us and trespassed them and I informed the police that if they continued to threatening me or my family I will use deadly force to defend myself and my family. After that didn't hear a peep😅
I was an HOA chairman in Mesquite, NV, and felt compelled to resign when the majority of the board voted to violate NV law to further their own authority. I'll never live in another one again. It's the most punitive level of "government" in our country.
Actually, municipalities can restrict more than most HOA's, for instance a city can REQUIRE you have garbage service but an HOA can not, it can only restrict it placement when being stored. A city can restrict street parking, an HOA can only restrict common areas from parking. However, you can restrict livestock when often allowed or RV's when often allowed by the city or county. Both are not allowed in my HOA and given the lot sizes I see no reason to change that. At almost 9000 SF I actually have the biggest lot.
We lived in Florida for 30 years. HOAs in a lot of communities are like mini gestapos. Any house we purchased always made sure you understood the covenants. The "Disney" neighborhood told ppl what colors of curtains, etc to put in their windows. That really exists there. -- We almost couldn't sell our house when we left bc the HOA changed up their accepted paint schemes for homes right after we had an ARC approved color for the paint on our house. Our Realtor was in the board, so she helped us crawl out of that mess. There was also a guy on the board who physically walked the neighborhood every morning going thru ppl's backyards (without fences) looking for things outside of covenants and writing ppl up. Then there was the guy on the board with the drone for fenced yards.... I absolutely drew the line there. Told them I'd take them to court for that. He stopped. One of our neighbors was having his driveway re-done while in the process of selling his home. The HOA put a lien on his home and took the guy to court for re-doing his driveway. The pending offer he had fell thru bc of that. In our friend's neighborhood, they had tow trucks on standby IN the neighborhood hooking up to any car that parked in the street and towed them off. Our friend got hit on two separate occasions on his lunchtime stopping by his home to get something really quick and take off back to work. When he came back out once, his truck was gone. The second time, they had his truck hooked up. HOAs in Florida are no joke. The HOA we have here where we moved (different state) is like $180 a year. It keeps the street lights on, and maintains our entry. That's it. None of this other terrorist crap. What a breath of fresh air!
Reading all real estate documents prior to buying is critical for future owners. However, some folks prefer uniform looking properties for aesthetic tastes.
I bought my first house in 2007. The newly built neighborhood had rules I needed to sign along with my other mortgage documents. I noticed that the rules provided seemed to be just the last page of the neighborhood rules. After some back and forth between my realtor and the listing agency, I got all the rules. They weren’t too oppressive, so I agreed. After I moved in, I noticed nobody followed any of the rules. When I talked to my neighbors, I quickly found out, nobody had been given the full list either, and they didn’t ask. Luckily for me, because of the housing bubble bursting, the developer unloaded the properties as fast as he could and the HOA never got set up.
A woman I know said her neighbor painted their house an unapproved color.She asked " how did you get away with that color ? " The neighbor said that the HOA had been desolved a long time ago .Her finance company was still charging her HOA fees .
Almost 20 years ago my wife and I visited a cousin in Arizona. He and his wife drove us around to show us a bunch of new housing developments, and he proudly announced that they were all under HOAs. My wife was recently arrived from another country so she had no idea what an HOA was, but my cousin and his wife genuinely didn't understand why I told them to just stop the tour unless there were some developments that weren't HOAs. (There weren't any.)
@@dashy9482 Yeah, most of the "issues" uninformed people think HOA's are formed to deal with are already covered by existing laws and town/city ordinance. Noise, garbage, failing/falling trees, fence regulations, etc. - And as to things like "distasteful house colors" I used to like being able to give directions like, "Turn left at the orange house with green shutters, and my house is the second on the left after the pink and purple mail box.
I turned down 3 homes that had HOA attached for my first home. The lady acted insulted. When I said HOA was not an option, she said she would have to find something for me later. Safe to guess I didn't do buisness with her. I was fortunate to have an ex realtor in my corner to keep me informed on what to look for.
I bought a house that was in a HOA. Then after being there for almost a year, I received a letter from the HOA and told me that my mailbox was 1 inch to close to the street. The company that I work for required to go out of town for a period of time so I received a $100 dollar find and I told them about the issue with my job and I would fix it when I get home but they still issue me to pay $100 dollars. I found out that the original owner was the brother of the head of the HOA, so I took them to court, I sued for $5000.00 because they did nothing to the previous owner and won. The Judge ordered the review the laws that HOA put in and will be hearing from the owners to see about change?
Our township attempted to write and HOA type agreement. The residents protested and stopped this ordinance. Thanks for your work. People have rights that need to be defended.
HOAs can be nightmares. My sister was going to buy a house in an HOA, and I told her, before you buy make sure you get a pen and paper and read ALL of the rules, at least 3 times. And any rule you're not sure of, write it down and ask the HOA to give you an example of that rule. Well after writing down 20 rules, she decided that this was insane and chose not to buy the house. Better to find out before you sign than after.
The problem with those "rules" is that they can change at any time. And you may/may not have any say so in the matter. All the more reason to steer clear of them.
Coming from the UK, it never ceases to amaze me that any part of the US allows this extortion. Whatever happened to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
It all starts with the greedy engineering company making extra money by creating the legal HOA for their developments, then dragging out the building of the development to keep collection those outrageous HOA fees into their pockets and do nothing but harass the homeowners for the picky rules they created to fine them for even more money. Then in the future the KAREN'S AND KEN'S take over and create more picky rules to keep fining the homeowners for more money to eventually taking their homes to sell it to the next sucker for even more money. These HOA developments are just mini communists communities controlled by power hungry Ken's and Karen's who have nothing better to do than harass other people and homeowners.
Your guess is as good as mine, but people seem increasingly unwilling to live those words in many respects. I'm american, I've never lived under a homeowner's association. I was confused to learn they exist at all, more confused to learn that most states legally recognize them and grant them broad authority. I was sure what I heard about them MUST be illegal, but it is explicitly legal. I swore as soon as I learned of them that I would never live under one.
With freedom, comes the freedom to voluntarily enslave yourself. HOAs are a voluntary association (no one forces you to buy a home with an HOA). Unfortunately, most city governments require an HOA for any development over a certain size, as a condition of the development plan. The reason is that the city can then mandate features like parks, pools, and landscaping in common areas, which they city does not have to maintain. Without an HOA, the city would be required to maintain those features (and ownership would be deeded to the city). When I bought my house 20 years ago, NO HOA was one of my criteria.
An HOA is the last place I'd want to live. Either you own the property or I don't, what I do with it is my business. I understand the concept, but that's how I always felt about it. A friend bought into one and was always working, so didn't pay much attention. The teenager he was paying to mow his lawn just stopped for some reason, so it grew to much for the HOA. One day he checked his mail and found a bill for lawn mowing by a neighbor he didn't know. I'm sure he went ahead and paid it, but I wouldn't have. I told him that I would have sent a thank you note, because he didn't hire them to do that. Of course I realize that the government does not actually believe you own your own property, but but that's another subject.
I had the association mow part of my yard and send me a bill. It wasn’t overgrown and them mowed over an azalea too! Their argument was that since they had to pay the company then I should pay the bill. I of course refused even after the HOA then tried to tell me I couldn’t throw them off that area when they were throwing weed killer all over my plants because it wasn’t mine! Make up your mind?
A few years back I was looking around for a buildable lot. I found one, 2.5 acres at a good price. Very nice. It had an HOA. I asked for a copy of the rules. They were emailed to me - all 112 pages of them. Unbelievable nazi-like restrictions on everything. I sent an email back to the seller saying that he would have to pay me to take the lot off his hands.
I am currently looking to purchase a property. I have come across a few that are ridiculously inexpensive. Fairly new and large homes. The price per sq.ft is ten times less the area is getting. The catch? HOA! 70k nonrefundable application fee. $3500.00 a month HOA fee. These people want out so much they are willing to take a huge loss.
@@davidsawyer1599 They should try selling the property to the state or federal government, who can then just retroactively make the property no longer part of the HOA, then sell it for a profit.
@@davidsawyer1599 ... One glaring thing was how the rules covered areas already covered by state law. This just illustrated a mindset that, either the HOA board thought they were equivalent to the state government, or that after the state gets done with violators, the HOA steps in for its own cut. Either mindset would be miserable to live with.
I live in Florida and I just found out at Thanksgiving that my mother is being sued by an HoA that is located next to where I live. The only problem: My 82 y/o mother lives eighty miles away. She had a cousin that owned a house in the HoA who died and have decided to sue family members for unpaid fees. I hate HoAs.
If there is any justice in the world, a counter suit would be very lucrative. Legal fees, punitive damages for harassment, sanctions against the lawyers suing not-participants in the contract, etc. I don't have a lot of confidence that there is justice, though.
Pretty sure you cannot sue family members for debts owed. You can sue the estate, but you cannot just pick family members and tell them they owe you money.
Here in the UK you cannot do this unless there is money in the estate. However if that has been passed to other family members it becomes their property and is no longer part of the deceased estate.
After my half brother passed away (unknowingly; we weren’t that close & he lived two states over), I received a letter abt his debts. I contacted a lawyer & he said I had nothing to worry abt.
Steve, one thing a lot of people don't realize about HOA's is that the reason they are becoming more common is because of laziness and corruption from city and county officials. Big developers will lobby city and county officials to DENY residential zoning permits to smaller plots of land, and one of the ways they do this is by getting laws and regulations passed that require new residential areas to be built with HOA's, and local governments LOVE to go along with this because then they don't have to enforce city ordnances regarding trash, weeds, etc... So they get to have their ordnances essentially enforced by HOA's that have almost zero accountability and run roughshod over people, and these local officials use HOA's to enforce their will regarding what people are allowed to do with their property in ways that would otherwise be wildly unconstitutional, such as selectively enforcing rules against signs and flags in people's yards that express views that they (local governments and the HOA boards, themselves) don't like. This is how you get these insane situations where people are sometimes faced with huge fines or even foreclosure and eviction because they put political signs on their own property. As a millennial, I won't be able to own a house until someone in my family _dies,_ but when I do I will sell that property and buy an empty plot on unincorporated land and plunk down a modular/ mobile home if the one I inherit is under the control of an HOA.
I lived in an HOA community in NC. The house came with Tall Fescue grass that needed a lot of watering during summer. I went to the HOA and submitted a request to change the grass to Zoysia, a summer type of grass. They approved and I changed the whole yard ($$$). Zoysia goes dormant during winter, turns yellowish brown color. The HOA didn't liked it, even it was explained in my approved request for the change. We ended in court...
8 years ago I lived under the rule of an hoa. I wanted to widen my driveway and was told no. I then asked if I could cut /trim the trees on either side of the driveway. Absolutely not. Those trees belong to the hoa. So, does their roots belong to the hoa since they are attached to the trees? Clearly, tenant's names, they are as the two cannot be separated. Ohhhhhhhh so the root belongs to the tree and the tree belongs to you. [setting this up] ** previous to this interaction I received a note from the hoa stating I was responsible for the conduct and actions of my guests due to the extension of the them being at my house and my house was subject to the rules of the hoa. I was responsible for any damages caused by my guests. So you are responsible the trees and by extension are responsible roots and any damage they may cause. My driveway is cracked due to the roots which creates a safety issue which by extension is now your responsibility. I was granted permission to widen the driveway.
I got on the board and immediately cancelled all their rules “passed” after the original HOA because they never filed them with the county as required by state law.
I moved from a very wealthy HOA neighborhood into a working-class/lower-middle-class neighborhood with no HOA. It's great! People actually talk to each other if they're unhappy with what a neighbor is doing. And while I do miss access to the pool and park the former neighborhood provided, I'm completely happy with the move and will avoid HOAs for the rest of my life.
In college I worked private security and one assignment was a condo complex. My main duty was to keep the community safe through reporting things such as damaged gates, pools and clubhouse door locks... but I was also handed a list of violations to the association's policies to tattle-tale on residents in violation of the HOA (or COA... it's been decades)... anyway, my orders were to write down the violations without contacting the resident and handing it in to the management. Okay, I get it if it's a problem such as a newly-painted door of hideous color, but yes, the curtains were also an issue. Being that I am not a jerk, before writing it in the final shift report, if it was before 8pm, I would knock on the resident's door and explain their new drapes were in violation and to have them changed or hidden some way... my goal was to allow the residents a moment to fix the problem instead of being hit with a surprise visit by management along with the first day fine. Of all the security duties I had, that was the worst, even if you include the one where I got shot at. I hated having to enforce some of these stupid, idiotic, anti-freedom policies these organizations enforce.
I lived in a condo with a HOA. The thing I learned about their rules were that they would selectively enforce them. There was a mosaic glass decal on a tiny window near the front door of our condo from when we purchased the place. It's fair to assume it had been there for some time prior, but not long after we moved in, we got a violation notice for it. I read over the rules and could spot various violations throughout the neighborhood that never seemed to change. If you don't enforce the rules for everybody, then the rules are meaningless. The amenities provided by HOA governed communities have to really be worth it to you to deal with nitpicky rules that will be arbitrarily enforced on you and seemingly nobody else.
The rules are there to enforce on those you don’t like. Originally, HOAs were designed to keep black people out of certain areas. That continues to be their main function, but with whatever people the HOA officers choose.
We had a mess with selective enforcement, playing favorites, etc... A team of 7 took over our HOA and ran it right with the best legal counsel by our side. Under my leadership as HOA president and regardless of the feedback, selective enforcement was NOT an option. In fact... I told the property manager to START by enforcing all the rules against the BOARD FIRST... She said NO and that she would treat everyone equally. Yes about 10% (those who used to benefit) hate me, but the other 90% loved me... When people complained at me, I ask them for a solution proposal instead of a problem ... I also asked them to volunteer to lead the solution... It is amazing how many people just like to complain and do not want to work. When people complained about Basketball goal rules and were willing to put forth the effort... I had the attorney draft a covenant change... My neighborhood needed 75% to pass it... Over 90% voted to pass it! This is probably the largest favorable vote that has ever happened in an HOA...
In general, condos are required to have HOAs (I'm on the HOA board for the condo I live in). For condos, it makes sense, as each condo is independently owned, but the exteriors of the buildings are shared. As such, it's the HOAs job to pay for things like roof repairs, because a single roof belongs to several condos. As for the by-laws, most of them are originally written by the builders of the community. Ours actually has many by-laws but little enforcement power - and so for the time being, the only thing we focus on is making sure everyone's dues are paid... and the only other rule that we insist on is no short-term leasing, primarily for safety reasons.
I'm looking for a larger (10 to 40 acre) property in MI right now, close enough to suburbs to worry about housing developments moving in. I have seen a number of large parcels being split into two still-fairly-large parcels, and have already decided I won't buy one of those unless I can afford to buy both, because I don't want to risk a development with an HOA going in adjacent to my land.
Ohio law, fortunately, provides a remedy for troublesome HOAs: the ability of residents to vote them out of existence. I and my fellow residents did precisely that to our development in Columbus a few years ago and there was much rejoicing.
When my son bought a house in a HOA community, the neighbor came over and within minutes said, "Hi, welcome, we have rules here." He continued to be like that. The lady next door on the first day said, "The fence between our property needs to be replaced so I will need $4,500 from you." He and I fixed it with a new 4"x4" and some paint. She had been told it needed to all be replaced and being elderly, she believed the contractor. People.
I worked for a cable company had a work order to turn off a person cable.. the HOA had me arrested. When I got out of jail the first thing I did was cut off all the cable to the hole place . My employer did not say anything to me and told HOA . Will fix the problem when are employe gets out of jail. F a HOA
I live in AZ. Formally in a townhouse. Glad I sold and moved into a nice area that doesn't have an HOA. I WILL NEVER LET ANYONE ELSE TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT DO WITH MY PROPERTY AGAIN!!!
I did that in Virginia, they sent out proxy sheets for people votes who will not be attending the annual meeting…I went door to door and gathered proxy’s from folks who basically gave up on the HOA. We (group of us) walked in and seated a complete new board, and changed the rules.
I'm surprised you were able to change the rules so easily. The board generally doesn't have that power, most CC&Rs require a pretty high quorum of owners to vote for rules changes.
@@nigelbarker8726 that's what the cards were for, they were signed writs that appointed them as representatives voting in absentia for the other HOA members who didn't care to attend.
@@nigelbarker8726 -- No two HOAs are the same but sometimes a relative small number of folks own several units each. They can provide a quorum for doing ordinary business and provide a bulwark again an overturn. To overwhelm the HOA and change or abolish it would take a lot of work.
@@MamaMOB Because HOAs have responsibilities that are crucial. In a condo building some entity has to maintain the shared roof. When a shared drain blocks, who else pays the plumber?
I remember how horrified my neighbors were when they got a notice... Their multiple hurricane damaged houses were going to be fined a few months past the last storm would be fined daily for houses being out of code. Ppl were lucky to get insurance claim in & someone to even look at let alone fixing it then, FL was completely overwhelmed from the storms but this HOA wanted to profit off the disaster! PLEASE dont live in an HOA!
Steve, Awesome video. My wife and I were looking at a nice house in Manatee County Florida, and it had an HOA, so we asked the sellers realtor for a copy of the HOA Rules. At which point we told to contact the HOA directly who informed us that a copy of the HOA Rules would cost us $79 per copy. Needless to say we did not look at any houses in that sub-division again. Aloha.........................
Living in a country where HOA's arent a thing, HOA's just sound like a legalised protection racket. The land of the free sure seems to have a lot of rules telling citezens what they can't do with their own property.
Some of the first HOA’s were created to ensure only white people could live in certain areas. This way if a neighbor was less racist than everyone else and sold the house, the poor fool who bought the house could be sued and kicked out.
I've only had to deal with an HOA twice, my condo association and later my townhouse. HOA rules apply to some but not others. Naturally the rules applied to me but not my neighbor. So glad to have left HOAs behind!!!!
In cases like that, you can play "do you really want to sue me". As one of the few generally always effective legal defenses you can have against a HOA is discrimination. So if you can prove a rule they fined you for isn't been applied to everyone equally, the HOA will nearly always lose, as they are discriminating. If your an ethnic, religious or any other form of "minority" or just "different" to the HOA board, even better.
We are finishing the interior of the last house I will ever live in. (I hope) When we went looking for a property I told the misses I had two requirements. 1) A small plot of acreage as I did not want to be able to shake my neighbors hand by opening a window. 2) No !#$^!@#$% HOA! I have lived in two HOAs with mixed experience. The first was very compliant and only enforced stylistic concerns and commons. You could do anything else as everyone's yard was an enclosed patio. The second, what a nightmare. The board meetings are a disaster. There is a small faction that goes around with a ruler looking for any infraction. I am glad we are moving out. In Texas there is a third form of HOA, PID Planned Infrastructure Development. Originally intended for industrial parks but now being applied to residences. The city wanted to place the townhomes in a PID. Essentially it would give the city the right to enforce improvements and charge the residents. I attended several meetings one of which I pointed out that once approved there is no exit in the future. The Mayor did not believe it nor did the city attorney. I read the appropriate passage to them. The city attorney looked it up and yep that is what it says. That pretty much killed the deal.
I lived for 20 years in an HOV neighborhood in northern Virginia without problems. The first year, a board member (who happened to be an architect) decided that window flower boxes were prohibited. Now I didn't want a flower box but resented his arbitrary decision. So in the next election, I ran for the board and was elected to a three year term. The year after that, I became president. My third year was as parliamentarian. My next 17 years were spent as an ordinary homeowner enjoying the perk of a well run HOA, i.e. common grounds professionally maintained, including plants and snow removal at a reasonable yearly fee. And I was blessed with good neighbors. Based on most of the comments herein, I got lucky.
I'm one of those people who read every word of a contract before signing, and when we were buying our house, they actually had CC&Rs available and I read them. Unfortunately, naive me, never having owned in an HOA before, thought "Well, I don't know what this means in practice, but if they literally expected you to live by this stuff, they wouldn't have sold even one house and here they've sold out 80% of the development, so it must not mean that." 😳
@@Ryarios -- Well, we don't have that problem. But we live in a semi-rural county where folks make specific agreements for these things. You might have 2 to 5 owners share responsibility for a well and water distributions system or for maintaining a common road or even for getting the snow off the road. Each agreement is functional but doesn't give your neighbors the collective right to tell you where you can park your truck or what color you can paint your home. Streetlights are often managed with an agreement with the local power company. Many folks have figured out that streetlights are a waste of money. Cars have headlights and folks can carry flashlights.
@@Ryarios This is exactly correct. An HOA is responsible for maintaining any "common areas". Common areas are technically owned collectively by the members, so each member is responsible for a percentage of the area. Without the HOA, imagine in a small HOA getting a few dozen people simply to agree with a lawn mowing schedule for the grounds around the koi pond, let alone collecting money to pay for it. Scale that scenario up to include pools, gyms, parks....
@@GilmerJohn I’m not saying there are not better ways of doing things. But in a subdivision situation, I can see people refusing to step up. And just dissolving the HOA seems like it would create other problem that may end up just as bad without something ready to be put in place at the time you dissolve it.
@@Ryarios Depends on the state/municipality. Here in PA, for example, you can't have private streets in a neighborhood, so HOA or not, the streets are always the responsibility of the muni.
I had my Harley parked near my window when I lived in a condo. A nice looking girl drove by, stopped and rolled down her window. I got all excited at the thought that wow she wants a ride! Then she started saying, "I'm on the board and you can't park your motorcycle on the lawn." That wrecked the day, needless to say.
I was a condo/townhouse mgr and had absolutely no problems. I now live in an HOA the board is doing so many things wrong. they are deaf to homeowners & maintenance repairs. Tell people to pay themselves for extra landscaping replacement Collect fees yet tell people to do their own exterior work. They don’t want to pay for exterior landscape maintenance upkeep. They increase fees, had a special asst while there was over 800k in reserves. Any extra money they pool the money into reserves and tell people they have no money. Yet, if someone is using an electric saw, patrol starts to drive around to inspect. Then board members exceed their term limits. Can’t get copies of financials or minutes. There are other matters too many to mention.
We lived in a HOA and didn't get the info on it until a year later. Some of the things listed in it were what type of pets you could have, where could park cars and how many you could have (no parking on your grass), how long your grass could be, all bushes had to be trimmed and sidewalks edged, had to put up a wood fence that matched every other fence in the HOA they picked the color could be stained etc. Even when could decorate for holidays ......... pain in the you know what. We moved. Best thing is never join one as they have certain people that you can let cut your grass etc. if you don't do it yourself.
My favorite subjects on your channel are when people stand up for their rights against HOAs, civil asset forfeiture, and corrupt local government abuses and actually win. I'm also glad to see the right to repair movement gaining momentum.
There are big changes on right to repair in europe and normaly the rest of the world follows those rules because of trade agreements. Right to repair can no longer be stoped.
@@12345fowler there is a new law forcing everyone to adopt the usb c for all devices beeing sold in Europe thats mostly targeted to apple but other companys too. The european union also Set a goal for full repairability by 2050 and Set steps Into that direction. Its a huge Part of the green Deal. So even when anti repair is enforced around the world repair shops can source original parts factory new in Europe. In Amerika parts are banned before entering the countrys which does not happen in europe because resale of original parts is and will allways be legal.
I remember reading an article years ago about a tussle that a HOA got in with a retired lawyer. He saw the power grab being foisted upon the residents of the HOA and decided to fight back. I believe that he filed so many lawsuits the HOA that it finally bankrupted it. I hate to see something go to this extent, but the board should have been removed years ago. I think that we all have seen those folks whose main aim in life is to control others. Give them a little power and ………
@Marvin Evans My favorite came I think from Reader's Digest. It involved an older veteran who was installing a flagpole to fly a U. S. flag. He was forced to remove the flag pole, so, having read the HOA's regulations, hired a company to paint his house as a giant American flag that went around all four sides of the house. There were NO regulations stating what color the house had to be. HOA lost that one.
HOAs = crazed power Nazis I had a woman just two days ago go onto my property, while we we not at home, and take pictures with her phone. I am livid and I am actively looking to move ASAP.
I had a property management company when I retired, and I dealt with HOA's all the time. They would do yearly inspections and depending on who they made the inspector they would flag the dumbest, most petty crap. They never answered the phone and were the most difficult people to deal with. Some would sue you if you painted your front door the wrong color.
Well petty tyrants need to find victims to sustain their thirst for injustice and subjugation. They don't actually care if the height of your mailbox is a few inches off, they just want to make you their be otch cause then the endorphins make their brains happy, in other words phony tough.
We actually really angered a group of real estate attorneys at a title company when we insisted on reading and understanding every page of the closing paperwork when we bought our house. I even managed to stump the whole group of them when we got to a word (don't remember what it was, but it dealt with mineral rights on the property). Not only did neither my wife nor I know the definition, but none of the 3 real estate lawyers present did, either. They had to send one of the lawyers out for a law dictionary to look it up. The closing ended out taking twice as long as allotted, but we knew and understood everything when they handed us the keys.
I thought almost all jurisdictions these days separated out the mineral rights to a property and those only could be obtained as the result of a mineral claim on a property. Otherwise, below a certain point, you didn't have control, so they could do things like dig tunnels underneath you if they decided it was expedient.
@@cesaravegah3787 Easy on the car salesmen. I’ve done a lot of computer work in dealerships. The salesmen totally reflect management. If your salesman is being a jerk, they are likely new, or they are doing exactly what management wants. Your beef is with the managers, and there are some real hard cases in their ranks. Last car salesman I dealt with was a young man just out of the army. His only training in sales was from that dealership. I told him that noticed how the salesmen were acting, and then stated describing his bosses. He was amazed. It was easy.
@@nunyabidness3075 Nope, my beef IS with the car salespeople, on my experience, my familys and friends, each and everyone of the..."persons" selling us cars ended being a sleazy, unethical lying douche canoe, un fact I had won a lawsuit against one of those son of a gun and still hasnt paid, so, maybe, maybe there is a car salesperson decent out there who deserves respect, so, with their possible exception, screw them.
@@cesaravegah3787 You miss the meaning, César. The sales people do behave poorly. They are not innocent. The reality though is that they are being trained and managed in a way to provoke that behavior. Everyone likes teachers and nurses, but if the hospitals and schools train young professionals to behave poorly you will get the same results! I suspect you didn’t sue a salesman without suing the company as well, so you should get it. If he behaved so poorly he should have been fired, but many dealerships instead fire the helpful clerks and hire ones that will behave ridiculously.
Thumbs up to the Keweenaw shirt, I grew up in Houghton County. A drive threw the Keweenaw in the fall always reminds me of why they call it Gods country. Thanks for all the vids, I am always fascinated by legal matters and probably should have went to school to be a lawyer.
The HOA on 5125 Fontaine St, 92120 in San Diego HATES Girl Scouts and OUR U.S. TROOPS. Yes, that's correct. They wouldn't allow Girl Scouts whether they were family or from the neighborhood to sell Girl Scout Cookies on the gated property. I had a big bay window that anyone could see from the street. Every year I would write "Happy Holidays" with window paint that removes easily with soap and water. When I changed it to "God Bless Our Troops", all hell broke loose. Political Statements are not allowed. They also didn't like the Halloween graveyard with tombstones of each of the board members' names on them. When the water main pipe burst and they failed to fix it or bring a truck with a water tank, many residents complained to the city, and the HOA was fined for every day we didn't have water. We also called in unhealthy water conditions in the jacuzzi and more fines. When I was sent a letter forbidding me from washing my car PER SOME MADE-UP RULE/LAW FROM THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, I contacted the fire department. They got mad and fined HOA for slander. The best one was all the different angles of pictures I took of the HOA's president's BOYFRIEND parking his truck in the FIRE LANE. He even saw me and had a good laugh.
Walked away from a house deal when I learned that I had to get HOA approval for the type of roofing materials used. Nope. I enjoy living in a multicultural neighborhood. The vegetable gardens and chickens give it a wonderfully healthy feel.
I once drove through a 55+ trailer court and it was beautiful. Every place had it's own colors and personality. I really wished I could live there. It was amazing. When I got old enough to buy a trailer there, they were doing new sewer lines, roads, the whole thing, and then they got the new rules and all the colors of the paint had to be approved and you could no longer build on any sort of small addition. It was then that the whole place looked so different there was no reason to want to live there anymore, except for financial reasons. The lot rents were less than apartment living. Sad thing though, what happened to the community. Even the mailboxes had to all be a basic black. People used to paint them and decorate them, showing their personalities and unique artwork. What a wonderful place it used to be.
@@analogidc1394 Yep. Human nature. Live and let live people don't want to run the HOA. People attracted to running it are those that love to tell their neighbors what to do, not "just don't scare the horses" types. Entitled Karens get power, and get busy straightening everybody out, making damn sure they toe the line or pay a heavy price.
My mom lives in a nicer trailer park and I lived with her when I was an Over The Road truck driver. Well, I had a 3x5 US Flag properly displayed in a window for years. Then, all of a sudden, we had to remove it. They claimed it was an "improper window treatment" and MUST be removed. Living across the street from the office, I figured out how to display a Flag they couldn't say shit about. To shorten the story up, I welded a pipe to a Gooseneck Ball Hitch and hung a 4x6 flag off of it. The real kicker is, the driveway was RIGHT across from the office and they HAD to look at it every day.
HOAs demonstrate both the problems with collective organization and the problems with selfish people. Lower-cost neighborhoods almost always need HOAs because without them, neighborhoods end up going into decline because enough residents don't take care of their properties, because cities are ineffective at enforcing CC&Rs or even municipal codes in many cases. Trouble is when HOAs take it too far, when they raise dues too high, when they enforce on things that don't need to be enforced. And it's very easy for an HOA set up with the best of intentions to prevent neighborhoods from becoming junked-up to take things too far.
When we moved, I searched for houses online that met our minimum requirements. Got maybe 75 results. When I ticked off "no hoa", got only 1 result. I HATE HOA"s. I think it's absurd to be willing to agree to a force that can take your house away just because you want to feel you control your neighbors' houses.
When I was looking to buy a house, I came across ones that had an HOA. No matter how cheap or nice the affordable house was, I skipped it and eventually found a home without an HOA. I would rather live happily with an overgrown lawn than have an HOA put rules on me.
But that's the problem: More and more land is being gobbled up by corporations and hedge funds who create HOAs, which means that land/homes that _aren't_ in those associations is becoming rarer, thus more expensive and potentially forcing people who want their first homes into HOA controlled places. It could be mitigated if the HOAs were able to be held to account but, as Steve said, many states have no rules in regards to them and they act like mini-fiefdoms with no legal recourse. Florida has some because of how prolific they are but still...
@@danielseelye6005 -- Some states (Virginia is one) have laws on the books that make it easier to launch a development with an HOA than without. It's a form of Fascism: an HOA can impose the kind of controls that a government can't. Fascists love this kind of stuff.
Easier said than done. In FL, nearly half of homes fall under an HOA. The ones that don't are often in lower end communities or in the sticks. It's a bit of a challenge to avoid HOAs in FL if you want a good neighborhood.
I had a chance to buy into a condo assn in the 90's, but I noticed that the items that the association were responsible for were severely neglected. The exterior boards were rotting and the roof was in need of repair and these things were like this for years. They still charged the residents a kings ransom for the fees, but obviously were NOT doing any of the maintenance. It took a threat from the subdivision for these units to get the maintenance they needed, but not until recently and it's 2024, so that's how long these units were being neglected.
We looked at a subdivision in our town that had so many CC&Rs that it made a book. We opted for a subdivision that had no HOA. There's just a voluntary fundraiser every spring to help pay for maintaining the entrances. Seems to work well enough.
When I was living in a small Florida community with a HOA, I convinced my neighbors to let me modify the HOA to get rid of picky rules such as the type of mailbox, the colors of the houses, how many cars you could have. Since at the time I was a County Judge, I had no trouble doing so and having the amended HOA recorded to each neighbor’s title.
This is the right answer. I know so many HOAs where almost nobody even returns the vote for who they want in charge, let alone actually runs for an HOA position, yet they're happy to bitch about how the money gets spent.
@@geraldbennett7035 that ugly neighborhood is a bunch of ugly houses built in the 1980s on the waterfront of the Loxahatchee River in Jupiter Florida. My ugly house had an ugly two boat dock that I had built. I had an ugly half a million dollar house with a screened in lake-sized pool and about an acre of beautiful grass and palm trees surrounded by a stone fence on one side and wood on the other sides. My ugly house was the crappiest in the ugly neighborhood. My ugly neighbors were thrilled to be free of the stupid HOA rules. It wasn’t imposed on them, we all voted for it. I only wish I had kept the house, now worth three times what it was sold for by me in around 1999. C’est la vie mon ami.😎
We have a townhouse in Pompano Beach FL for the past 18 years That we rent out 9 months of the year. Pretty restrictive HOA but we have never had any major issues with them and they keep our tenants in line. As a building contractor, oh boy! what a headache. Worst was a rebuild of a fire damaged home in a gated community. To approve the new home which other than adding a room over the garage was pretty much identical to the original. No big problem with design . they included numerous stipulations. such as work only between 8am and 5 pm Monday through Friday , deliveries only between 9:30 and 3:30. no parking on the street of heavy equipment and street parking of vehicles only between property boundaries. Pain in the ass but not a major inconvenience for me. The fun started when we got underway with framing there was two board members, that were there nearly everyday looking for something to complain about. It was coastal Georgia and hot as hell that summer, so to mess with them one day I set out 2 chairs and a umbrella with an electric fan for them to sit and bitch about us in comfort. They didn’t know what to do. My customer was in on it and some days would mix drinks in the job trailer and bring it out to them. We were so accommodating to them they just gave up and largely left us alone for the rest of the job.
Here in the Ocala Florida area we have a sprawling area called The Villages. If you want a deep dive into controlled areas with layered HOA controls here's your Rabbit Hole. Each village has its own HOA and The Villages has a covering called The Villages HOA. Add to all of that the individual villages are three in different counties. All of this has left a lasting impact on social interactions and societal interactions. As an example I live in the Ocala National Forest, bears don't have an HOA. People who live in The Villages are called Villagers. Those of us that live in the Forest are mostly Floridians. We avoid Villagers like the PLAGUE! The seem to think that all of Florida must conform to them. Aunt B
My husband got on the board. Our lives have been a neverending living hell ever since. He didn't run this last time but the current board hates us. We just got a violation for having curtains and not drapes.
I wouldn't willingly choose to live under the rule of the government either. Both are rife with thievery and corruption and should be abolished. Every single corrupt act I've heard of an HOA committing is something that the government does against its citizens on a regular basis.
I once bought a condominium many years ago and had no idea about these condominium contracts. A few days after moving in, some representatives came by and gave me a contract to sign. They wanted it to be signed right away but I told them I had to carefully read it first so they reluctantly left. Most of it was fine and I agreed with what it said, but there were a few things I didn't like that had to do with issues with your own back yard (which by the way had a 6 foot fence around it so seeing inside would not be easy). Anyway, I did not agree and never signed it. They complained but I just gave them the number to my lawyer. The more they complained, the more I went out of my way to break their rules. After about 3 years, they gave up and left me alone. It went to court only once but since I never signed the contract, I was not held liable to uphold it. 🙂
you are VERY lucky, there is generally no requirement to sign the covenants, they're a burden on the deed (they're a deed restriction that says the owner shall abide by current covenants). So when you buy the property you are agreeing to them (at least in georgia). Caveat emptor, and I'm very happy for you that it worked out like that.
@@scotttaylor9133 Perhaps I should have mentioned too that I'm in Canada. I'm sure such laws are different between the States and Canada. But I'm not an expert.
That's because they knew they broke the law before you bought the property they must INFORM YOU OF A HOA and provide you with the bylaws , and you would have the right to back out of the sale without losing escrow , when you buy in a HOA you ARE NOT BUYING REAL PROPERTY your buying 1 share of stock in an HOA that pays no dividends and you are required to pay maintenance fees in hopes the stock you own is only worth what you can sell the HOA asset for , real estate now days is for suckers unless you own 10 plus homes
Steve, I used to work for a developer and someone once told me that the reason Florida, Arizona and other states with large post WW!! developments were so HOA heavy was because cities and towns didn't want the burden of dealing with the added infrastructure, code enforcement and so forth. So the town's were actually the instigator's in developer's starting them in order to get their plans approved. It didn't take much arm twisting, the developers wanted a consistent, uniform look as a selling point and they wanted to include communal amenities like pools and community centers, so they started doing HOA's on most of these projects. If you or any viewers know I'd love to know whether this is true or false.
I used to live in Stafford County Virginia. All subdivisions built after 1988 were required to have an HOA in order to maintain the water runoff areas. Usually with that came HOA rules. I moved into a new subdivision in 1990. We were the fourth house. As soon as the developer turned the HOA over to the owners, I became President for four years. Each year we lowered our assessment the maximum amount until we got to $0. Then we quit meeting.
I am an attorney practicing in real estate litigation. I have had enough cases involving unreasonable HOAs that I never want to buy a home in a neighborhood where HOA membership is mandatory. The problem is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find nice property that is not subject to an HOA. The covenants run with the land, and nearly every new development is an HOA neighborhood.
New developments are required by the city to have an HOA, because then the city can require the developer to install pools, parks, landscaping, etc, which then the HOA (rather than the city) has to pay to maintain. As a Libertarian, I insist on keeping authority and responsibility together. You mandate it, you maintain it. Cities also like it because they don't have to do much code enforcement.
this is precisely why we bought an older home that needed a bit of work in a good, well established neighborhood. We told our relators "it can be a perfect home for us but if it's in an HOA it's an automatic hard no." we looked for the better part of a year but finally found what we wanted.
@@perdedor3571 I have a real estate license in my state, and I would never ever live anywhere where there's an HOA lol. I also live in a very old home. The next time I move will be the same.
I have seven roommates and we don't have enough parking so we need to park on the street but we are not allowed. I am not the only one who parks in the street or doesn't have enough spaces in the driveway. There are many. Do you think they will fine me and foreclose on my house? I have hearing coming up soon.
I recently moved from Ohio to Florida. I never had a legit powerful HOA in Ohio. NOT the case in Florida. Down here EVERY development (90%) has an HOA. Especially ones with homes over 150k or a golf course. The HOAs are very powerful and very punitive over EVERYTHING! The worst thing is they keep changing management companies so every other month they go around the neighborhood writing down EVERY little violation of a rule written 20 years ago that was never enforced. You get notices to fix in 1 week or they will fix and charge you 10Xs the amount to fix. I live in the back of the neighborhood on a dead end street. I get a company truck. I parked it in my driveway for over 1 year then all the sudden a new management co takes over and I get a notice saying I can’t park a vehicle in my drive with ANY logos. They want to charge me $1500 a night! We just bought a new house. The first thing I looked for was NO HOA! When you look at houses for sale in Florida it is a big selling point in the listing that there is NO HOA! I have story after story.
My daughter and son-in-law lived in an HOA controlled development. One of the most difficult items they had to deal with was that the HOA required a TREE in the front yard. Well, near Colorado Springs, you are lucky to get any tree to survive. They would plant one and shortly it would die. The final solution was a FAKE tree!!!
We had a weird situation at my complex. One owner rented out his unit and did not want to spend any extra funds to maintain it, meaning he wanted to keep the monthly HOA fees artificially low, so he joined the HOA board to block any repairs or maintenance that were needed. During my complex's 30 years of existence, it had only been repainted once. I never really noticed because I lived overseas during most of that time. Then I got a new neighbor, who was told the repairs needed during her purchase (repairs to a fake chimney on the roof) were the responsibility of the HOA. She petitioned the HOA board for months to have the repairs completed, but the repairs kept getting delayed because the bids were "not in good order." One guess who on the HOA board was responsible for reviewing the bids. Soon after, wood boards all over the complex could be seen rotting off their frames and none of us residences could ignore how bad things had gotten. By that time, no painting company would touch our complex with all the damage. In the end, the one board member who kept delaying repair requests was voted out and each owner had to fork over $27K in a special assessment to have the complex's siding redone. We now have proper annual increases to our monthly HOA fees and the complex is much better kept, but most of the prior unit owners have left in order to recoup their special assessment costs.
The best HOA story I've heard is where a wealthy man who was retiring moved into an HOA neighborhood and was told not to long after moving in that he was in violation of some nit-picky rule and he would be fined if he didn't comply. He tried to fight it and lost so he complied and set about fixing the HOA. Over the next several years, he hired or set up a management company and every time a property went up for sale, he bought it under that management company and rented them out. Eventually he had acquired enough properties that he was the majority owner. Then he purposely violated some rule and waited for the HOA to send him notice. He scheduled to go before the board to discuss his violation at the next meeting. The night of the meeting, after the board threatened him with whatever action they were going to take, he informed them that he was the majority owner in the neighborhood and as such he had the voting rights under the HOA bylaws to replace the board, which he did and then told the community that he was disbanding the HOA and everyone was free to enjoy their homes in anyway they see fit.
Got links? Great "they got what was coming to them" story. But sounds very urban legendish. Would love for it to be true, but seems too good to be true.
awesome lol
of course there will be owners that become bad neighbors when they aren't restricted. hope no one ends up with a hole in their wall.
and who will be responsible for the clubhouse/pool /laundry room fences , roof, foundation repairs etc. You know , those joint owned parts of a townhome
@@lindatullos9430 Karen, please don't ever leave your HOA. Stay there forever.
Always warms my heart to see an HOA go down.
Never again
I think that these corporate fascists should be charged with Sedition for assuming governmental powers and authority without any constitutional authorization.
Why would anybody ever buy a home under a HOA? I would not. City bylaws are bad enough.
@@puppetsock I would live in a tree or a cave before I would live in one of those private fascist enclaves.😬
@@jacqueslefave4296 Get the Webster's out and look up those big words you are using here so freely, bud.
Never ever buy a home in an HOA, NEVER.
When I was looking to buy several years ago, I saw a listing in which the realtor put in huge capital letters "NO HOA!!!". I guess she considered it a major selling point and I agree.
I've seen that, too. HOAs are a deal breaker for me.
We purposely chose all listings with no HOAs to look at when we purchased our house here in Florida. My neighborhood is amazing without one.
@@tuvelat7302 My HOA document is 4 pages definitions, 3 pages phase 1 that does, and 2 page of rules, a half page of obligations, and 4 pages of legal crap like signatures, stamps, survey registration, etc.
@@TheChoochooboy99 Mine is nice because we know each other. By name and personality, when I was in a condo I knew 2-5 people after 15 years and only 1 was a friend. One went insane, another has a stroke, one is still there and cooks some mean chicken, he is the only one I miss. I know more at my new location.
It is. That's the first criteria I asked of the realtor. No HOAs. It's definitely a selling point for some.
My buddy bought a home with an HOA. Apparently in Utah if you can prove the HOA doesn't doesn't provide services in the contract for 1 year, you can vote to disband it.
Every day for a year he quietly documented the dead grass between the sidewalk and the road that the HOA was supposed to be taking care of. Then he rallied his neighbors and overthrew tyranny.
I just have to mow the sidewalk grass.
@@toriless i bet you could understand a conditional hypothetical
You don''t need to prove anything to vote to disband an HOA, you just have to have the votes. This is not going to be an easy thing to do, you will have a lot of legal hurdles to jump through and it will be quite a complex process. Of course,, the bigger the association the more difficult it will be.
It's not that easy to disband an HOA. If there is commonly owned property, someone has to take care of it, and that someone is the City/County or whatever. That's why, in most places, the entity taking over ownership (and maintenance) has to agree to do it. Also in most places it takes a huge majority to do it, usually at least 75%.
@@eliseintheattic9697 I said that already, your post is redundant
I used to get calls to "private" communities with HOA'S and they insisted that I, a sheriff enforce their rules. They said " they are parking on the street" I said "so what" they (they were two ladies with clipboards) I told them the streets were private and not subject to most traffic laws. They would also complain about someone not cutting a lawn or some other garbage. We had a situation here in Tucson where a family moved into their new home and within a few weeks received a letter demanding that they "remove the eyesore on their front door" the owner asked them what eyesore and they pointed out the 3 inch long and 3/8 wide tubular item with some writing on it. He told the HOA it was a Mezuzah and is a religious item containing the blessing on the home. They still insisted on him removing it. He refused and they fined him all sorts of fees and violations and even eventually put a lein on the home. they finally took him to court. The HOA had 5 people there all smug and the homeowner had himself and his lawyer, the sides presented their case and the judge addressed them and said he was dismissing the suit and was shocked at the boards actions and he was personally going to bring this case to the federal court to present it to the U.S. attorney to review for federal law violation on religious persecution.
Something like a lien on the home, it's time to go full scorched earth. Not only completely destroy the house, but then contaminate the property to the extent that cleanup greatly exceeds the cost of the property, then just stick them with it.
If one is Torah observant, we are commanded to put His Word on the doorposts of our house and upon our gates. The word used is Shall meaning that there is no option. Hopefully the courts will never try to over rules God’s Law.
@@CrippledEagle I have no interests in the Thora, but can you say something about the following idea.
1. Everyone can create his own religious believe in the USA ?
2. Religious believe trumps HOA rules ?
Is that true?
Thank you for sharing that, Sheriff !
I'm hungry for news of sane legal decisions .
The hoa where we used to live decided we could no longer park in front of our houses even though had been that way since neighborhood was built 20 years earlier! Was public road owned by city and taxpayers.
I read a story where a house was in a H.O.A. and they were trying to fine the owner for walking in their house naked. The homeowner refused to pay the fee and the HOA tried to foreclose on the house, the homeowner filed a stay of execution with the court and a judge granted said Stay. The homeowner then filed a lawsuit against the HOA for invasion of privacy and being a peeping tom. The Judge sided with the homeowner stating that windows were to look out and not for looking into. With that judgement in hand the homeowner then went to the other court and said that they had a bogus lawsuit and moved for dismissal. The lower court granted the homeowners request for dismissal and ordered the fines were illegally obtained via the higher court ruling. The homeowner then charges the HOA for 2.5 Million dollars for invasion of privacy, trespassing, and embezzlement the homeowner won the suit and the judge doubled the award.
CoOL sToRy BrO
I love it when justice prevails.
@@donalddepew9605 Yes. As rare as that may be.
If I’m understanding what you’re saying, the courts seem to have been an error. If this person is walking around naked with their windows open, then that’s a problem. Windows go both ways.
@@spankynater4242 The court said if they are walking naked in their home then the rule uses the windows are to see out, not for looking in because it is an invasion of privacy. Nothing about if the windows are open or closed, or if it was only a bay window as long as they were in their home. This was The Supreme Court ruling.
I had an HOA lawsuit back in the mid 1990’s. I had sold my condo, and exited the association legally, so I thought! For24 months after moving, the HOA, continued to come after me for violations dealing with my car and truck, that one was present at the condo at any given time. The violation was that my vehicles were older then 2 years old! So the HOA insisted that my vehicles were an issue of safety due to age and neglect ( keep in mind the car was 1 year old, and the truck was an antique parked at m father’s house) I was 23 at the sale of the condo, but was hauled into court over unpaid and unsubstantiated claims of the prior 1 year, a lean against my father’s property, and impounding of all our cars ( on his land and inside the garage at the time) until violations were paid!
Solution, call brother-in-law (cop), lawyered up, both with civilian and military attorneys, applied for search warrants of HOA board members and all bylaws regarding said HOA documents (costing us thousands of dollars) entered the court, and the HOA claimed that I was responsible to live under their rules and regulations for a period 9 years after I moved out and sold the condo!
Court ruling abolished this HOA, jailed several board members found their attorneys in contempt, and most of the violations were communistic money grabs, and the board members were also found to have embezzled several hundred thousands of dollars! All vehicles were returned, lean was removed from my father’s property, and restraining orders extended against the HOA!
communistic? maybe capitalistic too?
@@howardbonds5106 Not quite...with capitalism, you still have the choice of if you want to consume it and buy it. Yes, capitalism is freedom to make profit, but that is only half of the story. With Communism, you get what you get...no choice.
@@bmuseoThe HOA Its a capitalist dystopia. You get to charge people in exchange for nothing. just like the medical system. Our country is full of this nonsense...there is a shill around every corner. The HOA is the half of the story we are talking about, correct? So you get your choice of HOA predator...or sleep outside. We live in a capitalist society and HOA is the worst side of it. I doubt the communists worry about HOA fees on top of their own misery's. While I am sure they have many faults HOA is our own mistake.
Wow! This story tops all HOA stories I’ve heard to date! Awful! Glad you took charge and won.
CoOL sToRy BrO
My little sister actually works full time picketing in front of an HOA in Bradenton, FL, sometimes there’s as many as 6 people!
The HOA started fining her boss for parking his pick up outside the garage. After talking with others in the community it seems there’s a lot of petty policy enforcement going on.
What the HOA didn’t know was how wealthy this guy is, he pays people $15/hr 7 days a week to harass board members. Additionally, he keeps filing lawsuits against the HOA for any thing he feels is unjust.
Haha this man is putting people to work!
if he has that much money, move out where there isn't an HOA. Stupid to just sit there and throw money at garbage.
Pay actor to look like homeless and just sit around the Hoa.
@@Bigbacon - Very tempting, yes, but running away from the problem doesn't help his neighbors and friends who are still stuck under the tyranny. Of course it's not an obligation, but it is admirable when people in power or privilege stand up for those who cannot afford or are not organized enough to defend themselves.
@@Bigbacon Because sometimes it feels better to piss off some assholes than to have the money.
When I was young, I lived in a townhouse complex during my college years. One morning I discovered my car had a flat tire. While I was changing the spare, I had a middle aged lady and a very elderly man approach me demanding I stop since automotive repairs were against the rules. They advised I should have it towed to a shop. After telling them where to go wi their absurdity and how to get there, in great detail, I finished the tire change whilst they shuffled off muttering amongst themselves. Decades later, upon reflection, I have to admit they taught me a great life lesson: Never purchase property under an HOA.
@@MM-pr1wf Woe is me! I might sell it for only $295,000 in a decade! Oh my profits have been slashed!
@@MM-pr1wf not if you move into a house you intend to die in or your kids to inherit and live in. why is it you always have to plan to make money out of selling a house?
M M, you missed the joke. I think even if scout planned on selling the house in ten years, a neighbor's project car won't cause a loss. He was being sarcastic
@@MM-pr1wfso what? His or her property. None of your damn buissness.
@@scout360pyroz under Biden's new tax law if you try to leave your children they must pay 40% of the value of the home. Sickening. Facts!!!
If you can join an HOA, but no-one can ever leave, HOAs will continually grow. As an Australian, it's stunning to think "the land of the free" would tolerate this.
People tend to think of freedom as just a right, but it's also a responsibility. You're free to enter into a contract that binds you to an HOA, but you're also responsible for upholding your end of that contract, including fees and rules that you agreed to be bound by. It's also your responsibility to research what you're getting into and unfortunately most people don't. Or crooked people take over and try to do stuff like what happened in this story.
You are free to pick your mob outfit to rule over you. ;)
hoas pay off republicans so hoas have unlimited power-especially in Florida, Georgia & Texas
hoas pay off republicans so hoas have unlimited power-especially in Florida, Georgia & Texas
We have the right to contract with whoever per our constitution but you need to carry our your end of the deal and be smart about entering into contracts that dont benefit you. I personally would never move into one of these sub-division that hoa controls. Thus is like dystopian type vibes lol why woukd I want anyone to impede on my private property
A friend had a condo in a HOA that stopped doing any maintenance , drained the pool , locked the laundry ,and turned off the landscape maintenance . The HOA said they couldn't afford anything .The home oweners requested a aduit of the books and went to court .The court gave the HOA time to open the books . The day before the books were tobe opened the HOA managers moved .There were no books .
In my state the HOA is required to disclose everything about their finances each year, and show where all of your money is going. Id be surprised if that isnt true for every state
Hearing an HOA lost a case always makes me smile.
I guess you still don't get it. The HOA did not lose the case, all the homeowners lost the case and all those families have to pay with increased home owner dues.
@@richardcommins4926 I know, I don't see how someone can't see how stupid that was. "I'm going to sue a club I'm a paying member of and we're all going to get money from ourselves" (minus the lawyer fees)
@@richardcommins4926 So what's the solution?
I have been living in a home with an HOA for 30 years. If I ever buy another home the last thing I would want is an HOA. The pretext is that they are there to maintain property values. What you actually get if a bunch of people with control issues who turn your neighborhood into their little fiefdom.
Yes. People who get a TINY bit of power over others can go crazy with it.
Ditto - I'd rather live WAY outside a city than to ever deal with an HOA ever again. The last place we bought, we told the real estate agents "NO HOA" - turned out there supposedly was one (we didn't find out until closing and were more than a little pissed). After reading the rules, most of them were pretty reasonable (no pigs, for example) - and it turned out that the association was at least long dormant if not dead. All our neighbors felt the same way, so there was never any effort to get it re-started.
@@scottcooper4391 just get everyone to vote it gone.
you only need a majority vote. It becomes a problem when one person or group of people have a majority vote in the hoa. You can even vote the hoa gone if enough people are on this side. (but there is a problem with communal property maintenance if you do.
@@scottcooper4391 IMHO, Linda is right. It may not be a problem now, but fast forward 10 years and it can become a big problem if it still exists. If it's dormant and nobody cares, it should be fairly easy to formally disband it now.
I refuse to even look at a house that has an HOA. I never understood paying to have someone tell me what I could and could not do on my property.
AMEN! Sister AMEN!.... doesnt the city already have that covered?
It isn't about you. It is your neighbors. You want THEM to be told they can't have their truck up on blocks for a month leaking oil. The main point is people are assholes and feel "if I'm allowed to do it, I will do it" and ruin the neighborhood resale value as a result. HOA neighborhoolds hold up value better than non.
We have a neighbor with an RV in front and another neighbor with out of control weeds. What we don’t have are snoopy Karens and out of control HOA fees. I’m good with this.
@@curtcollett2893 Until you go to sell your home, and can't get a good price for it. You sound like the anti-vaxers "I may die, but you can't tell me what to do"
@@erikbrandsberg3196😂 There are over 100 newer homes in multiple HOAs in our area and most are not even kept up to the standard at which our direct neighbors, w/o an HOA, do. For example, their matchbook sized lawns are full of dead grass, weeds and their flower beds filled w/ dead plants.
I live in an HOA and these people are horrible. Thieves is even a kind word for them. They selectively enforce the by-laws.
Last I knew, there was a nice little legal principle known as "easement" and it's based on the idea that a rule or a law cannot be applied selectively. If it is, then it can't be applied at all. If you're taken to court over something that was applied selectively, you need evidence that it's not being applied to other people and that this is consistent over a long period of time. If you can show that evidence in court, you should have a good case to claim Easement and that unless and until the rule is rigorously applied to everyone, it can't be applied to you. You then argue that to do otherwise violates the very principle of justice and that therefore ruling against you would tend to bring the court into disrepute.
Exactly. The people who are behind this horrid rotten to the core "HOA" total corruption are absolutely NOT the kind of people who are good neighbors. I would NEVER want to live anywhere near such jerks.
I lived in a HOA neighborhood once for 10 years and swore never again after we sold and left. Little people who like control over others end up on the board. I saw them use our funds to sue a neighbor whose high quality wood fence was an inch too high. I live on 38 acres now and need binoculars to see my neighbors.
HOAs are just miniature govsrnments. They can levy taxes, and arrest you and sieze your property for failing to pay those taxes. Taxation is extortion, and anyone practicing taxation should be shot.
that's what I want, no one's going to be able to tell you shit about your house if it's on the center of a huge property
Before I knew my husband, he lived in a retirement community in Florida where they tried to force people to have lights out by 10:00 p.m. and they weren't allowed to go out lol. The biggest mistake they made was going to my husband's place. They weren't met with any complying lol. There was nothing like that in the contract they just decided to make up their own rules as they went. After they met up with him, they never bothered anybody again. He had just moved in there.
@@VM-123 let's get you into a creative writing class ASAP.
@@VM-123sometimes it just takes a very confident individual to establish the personal boundaries with these HMO clowns. Great luck to you and your husband on your strong stance against those knot heads.
Saw a meme the other day: "What do call a group of Karens? A Homeowners Association."
I'm currently looking to buy a home and the first thing I told my real estate agent is to not even bother showing me any HOA properties. I'll compromise on certain things such as if the basement is unfinished but a HOA is a guaranteed deal breaker for me regardless of the price of the home. I'll be damned if I'll spend that kind of money on a home only to have a bunch of Karen's and Ken's telling me what I can and can't do with my own property. I'm too frigging old, sick, and bitchy to deal with that kind of bullshit and I refuse to do so.
I don't live in america but they sound horrifying to me. why would americans tolerate them? All those things you have an HOA for ... we have a local council for (and pay rates too) but they can't tell us how to live as in you can't have XYZ color mail box or something. They just tell us off if we have like too many animals or a broken sewer that's spewing into the road. they also can't put liens on our houses and take them away.
My direct neighbor paid $1.4 million for his house in my HOA. A young Asian couple, now with children, she WAS pregnant.
@@toriless CoOL sToRy BrO
I live a HOA with 466 condos and for years they never fixed things, they also kept the dues to low for too long because some of the board members were retired and and couldn't afford the higher dues then in 2018 they had emergency meetings about them implementing special assessments of $35,000.00+ depending on the square footage of your unit well I paid my assessment in 2018 and then they decided to do all the repairs in phases instead of doing all of the repairs on all the buildings at once like what we were promised would be done and now because of the super high inflation for the last 2 years I am pretty sure they are going to assess us again because of super high inflation. The board has failed the homeowners in a huge way
They’re not all bad. And trust me, Karen’s are no strangers to being disruptive in neighborhoods.
A friend of mine's favorite story about a HOA - he was installing satellite dish service and the HOA tried to prevent the homeowner from doing so. The owner contacted the FCC who showed up and told the HOA where to go.
You don’t fuck with the FCC. I watched someone learn that the hard way when they jammed my drone while I was working over a farm.
They will get their way, whether you like it or not.
@@AllCentaur Drones are extra fun because you can get the FAA coming down on you too. They really aren't fond of people messing with aircraft manned or otherwise.
@@AllCentaur any federal agency is like that. It's easy to get away with stuff with state and local police.
But the feds have a massive budget and all the time in the world. Someone is holding the case file and whenever they start digging their teeth in you're not getting out of it. They will eventually make their case. State / local cops are easy to fool because they don't spend so much time. Eventually they judt close out the case file
Ham radio. Put up ham radio tower in your yard. The FCC states you can not remove ham radio towers at all because it is a national security device and protected. Plus it will piss off the old hoa fuckheads.
Lmao the feds - ESPECIALLY the more "obscure" agencies like the FCC (not that they're necessarily obscure, but they're not the FBI getting all kinds of "action") are usually CHOMPING at the bit to justify their budget. That little bullet point they send to congress saying "the FCC prosecuted 10,438 cases of illegally tampering with a protected communication frequency this year" works a treat to make congress think there's an epidemic of pirate radio stations and possible terrorists interfering with our communications infrastructure, when in reality it's just an HOA getting rekt for forcing a homeowner to remove their satellite because it's not the correct "Morning Fog Gray" color from their approved color swatch.
And i'm perfectly fine with that being what the FCC spends their budget on 😂
ONE of the previous HOA’s I lived in made me replace the mailbox with their “specific” box that could only be bought through the management company. It cost about &350. Three years later they came around and demanded I replace it again. After some research I discovered the brother-in-law of the board president was making the mailboxes.
Pretty big conflict of interest. Pretty sure that is illegal.
Sweetheart deals between the HOA and contractors are par for the course. Our HOA told us to buy Behr paint from a specific store to repaint our garage doors. It is pretty clear why they tried to funnel all buyers to a specific store.
@@DovidM An HOA can require you to use a specific paint (i.e. Behr Red 2502), but they can not require you to purchase it from a specific vendor. That's a violation of FTC antitrust laws.
That a RICO violation. Depending on their tax structure, it could be illegal self-dealing as well.
@@maxsdad538 thats what i never understood often when they are formed theres some connection with the landscaping and maintenance companies that get contracts with the developers like it a family run business.
An old coworker of mine was harassed by the hoa for not having plants in her pots on her front porch. She was going through a really tough time because her mother was literally in the hospital dying and she did not have time to worry about it.
CoOL sToRy BrO
I live in a community with an HOA in Florida but luckily the previous owner had already sued them and got a ruling saying he didn’t have to join, which later applied to me, then it came out that the HOA committee was collecting thousands a year, using a couple hundred to keep the community sign area mowed then going in expensive vacations with the rest. It was a huge scandal and quite comical.
"then going in expensive vacations with the rest. " That is often illegal all on its own. I only use mine for insurance, state registration fees, and gas for mowing (the labor is free), same for for tree trimming labor. Why do think our fees are about $8 a month.
I bought a house before an HOA was started and then they tried to bully me and my family saying we had no choice and they were trying to fine us. I told them to get off my property or else and they wouldn't and being very threatening so finally had enough and grabbed my phone called the police and reported them. Police came out and lucky sided with us and trespassed them and I informed the police that if they continued to threatening me or my family I will use deadly force to defend myself and my family. After that didn't hear a peep😅
HOA's are the perfect way for petty tyrants to get their fix in making other people miserable.
*as miserable as they are
I was an HOA chairman in Mesquite, NV, and felt compelled to resign when the majority of the board voted to violate NV law to further their own authority. I'll never live in another one again. It's the most punitive level of "government" in our country.
See, THIS is why HOAs should be outright BANNED worldwide
Actually, municipalities can restrict more than most HOA's, for instance a city can REQUIRE you have garbage service but an HOA can not, it can only restrict it placement when being stored. A city can restrict street parking, an HOA can only restrict common areas from parking. However, you can restrict livestock when often allowed or RV's when often allowed by the city or county. Both are not allowed in my HOA and given the lot sizes I see no reason to change that. At almost 9000 SF I actually have the biggest lot.
absolutely, the small local governments and organizations are not good. grassroots is not reflective of how pleasant the word can sound.
They win that way. Your voice would've been the voice of reason on that panel
@@gfy2979Imagine how insane the corruption gets in BIGGER government.
We lived in Florida for 30 years. HOAs in a lot of communities are like mini gestapos. Any house we purchased always made sure you understood the covenants. The "Disney" neighborhood told ppl what colors of curtains, etc to put in their windows. That really exists there. -- We almost couldn't sell our house when we left bc the HOA changed up their accepted paint schemes for homes right after we had an ARC approved color for the paint on our house. Our Realtor was in the board, so she helped us crawl out of that mess. There was also a guy on the board who physically walked the neighborhood every morning going thru ppl's backyards (without fences) looking for things outside of covenants and writing ppl up. Then there was the guy on the board with the drone for fenced yards.... I absolutely drew the line there. Told them I'd take them to court for that. He stopped. One of our neighbors was having his driveway re-done while in the process of selling his home. The HOA put a lien on his home and took the guy to court for re-doing his driveway. The pending offer he had fell thru bc of that. In our friend's neighborhood, they had tow trucks on standby IN the neighborhood hooking up to any car that parked in the street and towed them off. Our friend got hit on two separate occasions on his lunchtime stopping by his home to get something really quick and take off back to work. When he came back out once, his truck was gone. The second time, they had his truck hooked up. HOAs in Florida are no joke. The HOA we have here where we moved (different state) is like $180 a year. It keeps the street lights on, and maintains our entry. That's it. None of this other terrorist crap. What a breath of fresh air!
hoa in Florida, Georgia & Texas are extremely powerful-paying off republicans
Reading all real estate documents prior to buying is critical for future owners. However, some folks prefer uniform looking properties for aesthetic tastes.
I bought my first house in 2007. The newly built neighborhood had rules I needed to sign along with my other mortgage documents. I noticed that the rules provided seemed to be just the last page of the neighborhood rules. After some back and forth between my realtor and the listing agency, I got all the rules. They weren’t too oppressive, so I agreed. After I moved in, I noticed nobody followed any of the rules.
When I talked to my neighbors, I quickly found out, nobody had been given the full list either, and they didn’t ask. Luckily for me, because of the housing bubble bursting, the developer unloaded the properties as fast as he could and the HOA never got set up.
“Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
Yea, thats America in a nutshell...we hide it better than most though.
Power also REVEALS. It may have been dormant for years but the power allows the dark side to be exposed.
When we bought in 2006, our #1 requirement was "No HOA"...
Yep. We learned out lesson 34 years ago. No more HOAs.
@@McRod-1 I want to add CCR to my lots that rule out HOA membership/formation and the addition to or modification of the CCR.
A woman I know said her neighbor painted their house an unapproved color.She asked " how did you get away with that color ? " The neighbor said that the HOA had been desolved a long time ago .Her finance company was still charging her HOA fees .
... and now that neighbour has grounds to charge her finance company with fraud.
Almost 20 years ago my wife and I visited a cousin in Arizona. He and his wife drove us around to show us a bunch of new housing developments, and he proudly announced that they were all under HOAs. My wife was recently arrived from another country so she had no idea what an HOA was, but my cousin and his wife genuinely didn't understand why I told them to just stop the tour unless there were some developments that weren't HOAs. (There weren't any.)
I will never live in a place that has my neighbors impose rules on my property. Nor do I wanna impose rules on my neighbor
Are you ok with your neighbours being intolerably loud?
@@nameberry220 if its within legal limits because most towns have a sound ordanence sure. I'm rarely home
@@dashy9482 Yeah, most of the "issues" uninformed people think HOA's are formed to deal with are already covered by existing laws and town/city ordinance.
Noise, garbage, failing/falling trees, fence regulations, etc.
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And as to things like "distasteful house colors" I used to like being able to give directions like, "Turn left at the orange house with green shutters, and my house is the second on the left after the pink and purple mail box.
Exactly, I could care less what my neighbors do with their land, and I expect the same.
I turned down 3 homes that had HOA attached for my first home. The lady acted insulted. When I said HOA was not an option, she said she would have to find something for me later. Safe to guess I didn't do buisness with her.
I was fortunate to have an ex realtor in my corner to keep me informed on what to look for.
I bought a house that was in a HOA. Then after being there for almost a year, I received a letter from the HOA and told me that my mailbox was 1 inch to close to the street. The company that I work for required to go out of town for a period of time so I received a $100 dollar find and I told them about the issue with my job and I would fix it when I get home but they still issue me to pay $100 dollars. I found out that the original owner was the brother of the head of the HOA, so I took them to court, I sued for $5000.00 because they did nothing to the previous owner and won. The Judge ordered the review the laws that HOA put in and will be hearing from the owners to see about change?
All HOA's for the past two decades (or more) use community boxes. You must be in an ancient HOA.
Our township attempted to write and HOA type agreement. The residents protested and stopped this ordinance. Thanks for your work. People have rights that need to be defended.
My town will charge me $500 if my lawn isn't mowed to their satisfaction.
HOAs can be nightmares.
My sister was going to buy a house in an HOA, and I told her, before you buy make sure you get a pen and paper and read ALL of the rules, at least 3 times. And any rule you're not sure of, write it down and ask the HOA to give you an example of that rule.
Well after writing down 20 rules, she decided that this was insane and chose not to buy the house.
Better to find out before you sign than after.
The problem with those "rules" is that they can change at any time. And you may/may not have any say so in the matter. All the more reason to steer clear of them.
@A H Depends on the HOA. They're not all the same.
Coming from the UK, it never ceases to amaze me that any part of the US allows this extortion.
Whatever happened to the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
It all starts with the greedy engineering company making extra money by creating the legal HOA for their developments, then dragging out the building of the development to keep collection those outrageous HOA fees into their pockets and do nothing but harass the homeowners for the picky rules they created to fine them for even more money. Then in the future the KAREN'S AND KEN'S take over and create more picky rules to keep fining the homeowners for more money to eventually taking their homes to sell it to the next sucker for even more money. These HOA developments are just mini communists communities controlled by power hungry Ken's and Karen's who have nothing better to do than harass other people and homeowners.
Your guess is as good as mine, but people seem increasingly unwilling to live those words in many respects.
I'm american, I've never lived under a homeowner's association. I was confused to learn they exist at all, more confused to learn that most states legally recognize them and grant them broad authority. I was sure what I heard about them MUST be illegal, but it is explicitly legal.
I swore as soon as I learned of them that I would never live under one.
With freedom, comes the freedom to voluntarily enslave yourself. HOAs are a voluntary association (no one forces you to buy a home with an HOA). Unfortunately, most city governments require an HOA for any development over a certain size, as a condition of the development plan. The reason is that the city can then mandate features like parks, pools, and landscaping in common areas, which they city does not have to maintain. Without an HOA, the city would be required to maintain those features (and ownership would be deeded to the city).
When I bought my house 20 years ago, NO HOA was one of my criteria.
@@daleinaz1 if most of the homes in an area you’d like to live in have an HOA, you’re kinda forced into buying into an HOA if you’d like to live there
Isn't it worse on the UK??
An HOA is the last place I'd want to live. Either you own the property or I don't, what I do with it is my business. I understand the concept, but that's how I always felt about it.
A friend bought into one and was always working, so didn't pay much attention. The teenager he was paying to mow his lawn just stopped for some reason, so it grew to much for the HOA. One day he checked his mail and found a bill for lawn mowing by a neighbor he didn't know. I'm sure he went ahead and paid it, but I wouldn't have. I told him that I would have sent a thank you note, because he didn't hire them to do that.
Of course I realize that the government does not actually believe you own your own property, but but that's another subject.
I had the association mow part of my yard and send me a bill. It wasn’t overgrown and them mowed over an azalea too! Their argument was that since they had to pay the company then I should pay the bill. I of course refused even after the HOA then tried to tell me I couldn’t throw them off that area when they were throwing weed killer all over my plants because it wasn’t mine! Make up your mind?
45% of Florida lives under HOA?! That's crazy!
A few years back I was looking around for a buildable lot. I found one, 2.5 acres at a good price. Very nice. It had an HOA. I asked for a copy of the rules. They were emailed to me - all 112 pages of them. Unbelievable nazi-like restrictions on everything. I sent an email back to the seller saying that he would have to pay me to take the lot off his hands.
Yup, had the sane thing with six acres I found for relatively cheap.
I am currently looking to purchase a property. I have come across a few that are ridiculously inexpensive. Fairly new and large homes. The price per sq.ft is ten times less the area is getting. The catch? HOA! 70k nonrefundable application fee. $3500.00 a month HOA fee. These people want out so much they are willing to take a huge loss.
@@davidsawyer1599 ?!?!!
@@davidsawyer1599 They should try selling the property to the state or federal government, who can then just retroactively make the property no longer part of the HOA, then sell it for a profit.
@@davidsawyer1599 ... One glaring thing was how the rules covered areas already covered by state law. This just illustrated a mindset that, either the HOA board thought they were equivalent to the state government, or that after the state gets done with violators, the HOA steps in for its own cut. Either mindset would be miserable to live with.
I live in Florida and I just found out at Thanksgiving that my mother is being sued by an HoA that is located next to where I live. The only problem: My 82 y/o mother lives eighty miles away. She had a cousin that owned a house in the HoA who died and have decided to sue family members for unpaid fees. I hate HoAs.
If there is any justice in the world, a counter suit would be very lucrative. Legal fees, punitive damages for harassment, sanctions against the lawyers suing not-participants in the contract, etc. I don't have a lot of confidence that there is justice, though.
Pretty sure you cannot sue family members for debts owed. You can sue the estate, but you cannot just pick family members and tell them they owe you money.
Here in the UK you cannot do this unless there is money in the estate. However if that has been passed to other family members it becomes their property and is no longer part of the deceased estate.
After my half brother passed away (unknowingly; we weren’t that close & he lived two states over), I received a letter abt his debts. I contacted a lawyer & he said I had nothing to worry abt.
@@DVankeuren Which VanKeuren was your ancestor? We are somehow related. We have a rather uncommon name.
Steve, one thing a lot of people don't realize about HOA's is that the reason they are becoming more common is because of laziness and corruption from city and county officials. Big developers will lobby city and county officials to DENY residential zoning permits to smaller plots of land, and one of the ways they do this is by getting laws and regulations passed that require new residential areas to be built with HOA's, and local governments LOVE to go along with this because then they don't have to enforce city ordnances regarding trash, weeds, etc... So they get to have their ordnances essentially enforced by HOA's that have almost zero accountability and run roughshod over people, and these local officials use HOA's to enforce their will regarding what people are allowed to do with their property in ways that would otherwise be wildly unconstitutional, such as selectively enforcing rules against signs and flags in people's yards that express views that they (local governments and the HOA boards, themselves) don't like. This is how you get these insane situations where people are sometimes faced with huge fines or even foreclosure and eviction because they put political signs on their own property.
As a millennial, I won't be able to own a house until someone in my family _dies,_ but when I do I will sell that property and buy an empty plot on unincorporated land and plunk down a modular/ mobile home if the one I inherit is under the control of an HOA.
I lived in an HOA community in NC. The house came with Tall Fescue grass that needed a lot of watering during summer. I went to the HOA and submitted a request to change the grass to Zoysia, a summer type of grass. They approved and I changed the whole yard ($$$). Zoysia goes dormant during winter, turns yellowish brown color. The HOA didn't liked it, even it was explained in my approved request for the change. We ended in court...
HOA's are just one of the plethora of reasons why I live at the top of a mountain in the rural Ozarks...!
8 years ago I lived under the rule of an hoa. I wanted to widen my driveway and was told no.
I then asked if I could cut /trim the trees on either side of the driveway. Absolutely not. Those trees belong to the hoa.
So, does their roots belong to the hoa since they are attached to the trees?
Clearly, tenant's names, they are as the two cannot be separated.
Ohhhhhhhh so the root belongs to the tree and the tree belongs to you. [setting this up] ** previous to this interaction I received a note from the hoa stating I was responsible for the conduct and actions of my guests due to the extension of the them being at my house and my house was subject to the rules of the hoa. I was responsible for any damages caused by my guests.
So you are responsible the trees and by extension are responsible roots and any damage they may cause.
My driveway is cracked due to the roots which creates a safety issue which by extension is now your responsibility.
I was granted permission to widen the driveway.
Townhouse
I got on the board and immediately cancelled all their rules “passed” after the original HOA because they never filed them with the county as required by state law.
I moved from a very wealthy HOA neighborhood into a working-class/lower-middle-class neighborhood with no HOA. It's great! People actually talk to each other if they're unhappy with what a neighbor is doing. And while I do miss access to the pool and park the former neighborhood provided, I'm completely happy with the move and will avoid HOAs for the rest of my life.
There's a reason the highest praise you ever hear about an HOA is, "It's not one of the bad ones."
In college I worked private security and one assignment was a condo complex. My main duty was to keep the community safe through reporting things such as damaged gates, pools and clubhouse door locks... but I was also handed a list of violations to the association's policies to tattle-tale on residents in violation of the HOA (or COA... it's been decades)... anyway, my orders were to write down the violations without contacting the resident and handing it in to the management. Okay, I get it if it's a problem such as a newly-painted door of hideous color, but yes, the curtains were also an issue.
Being that I am not a jerk, before writing it in the final shift report, if it was before 8pm, I would knock on the resident's door and explain their new drapes were in violation and to have them changed or hidden some way... my goal was to allow the residents a moment to fix the problem instead of being hit with a surprise visit by management along with the first day fine.
Of all the security duties I had, that was the worst, even if you include the one where I got shot at. I hated having to enforce some of these stupid, idiotic, anti-freedom policies these organizations enforce.
When I had a condo, all blinds, drapes, no rollers allowed, had to be white and white only. I have no rules in my HOA.
I lived in a condo with a HOA. The thing I learned about their rules were that they would selectively enforce them. There was a mosaic glass decal on a tiny window near the front door of our condo from when we purchased the place. It's fair to assume it had been there for some time prior, but not long after we moved in, we got a violation notice for it. I read over the rules and could spot various violations throughout the neighborhood that never seemed to change. If you don't enforce the rules for everybody, then the rules are meaningless. The amenities provided by HOA governed communities have to really be worth it to you to deal with nitpicky rules that will be arbitrarily enforced on you and seemingly nobody else.
The rules are there to enforce on those you don’t like. Originally, HOAs were designed to keep black people out of certain areas. That continues to be their main function, but with whatever people the HOA officers choose.
@@michaelwinter742 Yep it was called "redlining" and it was to keep Blacks and Jews out. Rampant in post war America.
I am SOOOOO glad that HOA's are not a 'thing' in the UK !
We had a mess with selective enforcement, playing favorites, etc... A team of 7 took over our HOA and ran it right with the best legal counsel by our side. Under my leadership as HOA president and regardless of the feedback, selective enforcement was NOT an option. In fact... I told the property manager to START by enforcing all the rules against the BOARD FIRST... She said NO and that she would treat everyone equally. Yes about 10% (those who used to benefit) hate me, but the other 90% loved me...
When people complained at me, I ask them for a solution proposal instead of a problem ... I also asked them to volunteer to lead the solution... It is amazing how many people just like to complain and do not want to work.
When people complained about Basketball goal rules and were willing to put forth the effort... I had the attorney draft a covenant change... My neighborhood needed 75% to pass it... Over 90% voted to pass it! This is probably the largest favorable vote that has ever happened in an HOA...
In general, condos are required to have HOAs (I'm on the HOA board for the condo I live in). For condos, it makes sense, as each condo is independently owned, but the exteriors of the buildings are shared. As such, it's the HOAs job to pay for things like roof repairs, because a single roof belongs to several condos. As for the by-laws, most of them are originally written by the builders of the community. Ours actually has many by-laws but little enforcement power - and so for the time being, the only thing we focus on is making sure everyone's dues are paid... and the only other rule that we insist on is no short-term leasing, primarily for safety reasons.
I'm looking for a larger (10 to 40 acre) property in MI right now, close enough to suburbs to worry about housing developments moving in. I have seen a number of large parcels being split into two still-fairly-large parcels, and have already decided I won't buy one of those unless I can afford to buy both, because I don't want to risk a development with an HOA going in adjacent to my land.
WRIF! I grew up with that radio station. Jim Johnson, George Baier, Ken Calvert, Arthur Penhallow--good times!
Ohio law, fortunately, provides a remedy for troublesome HOAs: the ability of residents to vote them out of existence. I and my fellow residents did precisely that to our development in Columbus a few years ago and there was much rejoicing.
Not if the other residents don’t care enough to vote for the board members or rule changes.
@@johnp139 They didn't vote for board members or rule changes. They voted to abolish the HOA.
Haha! "And there was much rejoicing" had me remembering that Monty Python and the Holy Grail bit with the same line and hilarious drawings
@@danielkoontz6732 Oh yeah! When they ate the bard over the Winter! That was a great movie.
yaayy...🚩🏴🏳🏴🚩
When my son bought a house in a HOA community, the neighbor came over and within minutes said, "Hi, welcome, we have rules here." He continued to be like that.
The lady next door on the first day said, "The fence between our property needs to be replaced so I will need $4,500 from you." He and I fixed it with a new 4"x4" and some paint. She had been told it needed to all be replaced and being elderly, she believed the contractor. People.
And that sums it up nicely. HOAs are all about the bucks, not the community.
I worked for a cable company had a work order to turn off a person cable.. the HOA had me arrested. When I got out of jail the first thing I did was cut off all the cable to the hole place . My employer did not say anything to me and told HOA . Will fix the problem when are employe gets out of jail. F a HOA
I live in AZ. Formally in a townhouse. Glad I sold and moved into a nice area that doesn't have an HOA. I WILL NEVER LET ANYONE ELSE TELL ME WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT DO WITH MY PROPERTY AGAIN!!!
I did that in Virginia, they sent out proxy sheets for people votes who will not be attending the annual meeting…I went door to door and gathered proxy’s from folks who basically gave up on the HOA.
We (group of us) walked in and seated a complete new board, and changed the rules.
I admire and respect you for your energy.
I'm surprised you were able to change the rules so easily. The board generally doesn't have that power, most CC&Rs require a pretty high quorum of owners to vote for rules changes.
@@nigelbarker8726 that's what the cards were for, they were signed writs that appointed them as representatives voting in absentia for the other HOA members who didn't care to attend.
@@nigelbarker8726 -- No two HOAs are the same but sometimes a relative small number of folks own several units each. They can provide a quorum for doing ordinary business and provide a bulwark again an overturn. To overwhelm the HOA and change or abolish it would take a lot of work.
@@MamaMOB Because HOAs have responsibilities that are crucial. In a condo building some entity has to maintain the shared roof. When a shared drain blocks, who else pays the plumber?
I remember how horrified my neighbors were when they got a notice... Their multiple hurricane damaged houses were going to be fined a few months past the last storm would be fined daily for houses being out of code. Ppl were lucky to get insurance claim in & someone to even look at let alone fixing it then, FL was completely overwhelmed from the storms but this HOA wanted to profit off the disaster! PLEASE dont live in an HOA!
I think that's just when you beat the piss out of the next board member you see.
Steve, Awesome video. My wife and I were looking at a nice house in Manatee County Florida, and it had an HOA, so we asked the sellers realtor for a copy of the HOA Rules. At which point we told to contact the HOA directly who informed us that a copy of the HOA Rules would cost us $79 per copy. Needless to say we did not look at any houses in that sub-division again.
Aloha.........................
I will NEVER purchase ANY property with an HOA.
Living in a country where HOA's arent a thing, HOA's just sound like a legalised protection racket. The land of the free sure seems to have a lot of rules telling citezens what they can't do with their own property.
The whole “Land of the free and the home of the brave” thing is over. We are now the land of the controlled and the home of the scared.
Some of the first HOA’s were created to ensure only white people could live in certain areas. This way if a neighbor was less racist than everyone else and sold the house, the poor fool who bought the house could be sued and kicked out.
America--the land of the fee and the home of the slave.
Frankly, I'm surprised that no one has (so far as I know) gone nuts and killed the condo board. Heck, that's the American way, right?
Its because people are naive and willing to sign up. I'll never join a HOA
I've only had to deal with an HOA twice, my condo association and later my townhouse. HOA rules apply to some but not others. Naturally the rules applied to me but not my neighbor. So glad to have left HOAs behind!!!!
In cases like that, you can play "do you really want to sue me". As one of the few generally always effective legal defenses you can have against a HOA is discrimination. So if you can prove a rule they fined you for isn't been applied to everyone equally, the HOA will nearly always lose, as they are discriminating.
If your an ethnic, religious or any other form of "minority" or just "different" to the HOA board, even better.
We are finishing the interior of the last house I will ever live in. (I hope) When we went looking for a property I told the misses I had two requirements. 1) A small plot of acreage as I did not want to be able to shake my neighbors hand by opening a window. 2) No !#$^!@#$% HOA!
I have lived in two HOAs with mixed experience. The first was very compliant and only enforced stylistic concerns and commons. You could do anything else as everyone's yard was an enclosed patio. The second, what a nightmare. The board meetings are a disaster. There is a small faction that goes around with a ruler looking for any infraction. I am glad we are moving out.
In Texas there is a third form of HOA, PID Planned Infrastructure Development. Originally intended for industrial parks but now being applied to residences. The city wanted to place the townhomes in a PID. Essentially it would give the city the right to enforce improvements and charge the residents. I attended several meetings one of which I pointed out that once approved there is no exit in the future. The Mayor did not believe it nor did the city attorney. I read the appropriate passage to them. The city attorney looked it up and yep that is what it says. That pretty much killed the deal.
@@johnmcginnis5201
Good on you. Watch your back, though, you just fucked someone out of millions of dollars. They're gonna want a head.
I lived for 20 years in an HOV neighborhood in northern Virginia without problems. The first year, a board member (who happened to be an architect) decided that window flower boxes were prohibited. Now I didn't want a flower box but resented his arbitrary decision. So in the next election, I ran for the board and was elected to a three year term. The year after that, I became president. My third year was as parliamentarian. My next 17 years were spent as an ordinary homeowner enjoying the perk of a well run HOA, i.e. common grounds professionally maintained, including plants and snow removal at a reasonable yearly fee. And I was blessed with good neighbors. Based on most of the comments herein, I got lucky.
I'm one of those people who read every word of a contract before signing, and when we were buying our house, they actually had CC&Rs available and I read them. Unfortunately, naive me, never having owned in an HOA before, thought "Well, I don't know what this means in practice, but if they literally expected you to live by this stuff, they wouldn't have sold even one house and here they've sold out 80% of the development, so it must not mean that." 😳
I wouldn't sue for money, I'd sue for permanent dissolution of the HOA.
Difficult to do. If you managed it, then who would cover streetlights, road repair, maintenance of the common areas, etc? The cities won’t.
@@Ryarios -- Well, we don't have that problem. But we live in a semi-rural county where folks make specific agreements for these things. You might have 2 to 5 owners share responsibility for a well and water distributions system or for maintaining a common road or even for getting the snow off the road. Each agreement is functional but doesn't give your neighbors the collective right to tell you where you can park your truck or what color you can paint your home.
Streetlights are often managed with an agreement with the local power company. Many folks have figured out that streetlights are a waste of money. Cars have headlights and folks can carry flashlights.
@@Ryarios This is exactly correct. An HOA is responsible for maintaining any "common areas". Common areas are technically owned collectively by the members, so each member is responsible for a percentage of the area. Without the HOA, imagine in a small HOA getting a few dozen people simply to agree with a lawn mowing schedule for the grounds around the koi pond, let alone collecting money to pay for it. Scale that scenario up to include pools, gyms, parks....
@@GilmerJohn I’m not saying there are not better ways of doing things. But in a subdivision situation, I can see people refusing to step up. And just dissolving the HOA seems like it would create other problem that may end up just as bad without something ready to be put in place at the time you dissolve it.
@@Ryarios Depends on the state/municipality. Here in PA, for example, you can't have private streets in a neighborhood, so HOA or not, the streets are always the responsibility of the muni.
I had my Harley parked near my window when I lived in a condo. A nice looking girl drove by, stopped and rolled down her window. I got all excited at the thought that wow she wants a ride! Then she started saying, "I'm on the board and you can't park your motorcycle on the lawn." That wrecked the day, needless to say.
I was a condo/townhouse mgr and had absolutely no problems. I now live in an HOA the board is doing so many things wrong. they are deaf to homeowners & maintenance repairs. Tell people to pay themselves for extra landscaping replacement
Collect fees yet tell people to do their own exterior work. They don’t want to pay for exterior landscape maintenance upkeep. They increase fees, had a special asst while there was over 800k in reserves. Any extra money they pool the money into reserves and tell people they have no money. Yet, if someone is using an electric saw, patrol starts to drive around to inspect. Then board members exceed their term limits.
Can’t get copies of financials or minutes.
There are other matters too many to mention.
We lived in a HOA and didn't get the info on it until a year later. Some of the things listed in it were what type of pets you could have, where could park cars and how many you could have (no parking on your grass), how long your grass could be, all bushes had to be trimmed and sidewalks edged, had to put up a wood fence that matched every other fence in the HOA they picked the color could be stained etc. Even when could decorate for holidays ......... pain in the you know what. We moved. Best thing is never join one as they have certain people that you can let cut your grass etc. if you don't do it yourself.
My favorite subjects on your channel are when people stand up for their rights against HOAs, civil asset forfeiture, and corrupt local government abuses and actually win. I'm also glad to see the right to repair movement gaining momentum.
For most; it is easier to just pay the fee.
reminds me of the quote:
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.
There are big changes on right to repair in europe and normaly the rest of the world follows those rules because of trade agreements.
Right to repair can no longer be stoped.
@@shayan7579 Can someone elaborate on this right to repair thing ? What's this exactely ?
@@12345fowler there is a new law forcing everyone to adopt the usb c for all devices beeing sold in Europe thats mostly targeted to apple but other companys too.
The european union also Set a goal for full repairability by 2050 and Set steps Into that direction.
Its a huge Part of the green Deal.
So even when anti repair is enforced around the world repair shops can source original parts factory new in Europe.
In Amerika parts are banned before entering the countrys which does not happen in europe because resale of original parts is and will allways be legal.
I remember reading an article years ago about a tussle that a HOA got in with a retired lawyer. He saw the power grab being foisted upon the residents of the HOA and decided to fight back. I believe that he filed so many lawsuits the HOA that it finally bankrupted it. I hate to see something go to this extent, but the board should have been removed years ago. I think that we all have seen those folks whose main aim in life is to control others. Give them a little power and ………
@Marvin Evans My favorite came I think from Reader's Digest. It involved an older veteran who was installing a flagpole to fly a U. S. flag. He was forced to remove the flag pole, so, having read the HOA's regulations, hired a company to paint his house as a giant American flag that went around all four sides of the house. There were NO regulations stating what color the house had to be. HOA lost that one.
HOAs = crazed power Nazis
I had a woman just two days ago go onto my property, while we we not at home, and take pictures with her phone. I am livid and I am actively looking to move ASAP.
An HOA is a magnet for tinpot dictator wannabes.
Fred
I had a property management company when I retired, and I dealt with HOA's all the time. They would do yearly inspections and depending on who they made the inspector they would flag the dumbest, most petty crap. They never answered the phone and were the most difficult people to deal with. Some would sue you if you painted your front door the wrong color.
Thanks for breaking all of that down.
Good information.
I have never understood why in the supposed land of the free, so many are willing to live under the thumb of petty tyrants.
Many don't know what they are getting into.
Well petty tyrants need to find victims to sustain their thirst for injustice and subjugation. They don't actually care if the height of your mailbox is a few inches off, they just want to make you their be otch cause then the endorphins make their brains happy, in other words phony tough.
I mean many Americans talking about taking guns if the goverment takes their freedom, but if is a private entity they just bend over.
We actually really angered a group of real estate attorneys at a title company when we insisted on reading and understanding every page of the closing paperwork when we bought our house. I even managed to stump the whole group of them when we got to a word (don't remember what it was, but it dealt with mineral rights on the property). Not only did neither my wife nor I know the definition, but none of the 3 real estate lawyers present did, either. They had to send one of the lawyers out for a law dictionary to look it up. The closing ended out taking twice as long as allotted, but we knew and understood everything when they handed us the keys.
When you anger attorneys, car salesmen or telemarketers you are doing Gods work.
I thought almost all jurisdictions these days separated out the mineral rights to a property and those only could be obtained as the result of a mineral claim on a property. Otherwise, below a certain point, you didn't have control, so they could do things like dig tunnels underneath you if they decided it was expedient.
@@cesaravegah3787 Easy on the car salesmen. I’ve done a lot of computer work in dealerships. The salesmen totally reflect management. If your salesman is being a jerk, they are likely new, or they are doing exactly what management wants. Your beef is with the managers, and there are some real hard cases in their ranks. Last car salesman I dealt with was a young man just out of the army. His only training in sales was from that dealership. I told him that noticed how the salesmen were acting, and then stated describing his bosses. He was amazed.
It was easy.
@@nunyabidness3075 Nope, my beef IS with the car salespeople, on my experience, my familys and friends, each and everyone of the..."persons" selling us cars ended being a sleazy, unethical lying douche canoe, un fact I had won a lawsuit against one of those son of a gun and still hasnt paid, so, maybe, maybe there is a car salesperson decent out there who deserves respect, so, with their possible exception, screw them.
@@cesaravegah3787 You miss the meaning, César. The sales people do behave poorly. They are not innocent. The reality though is that they are being trained and managed in a way to provoke that behavior. Everyone likes teachers and nurses, but if the hospitals and schools train young professionals to behave poorly you will get the same results! I suspect you didn’t sue a salesman without suing the company as well, so you should get it. If he behaved so poorly he should have been fired, but many dealerships instead fire the helpful clerks and hire ones that will behave ridiculously.
Thumbs up to the Keweenaw shirt, I grew up in Houghton County. A drive threw the Keweenaw in the fall always reminds me of why they call it Gods country. Thanks for all the vids, I am always fascinated by legal matters and probably should have went to school to be a lawyer.
The HOA on 5125 Fontaine St, 92120 in San Diego HATES Girl Scouts and OUR U.S. TROOPS. Yes, that's correct. They wouldn't allow Girl Scouts whether they were family or from the neighborhood to sell Girl Scout Cookies on the gated property. I had a big bay window that anyone could see from the street. Every year I would write "Happy Holidays" with window paint that removes easily with soap and water. When I changed it to "God Bless Our Troops", all hell broke loose. Political Statements are not allowed. They also didn't like the Halloween graveyard with tombstones of each of the board members' names on them. When the water main pipe burst and they failed to fix it or bring a truck with a water tank, many residents complained to the city, and the HOA was fined for every day we didn't have water. We also called in unhealthy water conditions in the jacuzzi and more fines. When I was sent a letter forbidding me from washing my car PER SOME MADE-UP RULE/LAW FROM THE FIRE DEPARTMENT, I contacted the fire department. They got mad and fined HOA for slander. The best one was all the different angles of pictures I took of the HOA's president's BOYFRIEND parking his truck in the FIRE LANE. He even saw me and had a good laugh.
Walked away from a house deal when I learned that I had to get HOA approval for the type of roofing materials used. Nope. I enjoy living in a multicultural neighborhood. The vegetable gardens and chickens give it a wonderfully healthy feel.
I once drove through a 55+ trailer court and it was beautiful. Every place had it's own colors and personality. I really wished I could live there. It was amazing. When I got old enough to buy a trailer there, they were doing new sewer lines, roads, the whole thing, and then they got the new rules and all the colors of the paint had to be approved and you could no longer build on any sort of small addition.
It was then that the whole place looked so different there was no reason to want to live there anymore, except for financial reasons. The lot rents were less than apartment living. Sad thing though, what happened to the community.
Even the mailboxes had to all be a basic black. People used to paint them and decorate them, showing their personalities and unique artwork. What a wonderful place it used to be.
An HOA may start out being reasonable with rules, but as time goes on the rules almost always become more restrictive.
@@analogidc1394 Give ‘em an inch and they’ll take a mile.
@@analogidc1394 thats what government does
it takes the power you gave to it and uses it to take more power
@@analogidc1394 Yep. Human nature. Live and let live people don't want to run the HOA. People attracted to running it are those that love to tell their neighbors what to do, not "just don't scare the horses" types. Entitled Karens get power, and get busy straightening everybody out, making damn sure they toe the line or pay a heavy price.
That's what happens when a psychopath is in charge.
The insane part for me is that this kind of stuff is legal in “the freest country on earth “
All I know about hoas is that they are Karen factories
Communist organizations
My mom lives in a nicer trailer park and I lived with her when I was an Over The Road truck driver. Well, I had a 3x5 US Flag properly displayed in a window for years. Then, all of a sudden, we had to remove it. They claimed it was an "improper window treatment" and MUST be removed. Living across the street from the office, I figured out how to display a Flag they couldn't say shit about. To shorten the story up, I welded a pipe to a Gooseneck Ball Hitch and hung a 4x6 flag off of it. The real kicker is, the driveway was RIGHT across from the office and they HAD to look at it every day.
HOAs are a great example of the problems with USA in general.
HOAs demonstrate both the problems with collective organization and the problems with selfish people.
Lower-cost neighborhoods almost always need HOAs because without them, neighborhoods end up going into decline because enough residents don't take care of their properties, because cities are ineffective at enforcing CC&Rs or even municipal codes in many cases.
Trouble is when HOAs take it too far, when they raise dues too high, when they enforce on things that don't need to be enforced. And it's very easy for an HOA set up with the best of intentions to prevent neighborhoods from becoming junked-up to take things too far.
When we moved, I searched for houses online that met our minimum requirements. Got maybe 75 results. When I ticked off "no hoa", got only 1 result.
I HATE HOA"s. I think it's absurd to be willing to agree to a force that can take your house away just because you want to feel you control your neighbors' houses.
join your neighborhood's HOA board or Karen will
@@jansonshrock2859 Except that she will join anyway, and so will every other Karen in the neighborhood. HOAs turn people into Karens.
When your neighbor doesn't cut their grass and you can't use your patio because of all the Mosquitoes and Ticks, an HOA starts looking very nice.
@@drink15 that's what city ordinances are for. No need to create a new entity with the authority to ruin your life.
Another very enjoyable Lehto's Law tutorial! Thanks for the laughs, Steve. /:-)
When I was looking to buy a house, I came across ones that had an HOA. No matter how cheap or nice the affordable house was, I skipped it and eventually found a home without an HOA. I would rather live happily with an overgrown lawn than have an HOA put rules on me.
not me I like it nice and neat!
I always laugh at people who move next to a airport and complain about the noise!!
Or close to a railroad crossing & complain abt the train horns. Well, DUH!
Or next to the sewage treatment plant or a pig farm!
Or a gun range then they try and get it shut down. Wish we could burn their houses down and insurance deny payout, it would be justice.
@@apersonontheinternet8006 They'd go nuts here since most of us target shoot in our backyards.
There’s race tracks that have been around long before houses were built nearby shut down due to this 😠
You know how I handle HOA’s
Don’t move into one…..worked out well for me so far
But that's the problem: More and more land is being gobbled up by corporations and hedge funds who create HOAs, which means that land/homes that _aren't_ in those associations is becoming rarer, thus more expensive and potentially forcing people who want their first homes into HOA controlled places.
It could be mitigated if the HOAs were able to be held to account but, as Steve said, many states have no rules in regards to them and they act like mini-fiefdoms with no legal recourse. Florida has some because of how prolific they are but still...
Wow you have all the answers.
@@danielseelye6005 -- Some states (Virginia is one) have laws on the books that make it easier to launch a development with an HOA than without. It's a form of Fascism: an HOA can impose the kind of controls that a government can't. Fascists love this kind of stuff.
@@davidk8184 I do and thanks for noting
All the answers are on a sign in my front yard…cause I can put it there
Easier said than done. In FL, nearly half of homes fall under an HOA. The ones that don't are often in lower end communities or in the sticks. It's a bit of a challenge to avoid HOAs in FL if you want a good neighborhood.
I had a chance to buy into a condo assn in the 90's, but I noticed that the items that the association were responsible for were severely neglected. The exterior boards were rotting and the roof was in need of repair and these things were like this for years. They still charged the residents a kings ransom for the fees, but obviously were NOT doing any of the maintenance. It took a threat from the subdivision for these units to get the maintenance they needed, but not until recently and it's 2024, so that's how long these units were being neglected.
We looked at a subdivision in our town that had so many CC&Rs that it made a book. We opted for a subdivision that had no HOA. There's just a voluntary fundraiser every spring to help pay for maintaining the entrances. Seems to work well enough.
When I was living in a small Florida community with a HOA, I convinced my neighbors to let me modify the HOA to get rid of picky rules such as the type of mailbox, the colors of the houses, how many cars you could have. Since at the time I was a County Judge, I had no trouble doing so and having the amended HOA recorded to each neighbor’s title.
This is the right answer. I know so many HOAs where almost nobody even returns the vote for who they want in charge, let alone actually runs for an HOA position, yet they're happy to bitch about how the money gets spent.
@@darrennew8211 👌🏻😎
so now those homeowners still pay HOA dues but live in an ugly neighborhood?
@@geraldbennett7035 that ugly neighborhood is a bunch of ugly houses built in the 1980s on the waterfront of the Loxahatchee River in Jupiter Florida. My ugly house had an ugly two boat dock that I had built. I had an ugly half a million dollar house with a screened in lake-sized pool and about an acre of beautiful grass and palm trees surrounded by a stone fence on one side and wood on the other sides. My ugly house was the crappiest in the ugly neighborhood. My ugly neighbors were thrilled to be free of the stupid HOA rules. It wasn’t imposed on them, we all voted for it. I only wish I had kept the house, now worth three times what it was sold for by me in around 1999. C’est la vie mon ami.😎
@@moodiblues2 Hey I see what you did there mon ami. It was a memorable comeback !
We have a townhouse in Pompano Beach FL for the past 18 years That we rent out 9 months of the year. Pretty restrictive HOA but we have never had any major issues with them and they keep our tenants in line. As a building contractor, oh boy! what a headache. Worst was a rebuild of a fire damaged home in a gated community. To approve the new home which other than adding a room over the garage was pretty much identical to the original. No big problem with design . they included numerous stipulations. such as work only between 8am and 5 pm Monday through Friday , deliveries only between 9:30 and 3:30. no parking on the street of heavy equipment and street parking of vehicles only between property boundaries. Pain in the ass but not a major inconvenience for me.
The fun started when we got underway with framing there was two board members, that were there nearly everyday looking for something to complain about. It was coastal Georgia and hot as hell that summer, so to mess with them one day I set out 2 chairs and a umbrella with an electric fan for them to sit and bitch about us in comfort. They didn’t know what to do. My customer was in on it and some days would mix drinks in the job trailer and bring it out to them. We were so accommodating to them they just gave up and largely left us alone for the rest of the job.
Great way to handle such persnickety people!! 👍👍👏👏‼️
Here in the Ocala Florida area we have a sprawling area called The Villages. If you want a deep dive into controlled areas with layered HOA controls here's your Rabbit Hole. Each village has its own HOA and The Villages has a covering called The Villages HOA. Add to all of that the individual villages are three in different counties.
All of this has left a lasting impact on social interactions and societal interactions. As an example I live in the Ocala National Forest, bears don't have an HOA. People who live in The Villages are called Villagers. Those of us that live in the Forest are mostly Floridians. We avoid Villagers like the PLAGUE! The seem to think that all of Florida must conform to them.
Aunt B
My husband got on the board. Our lives have been a neverending living hell ever since. He didn't run this last time but the current board hates us. We just got a violation for having curtains and not drapes.
I have rarely seen anything as ludicrous as choosing to live under the thumb of an HOA.
I wouldn't willingly choose to live under the rule of the government either. Both are rife with thievery and corruption and should be abolished. Every single corrupt act I've heard of an HOA committing is something that the government does against its citizens on a regular basis.
I once bought a condominium many years ago and had no idea about these condominium contracts. A few days after moving in, some representatives came by and gave me a contract to sign. They wanted it to be signed right away but I told them I had to carefully read it first so they reluctantly left. Most of it was fine and I agreed with what it said, but there were a few things I didn't like that had to do with issues with your own back yard (which by the way had a 6 foot fence around it so seeing inside would not be easy). Anyway, I did not agree and never signed it. They complained but I just gave them the number to my lawyer. The more they complained, the more I went out of my way to break their rules. After about 3 years, they gave up and left me alone. It went to court only once but since I never signed the contract, I was not held liable to uphold it. 🙂
you didnt read the covenants prior to closing!
@@geraldbennett7035 Nope. That was given to me after the fact.
you are VERY lucky, there is generally no requirement to sign the covenants, they're a burden on the deed (they're a deed restriction that says the owner shall abide by current covenants). So when you buy the property you are agreeing to them (at least in georgia). Caveat emptor, and I'm very happy for you that it worked out like that.
@@scotttaylor9133 Perhaps I should have mentioned too that I'm in Canada. I'm sure such laws are different between the States and Canada. But I'm not an expert.
That's because they knew they broke the law before you bought the property they must INFORM YOU OF A HOA and provide you with the bylaws , and you would have the right to back out of the sale without losing escrow , when you buy in a HOA you ARE NOT BUYING REAL PROPERTY your buying 1 share of stock in an HOA that pays no dividends and you are required to pay maintenance fees in hopes the stock you own is only worth what you can sell the HOA asset for , real estate now days is for suckers unless you own 10 plus homes
I live in a 55 and over community. On my last “inspection” I was told I needed to repair or replace my curtain in my storage shed.😂
Steve, I used to work for a developer and someone once told me that the reason Florida, Arizona and other states with large post WW!! developments were so HOA heavy was because cities and towns didn't want the burden of dealing with the added infrastructure, code enforcement and so forth. So the town's were actually the instigator's in developer's starting them in order to get their plans approved. It didn't take much arm twisting, the developers wanted a consistent, uniform look as a selling point and they wanted to include communal amenities like pools and community centers, so they started doing HOA's on most of these projects. If you or any viewers know I'd love to know whether this is true or false.
I used to live in Stafford County Virginia. All subdivisions built after 1988 were required to have an HOA in order to maintain the water runoff areas. Usually with that came HOA rules. I moved into a new subdivision in 1990. We were the fourth house. As soon as the developer turned the HOA over to the owners, I became President for four years. Each year we lowered our assessment the maximum amount until we got to $0. Then we quit meeting.
iv'e heard many people say it a lot
I am an attorney practicing in real estate litigation. I have had enough cases involving unreasonable HOAs that I never want to buy a home in a neighborhood where HOA membership is mandatory.
The problem is that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find nice property that is not subject to an HOA. The covenants run with the land, and nearly every new development is an HOA neighborhood.
New developments are required by the city to have an HOA, because then the city can require the developer to install pools, parks, landscaping, etc, which then the HOA (rather than the city) has to pay to maintain. As a Libertarian, I insist on keeping authority and responsibility together. You mandate it, you maintain it.
Cities also like it because they don't have to do much code enforcement.
HOAs are a successful attempt to convert affluent neighborhoods into gulags.
this is precisely why we bought an older home that needed a bit of work in a good, well established neighborhood. We told our relators "it can be a perfect home for us but if it's in an HOA it's an automatic hard no." we looked for the better part of a year but finally found what we wanted.
@@perdedor3571 I have a real estate license in my state, and I would never ever live anywhere where there's an HOA lol. I also live in a very old home. The next time I move will be the same.
I have seven roommates and we don't have enough parking so we need to park on the street but we are not allowed. I am not the only one who parks in the street or doesn't have enough spaces in the driveway. There are many. Do you think they will fine me and foreclose on my house? I have hearing coming up soon.
I recently moved from Ohio to Florida. I never had a legit powerful HOA in Ohio. NOT the case in Florida. Down here EVERY development (90%) has an HOA. Especially ones with homes over 150k or a golf course. The HOAs are very powerful and very punitive over EVERYTHING! The worst thing is they keep changing management companies so every other month they go around the neighborhood writing down EVERY little violation of a rule written 20 years ago that was never enforced. You get notices to fix in 1 week or they will fix and charge you 10Xs the amount to fix. I live in the back of the neighborhood on a dead end street. I get a company truck. I parked it in my driveway for over 1 year then all the sudden a new management co takes over and I get a notice saying I can’t park a vehicle in my drive with ANY logos. They want to charge me $1500 a night! We just bought a new house. The first thing I looked for was NO HOA! When you look at houses for sale in Florida it is a big selling point in the listing that there is NO HOA! I have story after story.
My daughter and son-in-law lived in an HOA controlled development. One of the most difficult items they had to deal with was that the HOA required a TREE in the front yard. Well, near Colorado Springs, you are lucky to get any tree to survive. They would plant one and shortly it would die. The final solution was a FAKE tree!!!
We had a weird situation at my complex. One owner rented out his unit and did not want to spend any extra funds to maintain it, meaning he wanted to keep the monthly HOA fees artificially low, so he joined the HOA board to block any repairs or maintenance that were needed. During my complex's 30 years of existence, it had only been repainted once. I never really noticed because I lived overseas during most of that time. Then I got a new neighbor, who was told the repairs needed during her purchase (repairs to a fake chimney on the roof) were the responsibility of the HOA. She petitioned the HOA board for months to have the repairs completed, but the repairs kept getting delayed because the bids were "not in good order." One guess who on the HOA board was responsible for reviewing the bids. Soon after, wood boards all over the complex could be seen rotting off their frames and none of us residences could ignore how bad things had gotten. By that time, no painting company would touch our complex with all the damage. In the end, the one board member who kept delaying repair requests was voted out and each owner had to fork over $27K in a special assessment to have the complex's siding redone. We now have proper annual increases to our monthly HOA fees and the complex is much better kept, but most of the prior unit owners have left in order to recoup their special assessment costs.