Avoid buying in HOA neighborhoods (2014)
outofyourrut.com
outofyourrut.com
My current house is in an HOA that's around ~$20 / month (which pays to keep some of the common spaces of the development maintained), has never gone up in ~4 years, and we've never been notified about anything needing to look better even when our lawn was in pretty rough shape the summer we moved in. We did some research and were pretty confident going into it that we weren't going to be dealing with an overbearing HOA, and I also like that the development and community areas (including a tennis court and basketball court) stay well maintained. In our case, it feels like we're getting a good deal for the cost.
This is one of the reasons I always prefer no HOA's and when possible in Unincorporated land as I want none of those things to be provided by the city.
years ago when i was looking for an apartment I remember the leasing agents showing how they had a pool, or community center, or gym, etc etc etc. My response was always "will you discount the rent if I agree to never use any of these things I have no interest in" Of course the answer was always no, so I found an apartment that has no pool, no gym, no anything just the apartment, there was not even a Rental Office on the property. It was quite, and about 20-30% cheaper than the "full featured" units with all the amenities I would never use nor have the time to use.
this article talks more about 500$/month HOAs with free spirits that optimize everything
I realize you were speaking in hyperbole. The math of, let’s say 50 homes paying $20 a month each: 50 * 20 * 12. Twelve thousand dollars a year is quite a bit of money for an HOA to manage.
Eg. "The HOA shall not have income (including fines and charges) totalling greater than 0.01% of the value of the houses under its control."
"The HOA president shall sit a maximum term of 1 year, after which they shall be barred from all roles within the HOA for 3 years"
Our neighborhood has dues around $35 (they've actually dropped in the last 5 years due to sufficient reserves and lower than anticipated maintenance costs). Our HOA President has lived in the neighborhood since it was built and been the President for many years, and they do a fine job - they've been around enough to know who to talk to in city government if there's a problem, who in the neighborhood can be counted on for a quick favor (need to dig a posthole to install a new sign, etc.), contacts in nearby neighborhoods for coordination, etc. They do plenty of work, things run well, and there haven't been any issues.
The HOA in general avoids the overbearing nature described here. It mediates disputes between neighbors, approves property changes (emphasis on "approves" - I've been on the board, and while they'll often give feedback such as "please add another plant here", they almost never end up rejecting a request), and doesn't make too many demands. It recently requested the homes get repainted, but the last time it was required was 15 years ago, so that doesn't seem out of line to me. Frankly, I have no complaints.
To do this would be foolish. It take years to fully understand what can happen in any HOA. A one year term limit would create problems that allow other parties to manipulate the HOA. This would also encourage the use of a "management association(MA)", an outside contractor who signs a contract with the HOA giving all HOA control to the MA.
Having an MA does allow "things to get done" but also increases costs radically and usually removes control from the HOA officers. So your choice is:
a ) Have an HOA - you must deal with crazy people (about 1/3 of your membership - seriously), or
b) Have an MA - you will have to pay more because you have given up HOA control.
The modern condominium agreement is a well-examined standard document that almost works. There is one problem with most condominium agreements: they allow owners to rent their units. Once this begins to happen, then entrepreneurs move in and work to take over the condominium, drive the condominium value down, buy everyone out at a low price and resell at a high price. This may also involve tearing down and rebuilding/repurposing land.
Altering the condominium agreement to disallow owners from renting units would correct this weakness. But most people find this an offense against ownership. Nonetheless condominium unit rental is a weakness that should be eliminated from most condominium agreements.
For example, in our HOA, everyone on the board wants to make the common area non-smoking, but they haven't been able to get people to vote on it at this time, therefor there's f* all the board can do about it, even if everyone agreed to it. It has to be voted on, on paper, signed and submitted to the land court.
HOAs vary quite a bit. The older I get, the more I want to live in a strict HOA community though. I want the stability and improved neighbor relations(the HOA is the bad guy, not me, when the neighbor stops maintaining their property).
I understand why people don't like HOAs. Yes they were born out of racism. I don't think that invalidates the concept.
Pidgeons, I can't really abide. Crows are cool though.
So? Nothing to stop them adding it in.
Otherwise this feels seriously off - just being able to add new rules that people must adhere to whether they agree or not.
Have you heard of 'democracy'?
When your government writes a new law by majority do you have to adhere to it whether you agree or not?
It's the same mechanism. The only difference is you agree to be bound by the rules of the HOA - contract rather than common law. The HOA is a direct democracy. It can vote to change the rules - you can give your input as a vote, but you're bound by the majority. It's the same system.
> HOAs are not government.
They're a form of local government.
Then that sounds terrible.
Sure, democracy that works by majority (or majority party) or whatever makes sense for actual government. But my street is not a government, and devolving the sort of power to change rules and impose fines, liens or whatever on my house to the rest of the folks in the street, without even requiring unanimous agreement on the rules by all the property owners, is just nuts.
I would never put myself at the mercy of whoever I happen to live on a street with like that. I'm glad these things are rare to non-existent in the UK.
A lot of people who strongly believe in democracy (real democracy) don't believe that 51% of the people should be allowed to impose their views on the other 49%. That can lead to big problems. They would say to keep talking, negotiating, and compromising, and that it you can't reach consensus then the proposal should not be passed.
Obviously, on the other hand if 50% + 1 can do whatever just happens to be on their mind, that seems like a very-very bad (or good, if you are the more evil-er sibling to Satan) recipe for disaster.
...
And here were are. Extreme polarization, fight for survival, everything is up for grabs (voting rights, citizenship/deportation, budget, supreme court seats, filibuster).
Justice is hard. (Rawls' Theory of Justice proposes that what's fair is just, and it defines that as a reflective equilibrium ... which seems a pretty elegant solution - especially if you have spent too much time in abstract math classes.)
Nothing an HOA does is an emergency. Even if 2/3 of the people want to change the rules for parking, for example, they shouldn't get to screw over the people who bought the place without that rule and are vehemently opposed to such a change.
Scaled up to country size, like you mentioned, trying to get 330 million people to agree how the federal government allocates 25% of our national GDP turns out to be a big mess, especially when the slim majorities in congress change back and forth every handful of years. Maybe that's why the tenth amendment was put in place.
For what's it's worth, these are POAs until the developer has sold off most of the land. After that point, you can establish an HOA.
Sure that was obvious but in case anyone points it out. Sleepy brain.
Tried to pass racist new bylaws, but never quite made the hurdle
You'd love mine. Fabricated violations. Select residents targeted by obsessed board members. No political signage from one party.
Sidebar: Our HOA restrictions insure that every waterway that feeds from this neighborhood is hopelessly polluted. Lots of HOAs work to achieve that tho.
Um, ya, if they are dumb enough to write that in the bylaws feel free take them both to state and federal court for civil rights violations.
I don't think there is any law that keeps you from creating a private agreement that only signage from one party is allowed.
I ask because I'm not sure. There are obviously some limitations to what a private contract can require, but i don't think this is one of those things.
https://www.freedomforuminstitute.org/first-amendment-center...
It appears that a HOA is not the government, and you can give up your first amendment rights. Moreover, political opinions aren't protected -- this isn't discrimination, and isn't a civil rights violation to my understanding.
Can you cite a law or precedent supporting your claim that this is a voting rights violation? Genuinely curious
Rulings that establish HOAs as not standing for "government" is really interesting to me. Contrast to Marsh v. Alabama, where company towns were ruled to be standing in for government, so they couldn't forbid proselytizing. Very curious.
> I don't think there is any law that keeps you from creating a private agreement that only signage from one party is allowed.
Okay the ongoing presumption here that enforcement is limited to bylaws is weird.
They simply wrote up homes w/ signs from one party and ignored those from the other party.
The older I get, the more careful I want to pick my fights. I'd rather spend some time and find a good HOA (or no HOA) than having to deal with petty people
An HOA is not a static thing. You must be part of it and actively prevent it from becoming a thing worthy of hating.
They should have to show they're up to snuff for your membership
> Um, ya, if they are dumb enough to write that in the bylaws
Written into the bylaws? I never considered that. Likely for a good reason.
Anyhoo, I'd say that fits better under 'selective enforcement'.
How? What restrictions are you referring to?
Other countries have similar concepts to HOAs, often without any particular history of racism behind it.
For example, here in Australia we have "strata corporations", "owners corporations", "strata title", "strata schemes" (different states call it by slightly different names, but they're all the same basic concept). Individually owned lots attached to common property, with a corporate body whose voting members are the lot owners, which controls the common property, and also has the power to charge fees to the lot owners and impose rules on the lot owners (and their tenants). They are most commonly found in apartment buildings, but are also used for housing estates of townhouses / semidetached houses, and even (albeit more rarely) detached houses. When applied to housing estates, they are rather comparable to HOAs in the US. But, as far as I am aware, there is no particular history of racism behind strata schemes in Australia.
If so, it's likely a racist institution
So, on the one hand they get in everybody's business, on the other hand, they prevent things going sideways when you have "characters" in the neighborhood.
So I agree, it depends on the HOA.
You either own something, or you don't. If you actually do own something, you shouldn't owe anything to anyone. No dues, no rules, no crap. It's your goddamn property, it's your rules. You decide what fence you put, what flowers you put, and what color car you have, and where you park your car on your property. Those idiots who think they have power over your property can get lost.
My 2 cents.
On top of that, sometimes there's shared infrastructure. Access roads, water, waste, community space etc. You do own a small part of it.
The solution to this is to define land ownership as a 3D space and not a 2D space. It should be a 3D trapezoidal sort of shape, and as long as you keep everything within that it should be allowed.
> Access roads, water, waste
These are utilities. You pay for access to them
> , community space etc
This should be optional and you pay IF you want access
But hell no they should not be governing aesthetics of something you own. If you can get the right architectural permits and whatnot you should even be allowed to rebuild your house in a different style. That's what ownership means.
> The solution to this is to define land ownership as a 3D space and not a 2D space. It should be a 3D trapezoidal sort of shape, and as long as you keep everything within that it should be allowed.
We already have somewhat similar solution. Some stuff is allowed no closer than 3m to fence or needs written neighbour permission. But it does not solve a lot of edge cases. Some fence types need written permission based on how much sun passes through.
> These are utilities. You pay for access to them
It's common that developer builds local private infrastructure for the project. City and/or utility companies manage up to private lot and don't want to take over the last mile.
> This should be optional and you pay IF you want access
And many smartasses would skip paying but jump the fence. Those community spaces do help their property value too.
At the very least paying for access would have to include all costs to install it, not just run.
> If you can get the right architectural permits and whatnot you should even be allowed to rebuild your house in a different style. That's what ownership means.
Wait till you hear restrictions in historical neighbourhoods...
The problem with HOAs is that often, your next-door neighbor (the only one actually affected) doesn't care, but Karen 15 doors down does, so you have to remove the tree for no good reason.
Preserving historic neighborhoods are fine. There's a historic value to them, and it's not some arbitrary group of old people with nothing better to do walking around getting pissed off at peoples' decorations.
What about signed a lease on an apartment? That's pretty common. The landlord owns it, but you have rights on it and they can't do whatever they want with their own property anymore.
Why does it surprise you that someone can own something but sign some of their ownership rights away? People literally do this all the time for a million reasons.
Is there a state where you can buy a house without signing anything? How do you transfer deeds over there?
Many Americans idea of freedom is completely out of touch with the reality on how land contract law works.
Of course they can, they just need to wait till the lease is over.
With HOAs on the other hand they're forever restricted by some old farts who have nothing better to do than nose their way into other peoples' private lives.
My property is on a land lease. The term of the lease will literally outlive the owner. Again, consenting adults are allowed to sign papers to come into an agreement that binds both sides. This is nothing weird or nothing new.
The only thing that is a bit unique about HOAs is that there's rarely an easy way out in the agreement, which kind of makes sense since you can't just move the land away. Once large scale teleportation is a thing we'll be able to solve that issue.
In other words, the owner of that farm had the right to split it up into little chunks that have restrictions and sell them. When you buy into the neighborhood, you are buying the property burdened by the covenants the previous owner attached. So your full rights would interfere with the previous owner’s effort to do what THEY wanted with the property.
Because the law gives them that right, and you are not going to find any kind of majority that is going to change that.
If only the world were that simple. Mineral rights is one of many examples of how complicated and nuanced things can get.
If you really want to break the laws of nature down, you either have the capacity to take and defend something, or you don’t.
The problem is that they can get involved at any time whether you like it or not and if you don't want to lose your home, you will have to comply.
It's basically enough to do some upkeep on the neighborhood entrance area, along with some cash for incidental expenses for neighborhood events.
I've lived on both extremes of HOAs, from this current one to one where I got fined for opening the hood of my car in my driveway to replace a headlight (working on your car in view of others was specifically called out as not allowed).
I can see why people would want the more extreme HOAs, but it's generally not for me.
They do a decent job with the common grounds and the trash contract, so there's that.
I don't think it was a blanket statement; he differentiated between voluntary and mandatory HOA. The mandatory ones can, at any time, turn into a nightmare.
I'm part of a voluntary one. They don't have actual rules for the homeowners, but they do use the money to keep the area clean, run cameras on our suburb's entrances, etc.
They've been nothing but helpful and don't get involved if two neighbours have a disagreement (My two nieghbours both launched different lawsuits against each other, and HOA persons they each contacted declined to get involved).
OTOH, in a mandatory HOA (I've lived in one of those too) the neighbour with the best friendship of the board will basically get their way. The board members themselves get their way all the time.
This ability to in effect seize your ownership rights away from you post sale is the core of the problem with HOA's.
If rule changes by the HOA's required unanimous consent of all owners then maybe but they dont, they only require a simply majority of the board members...
There are rules here that are related to maintenance, but since there are so many common areas (and roofs and walls, there are a lot of town houses) one person's deferred maintenance can easily become costly for others.
I don't find the HOA oppressive our violating my rights at all. I was completely free to not buy a home in this development, and the HOA documents were shared with us early and often in the buying process. I feel more like our HOA is about buying into the community, and getting the benefits of pooled resources. If that's not your thing, keep looking.
Mandatory HOAs should be outlawed, plain and simple. Optional participation in return for access to common areas (e.g. a gym/pool membership) is fine, but hell no they're not telling me how to decorate something I own. Tell them to look up what "own" means in the Oxford English Dictionary if they have a problem with it.
Something even as small as a bunch of junk in a yard that fills with rain water can bring a plague of mosquitos upon an entire neighborhood in certain areas.
No, I don't care. If there is evidence that it is a brothel that is illegal where I live and I'd report it, but decorated like one? It's not my house, and not my right to decide.
But have you considered that most people aren't going to make their house look like a Brothel? More realistically I might want to make my house look like an awesome fairy tale house, would love to see the other creative houses around me, and most HOAs would not "allow" that.
I currently rent but there's a non-HOA neighborhood near me and it's a pleasure to walk those streets. One house looks like a traditional Japanese house, another has some Black Lives Matter signs on it, another has a mini forest in their front yard and it looks like something that came out of Harry Potter. I love it.
There's also an HOA neighborhood near me. Boring as fuck.
> Or your other neighbor using his front yard as an auto parts storage area?
No. I don't care. I'll just build wood furniture in my front yard and maybe we'd have some nice conversations and maybe I'd pay them to fix my car. Auto repair next door sounds kinda nice actually.
> Or another letting their grass grow so high that it starts attracting wild animals and snakes that keep spilling over into your backyard?
I don't care about their grass. Most wild animals aren't actually nuisances. Snakes would probably just stay in the tall grass and are unlikely to migrate to open areas, that's just how they behave. If there are nuisance pests then it's their responsibility to find a way to not impact my property, but it's not upto me how they exercise that responsibility. If they want their tall grass and a fence, fine, if they want to cut the grass short, fine, if they want to spray their property with some anti-pest stuff, fine, that's upto them.
> Something even as small as a bunch of junk in a yard that fills with rain water can bring a plague of mosquitos upon an entire neighborhood in certain areas.
Yes, if the mosquitoes are flying into other peoples' properties, that's not okay. But if they want to build a pond in their front yard AND take responsibility to make sure there aren't mosquitoes by spraying it appropriately or installing a fountain to keep the water moving or build a greenhouse over it or however other way they choose to avoid impacting others, that's their right to decorate their place however they want. An HOA would probably be stubborn and say "no ponds". I say let them have whatever they want as long as they aren't releasing mosquitoes into my property.*
Well, then you are going to need an HOA to enforce that unless you live in a municipality that already does.
Fuck that. The municipality on the other hand will only care about the mosquitoes and such public health issues and unless it's a historic neighborhood they couldn't care less about what color your house is. That's the way it should be.
And if the municipality doesn't care, go to a city council meeting with the 20 other people who are affected and make them care.
HOA neighborhoods is an extension of the phenomenon of paving everything. HOA neighborhoods look like someone paved over everyone's soul.
I think a big problem is that one single thing is paramount in housing: selling the house later for a profit. People get this idea that because their property value fluctuates that you owe them something. Everyone must sanitize every aspect of their lives lest some random stranger get a whiff of it. I can't wait til all this horse shit resolves itself and all these people who treat housing like the stock market are underwater and signing divorce papers.
Some people wish to live in a place with a bit higher standards than their municipality sets. Because municipalities have to set rules and standards that make sense in both the lower and middle class neighborhoods as well as the rich ones.
But this is addressed in the article: HOAs may not feel oppressive... until they do. And if that happens, then you'll essentially be powerless because in most jurisdictions, the law heavily favors HOAs.
This is the part I dont understand. Is an HOA really the best way to handle this? Isnt there some company that could be hired to handle these maintenance tasks?
It's like a mini government, for the neighborhood. Then they contract out work that needs to be done to care for the things they cover (like the common property/green areas, pools, etc.), review/revise rules as times change, resolve HOA-rule-related disputes, etc.
From what I’ve seen, Non-hoa areas tend to have more variety in landscaping and color and are more pleasant to look at while hoa areas are drab and have a monoculture office park landscaping that some how makes plants feel lifeless and can’t be environmentally friendly.
They do prevent trashed houses and a number of other ills, but they do it by forcing everyone to be equally mediocre. They are like the porridge of architecture and landscaping.
And a lot of them claim to be about maximizing home values which is definitely not true. They are about preventing a house from lowering the values of the neighborhood, but that usually means preventing nicely done houses raising the value of the neighborhood.
Try that with townhomes with shared walls and ceilings and you'll see negative side effects pretty quick.
If you made the rule you suggest, all it would change is that new HOAs would all be on long term land leases (and you'd have a lot of chaos in the current ones that didn't do this because with existing laws it was not necessary).
And if you did that, stuff like making a pool would no longer be possible.
And a voluntarily financed pool makes a certain amount of sense. Why should someone who doesn't want to be involved be forced to contribute against their will? That's not easy to justify.
Hell, “terraced” or “mews” housing is incredibly common in the UK and HOAs are effectively unheard of.
It isn’t popular on the internet, but many people prefer their hoa. So you would be solving a problem that many people don’t believe exist.
You make a choice to live in a neighborhood with an hoa. If you don’t like it, leave or don’t buy. Not sure why we should pull the rug out from under those who choose to live their because others would prefer not to.
And I say this as someone who does not live in a neighborhood with an hoa.
I wonder if the love/hate opinion on HOAs boils down to that, i.e. some like forcing others to their way of thinking, and others are very opposed to such things.
Some people want to live in Bohemia; some people want to live in vibrant cities; some people want to live in places where all the lawns are nicely manicured and Billy Bob down the street can't have his car up on blocks and Jennifer next door can't have a stream of cars showing up for her private pilates class.
The world is filled with many different kinds of people, with many different visions of the good life. Just because one particular vision doesn't match mine doesn't mean it should be banned or destroyed, or that they are terrible people.
You mean the people that actually vote, right?
You may think you belong to the majority view on this, but I believe you're incorrect.
That makes it sound like covenants that run with the land are something you could simply implement via contract law, binding the first purchaser to them via contract and requiring that they only sell to people who sign a contract agreeing to being bound and the propagating the covenant.
In fact, covenants that run with the land are stronger than that. The contract approach might work as long as the land was only conveyed through contractual arrangements between the conveyor and the conveyee. But there are other ways land can be conveyed.
My land could be seized by the state because I stopped paying taxes and then sold at auction, for instance. Or I might die intestate and with no close relatives, and the land ends up with some distant relative I've never met or had contact with. Or I go bankrupt and the bankruptcy trustee sells my land to pay my creditors. These and many other ways could result in my land ending up owned by someone else with no contract between me and them, and hence no way for me to impose the restrictions on them.
A covenant that runs with the land would still work after all of those. I've not looked into the history of it, but I'd guess that the need to have a way for arrangements to stick no matter how the land is conveyed is why covenants that run with the land were developed.
A few houses down the bank owns a house that was a foreclosure three years ago that no one lives in and is falling apart. I guess they were not able to get any money at auction for it so now are just sitting on it until they can write it off as a total loss and sell the property for land value.
Apparently no one can do anything about either problem.
I've seen municipalities that do a better job at these kind of things than HOAs. I've also seen HOAs that don't do a good job of enforcing their laws, seemingly falling apart. (I wonder if they can be sued in these cases?) For example, I've seen HOA neighborhoods with cars parked everywhere - driveways, street, blocking driveways, and on lawns, because the houses were unaffordable unless four or more working people lived there, and there was no way to get anywhere except via car.
That said, is there something specific you wanna chat about?
I'd rather $0 than your $250
> However, it’s been helpful in rare cases where our neighbor had obnoxious election signs up til after February 2020
Why do you care? It's their property, as long as they aren't putting election signs on your property or blasting noise that affects you, they have a right of free speech.
"You can vote them out" is not an argument. The article goes into several factors that make it very difficult to dislodge the types of power-hungry individuals who tend to dominate HOAs. Perhaps you should read it again.
My present HOA is a well-known nightmare. I lament the lack of options that led to me being here.
Lucky you. Mine is over $250 a month, and half the board seem to hate the residents. They have made life difficult for families with kids, to the point where several are looking at legal options.
Americans usually have this idea that a home is a valuing asset, because they mistake price inflation, fueled mostly by a constrained supply in some growing markets, with true asset valuation.
It is not like something magic happened in the bay area and trillions of dollars have magically been added as true value for the existing house, it was just price inflation most of the time.
When Detroit was an american economic power-house people probably thought that their properties would value indefinitelly.
But the thing is, even if a local supply constraint is sustainable over time, either because of real space limits (like in Manhattan where the only way to build new space is by first demolishing something) or because of zoning restrictions, nothing guarantees that the demand will stay strong forever. And even if local demand stay strong, we can expect it to decrease globally some moment in the future, as we enter a demographic transition where population starts to actually shrink instead of grow.
Take out the my-home-as-a-valuing-asset notion, and a lot of the drawbacks of this style of community (lack of privacy due to the absence of front yard fences/block walls, increasing fees, annoying restrictions) become more salient.
And of course, if you buy in such a market, you are all the more desperate (quite logically) to keep it that way.
One of the best lawns in my neighborhood is owned by an African American family. Impeccable.
The worst lawns are owned by white folks.
Doesn’t this comment assume that “only white people mow their grass?”
We’ve had issues with our HOA, and I wish they weren’t necessary, but some people won’t take care of their lawns unless they’re threatened with fines. Otherwise, they’ll let the jungle grow in their yards, and leave a couch by the sidewalk.
On the topic of race, homeownership, I’ve heard, is usually one main way in which a family can build wealth; if we’re concerned (as we should be) about racial inequality (financial inequality being a sub portion of it), any self-governance that encourages homes to be well-maintained, lawns to be kept, trees and bushes trimmed, and junk vehicles not parked in the yard is a benefit to any family’s net worth, since a main concern of an HOA is preservation of property values.
Real Estate is a supply/demand game. The nicer your home and neighborhood look, the higher the market value, which is of upmost concern if homeowner is trying to increase wealth.
I know that these same mechanisms were used to keep out minorities in the past. But I'd say now that they are more about forcing conformity to stereotypical average white middle class appearances than against minorities per say. Variety is not tolerated. It is ok to be a minority, as long as you don't ever act like one.
I personally think that's oppressive, even scary, and not good for the culture over the long term. But some people are into that.
You're right, and that's bad, too.
If what you're doing isn't affecting anyone else, you should be free to do it.
It would seem that most people's definition of "buying" works for HOA-controlled properties. What's your definition?
its on a spectrum.
property rights are given to us by the government with certain limitations. dont pay your taxes and your property goes away. HOAs is one additional restriction.
I've met plenty of people that don't like HOAs and purposely avoid them, which is fine also. But be prepared for a much wider variation of look and style of a neighborhood. It makes it much easier for a house to get run-down as well.
One thing not mentioned in this post is that HOAs can be dissolved. A friend had voted to dissolve his HOA (which was successful), due to too many problems. Common-land that the HOA owned becomes a problem, but it can all be worked out.
That’s why HOAs can be a problem if they have too much power. The fact is that most HOA board members/directors tend to be older folks that have more time on their hands than you do. And they set the agenda. Good luck with that.
I just want to come home and chill dude. Not have to lobby all my neighbors, just not to get fleeced out of my money.
The fact is that most HOA board members/directors tend to be older folks that have more time on their hands than you do. And they set the agenda. Good luck with that.
And most of the time, board members are "older folks" not because they have more time on their hands. It's because they got burnt enough and figure being part of the board is an easier way to deal with the bullshit.
Hell, in the HOA I'm in, the board members are trying to give the spots away but no one want it. Unfortunately someone has to make sure the common elements get maintained, and even if you hire someone to do it, someone has to be accountable for making sure the person hired does their job.
People complain about their governments all the time, few are willing to do anything.
HOAs exist mostly for those who want to live in a community of people where everyone else does care about one another, where there are common properties that are shared and taken care of, and where everyone has a responsibility to maintain their property.
That is not for everyone, absolutely, but if it's not for you, then don't live there. From the way your post is written, it suggests you wanted the benefit of living in an HOA without contributing to any of the responsibilities.
Now, of course, if you can and prefer to permanently work remotely, then moving to a further location from where you work may be a good option for you. But then you will have to consider the risk of you being able to continue to have a job that allows permanent remote work.
Where are the HOAs around here?
That said, I should probably qualify my original comment with "Bay Area within 1 hour of typical office locations in the Bay Area on typical rush hour commute". Here, "typical office locations" will include San Francisco County, San Mateo County, and Santa Clara County. This then limits your property locations to San Francisco County, San Mateo County, Santa Clara County, and Alameda County. In _these_ locations, $1M can generally only get you a condo or townhouse with many units (at least the last time I checked).
It's true that the most egregious complaints about power-hungry board members can be similar among HOAs and condo/coop boards, but in my mind HOAs are different in that they are not strictly necessary.
I would agree that in the areas you mention, $1M doesn't cover a single-family home, or even undeveloped land for a home. But I would guess that many first-time buyers in this area actually buy homes that cost a good deal more than $1M, with cash from IPOs or acquisitions. We got new neighbors after the FB IPO and the Nest acquisition, for example.
I’m pretty sure the people buying townhouses aren’t just people trying to get into the market but also people who will not likely be able to afford more. The gap between a townhouse and a decent standalone house is still a large gap and it only gets wider as time goes on. Thus it becomes even harder to go from townhouse to sfh even if you already own a townhouse...
Man jailed over brown sod: https://jonathanturley.org/2008/10/12/putting-the-prude-back...
EMTs finish heart attack victim's sod job so he'll go to the ER: http://www.ccfj.net/HOAFLFirefFinLawnw.html
A legendary HOA victory if there ever was one.
Leave the kids toys and trash cans out for a day? A week? Forever? No problem! But I can't complain about similar things my neighbors might do. Or, I can complain, directly to them. If I care enough.
Neighbors replaced their roof a year ago. Left the old shingles on the lawn, for a year. Did I like it? No. Did I care enough to complain to them about it? Also no. That's the kind of neighborhood I want to live in though. You want a neighborhood where the houses are in perfect cookie cutter shape? You need an HOA neighborhood, and you get the pluses with the minuses.
What I think most of us really want is to be able to do whatever we want, while also being able to tell others what to do. That doesn't work. You have to choose to either rely on your neighbors being decent, or suffer through life under an HOA.
Edit: IANAL
Nope can’t do, _everyone_ needs to agree that yes we can install them and what type and colour and whatnot. We have to call a meeting for that, guess how many people show up?
Our next house is definitely not going to have such a thing if I can help it
I'm not very familiar with Europe but the couple of times I've been there it seemed somewhat similar to denser American cities and charming rural villages. I didn't see a parallel to "cookie cutter" American suburbia. I'm no expert on Europe but that's probably why HOAs aren't that common.
Based on people mentioning maintaining commons (i.e. building parks, etc.) maybe it's a function of having comparatively less government provided common services in American suburbs? That would fit the stereotype in my head, but I admit I don't have a lot of solid data one way or another.
Go mow your lawn on Sunday in Germany and let me know how long until someone tells Ruhetag at you.
There was a recent event gained notoriety in the UK for the pettiness these bodies sometimes have https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3P_0GAi0I
The one I have is the "condominium HOA" kind, that is the reasonable kind according to the article because of the nature of buildings. But the bad "mandatory HOA" kind also exists, with the same kind of rules as the article mentions. It is just that US-style suburban areas are less common.
It looks like copropriétés in France are less focused on property value and the process sounds more democratic since every decision typically require a direct vote and most of the process is defined by law. However, it doesn't stop them from being a major pain in the ass sometimes.
Destroying cultural property to install a satellite dish is not making 'the future more important than the past'.
We've always lived in HOA homes (in our 4th now) and they have all been very laid back.
This kind of HOA I belong to is basically the "anti-hillbilly" HOA. You aren't allowed to own 50 cats and dogs free roaming and crapping everywhere, don't leave your rusted out broken down beater in the front lawn, don't let your lawn go to 4 foot weeds (but by all means grow some 6ft tomato plants), your backyard is not your personal firing range, you aren't allowed to have a personal dump of trash that you clear every 6 months, etc.
Our HOA does are for snow/ice services, long term repairs on our private road, and the front entrance maintenance.
Every house is very distinct, some I don't prefer the styling/color, but I enjoy the diversity way better than a cookie cutter subdivision.
Soul crushing to me are people who don't take care of their property and enjoy living in neglect (which plenty of people out there manage just fine without an HOA, I just dont want to roll the dice)
Why is it soul crushing to you that others enjoy their lives without worrying about their property?
If I had that many terrible neighbors I'd want to move regardless
One bad idiot cannot start passing "all sorts of rules". Getting a super majority vote, doing all the paper work and registering it with the land court all while following applicable laws and statutes isn't something that just randomly happen.
I think some people really do want this. But I don't. I really just want to be able to do whatever I want, and then want other people to do whatever they want, as long as it isn't doing material harm to someone. The problem can come down to defining 'harm' since some people try to define it in their own image of what they wish wasn't allowed, but I hope there are still people out there who espouse these values, because it's the world I would prefer to live in :\
The problem is that people think like this everywhere, because it's exceptionally easy to just lie to yourself and convince yourself that in your case, it's justified to tell others what to do. And you get a lot of mental gymnastics out of that.
I do understand that sometimes it might not be out of a strict desire to prevent people from doing stuff that they do not personally agree with. For example, maybe someone's primary concern is property value, or hell, just having a nice looking neighborhood. But honestly, if I see a neighborhood with a very tasteless looking front yard with shit scattered about, then at least that's a sign that the neighborhood is chill.
edit: And it shall be noted I am trying to make a case against HOAs. I think my note about “harm” was a bit ambiguous. In general I want the legal system to define what is harmful enough to be actionable. Imperfect? Yes. A sort of “nobody’s favorite, but everybody’s favorite” -type situation, in my view.
Indeed. If I, say, allow drug addicts to camp out on my front lawn and defecate on it, I'm probably going to make the neighborhood as a whole less desirable to live in and hence reduce property values. The net effect of that is the same as literally taking money from you. Is that harm? Because it's really hard to draw a sharp line between that and the wrong color of shutters.
Aside: I lived in HOA neighborhoods and non-HOA neighborhoods. On the whole I prefer the later, but I have horror stories from both.
It might be obvious to you (it's obvious to me too), but it was manifestly not obvious to the board members who voted to enforce the shutter-color policy, nor to the people who voted for them.
I'm not even sure that's the case. I can conceive of a board that previously had a house like this[0] (first result of google image search for "garish house colors"), had a big back and forth on what to do about it, and wants to avoid getting into the same fight again. The resolution from last time was to establish some boundary and to enforce it rigorously, even if that excludes some colors that are acceptable. The current board knows that the shutter-color enforcement is ridiculous, but can't make an exception for the general house colors without giving ammunition to the person who painted their house neon green with pink polka dots.
Not saying that that is the reasoning of any one particular board, but rather saying that I can conceive of cases where a person or group takes actions they know to be unreasonable in themselves, but may be reasonable in a wider context.
[0] https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a3/9b/35/a39b35132a3c1cc219a7...
I agree that it is not obvious where the line is, and was attempting to a hypothetical where even a single person might be unsure.
What happens behind closed doors is mostly still fine, though, even though it can lower property value. A lot of things can lower property value that aren’t fair to you, and the mere fact that they happen doesn’t mean you personally were wronged nor does it mean anything illicit has happened. Could be a nearby factory shuttering causing the local economy to struggle, or something.
It's really easy - the former example is actually illegal in most places and the local LE will deal with you if someone complains. No HOA needed.
I fail to see how this is circular reasoning. Can you explain?
> It doesn't matter whether that "someone else" is "the government" or "the HOA board"
It's not an "or", it's an "and" and that makes all the difference.
The reality is that in all cases, having both a Party A AND a Party B make your decisions for you is objectively worse than simply having Party A or Party B make the decision.
Having an HOA make you decisions for you doesn't make the state's decisions go away. Doing away with the HOA only leaves a single irritation.
> What matters is that the decisions about what you can and can't do with your house (and, for that matter, in every aspect of your life) are either yours to make, or they are someone else's,
There is a large distinction of "having many different parties with authority over you" and "having one party with authority over you".
The HOA isn't a single party that has authority over you, it is composed of multiple people who make take turns invoking the HOA rules against you. The state is a different matter - there are repercussions to individuals and appeals to an impartial third-party when the state invokes a rule against you.
You simply cannot equivocate an HOA with the state. People have recourse against the state.
Here:
> > it's really hard to draw a sharp line between that and the wrong color of shutters.
> It's really easy - the former example is actually illegal in most places and the local LE will deal with you
How do you think HOAs enforce their restrictions? When push comes to shove, disputes with HOAs get settled in courts, which are an arm of the state.
> You simply cannot equivocate an HOA with the state. People have recourse against the state.
People have the exact same recourse against HOAs as they have against the state because the HOA's authority derives entirely from the state. HOAs do not have their own enforcement mechanisms. And HOA boards are elected just like the people who run the state(s) in the USA. It really is just another level of government.
>
>Here:
>
>> it's really hard to draw a sharp line between that and the wrong color of shutters.
>
>> It's really easy - the former example is actually illegal in most places and the local LE will deal with you
>
> How do you think HOAs enforce their restrictions? When push
> comes to shove, disputes with HOAs get settled in courts,
> which are an arm of the state.
So? That doesn't make it illegal; going to court against an HOA is a civil matter, so the issue of whether something is illegal or not is irrelevant. Going to court because you broke the state's rules is a criminal matter.
When something is illegal, you call the cops and let the state prosecution handle it. When something isn't illegal, you have to directly sue the respondent(s) yourself and handle the matter yourself.
So, yeah, there's a big difference between getting prosecuted by the state in criminal court for defecating on your lawn and getting sued in civil court by the HOA for breaking the contract.
There's no circular reasoning there at all: one of those things ends up in a certain type of court, the other ends up in a different type of court.
> People have the exact same recourse against HOAs as they have against the state because the HOA's authority derives entirely from the state.
No, you have more recourse against the state when the state breaks the rules, and not just because the state has many more limitations on their rules than a HOA. For just one example, the state may not prohibit political speech of one party and encourage political speech of another party, while the HOA has no such limitation.
For that you have no recourse agains the HOA, but you *will* have recourse if the state attempted it.
> It really is just another level of government.
It really isn't.
There's a particularly large difference between criminal and civil trials.
There's a difference between what a juristic person is allowed and what an arm of the state is allowed (one of those two aren't allowed to suppress speech, for example, while the other can).
There's a difference in the enforcement that is allowed (for HOA: fines only, and then go to civil court for an order, for the state: arrest, then prosecution).
There's a difference in the levels of enforcement allowed (HOA has no choice but to launch civil proceedings, while the state is fully within its rights to use force, deadly or otherwise).
They really aren't the same. The rules of an HOA is a meeting-of-the-minds contract between two juristic persons. Any "contract" is not a contract if one of those people don't agree (signed under duress, for example).
The laws of the state does not require the citizen to agree; there is no contract because the citizen has to abide by those laws whether or not they agree to them.
But just for the record, you are factually incorrect about a number of your claims.
First, if push really comes to shove, the HOA can force a sale of your house in order to pay your delinquent fines. If you refuse to vacate, the cops will come and they will arrest you and take you to jail. So there really is no difference at all other than the number of steps that it takes to get to that point.
Second, there is no "meeting of the minds" with regards to HOAs because there is no other mind. The HOA CC&Rs are established by the original developer long before anyone joins, and they are take-it-or-leave-it. There is no negotiation. Joining an HOA is exactly the same as becoming a legal resident or naturalized citizen of a country. There are restrictions on your behavior. Whether those restrictions are called "laws" or "HOA rules" is immaterial. If you choose to join, you have to abide by those restrictions or face punishment. If you don't like the terms, your only recourse is to try to effect change via the governing body or leave.
Third, you are factually incorrect about the nature of laws against allowing people to camp on your lawn. Those are generally zoning or public health laws, and violating them is generally a civil offense, not a criminal one. But violations are nonetheless generally prosecuted by the state. Even in private lawsuits, an individual has to show that a law was violated in order to prevail.
You are correct that HOAs are not bound by Constitutional constraints, but I fail to see how that is germane to the matter at hand. Different governmental and quasi-governmental entities have different powers. So what? That doesn't change the central point: either you get decide what you can and can't do with your house, or someone else does. It really is that simple. Attaching a label to the entity that makes the decisions changes nothing. If it quacks like a government...
That's an interesting opinion.
> But just for the record, you are factually incorrect about a number of your claims. > > First, if push really comes to shove, the HOA can force a sale of your house in order to pay your delinquent fines.
No different than any creditor, that doesn't mean all your creditors are a form of government over you.
> If you refuse to vacate, the cops will come and they will arrest you and take you to jail.
For breaking a law - contempt of court. The same as with any creditor. The cops cannot and will not get involved until you break a law, which means that the HOA has to first go through civil proceedings and get a court to issue an order against you. At that point no crime has been committed. Failing to comply with the order is a crime, at which point the cops can and will get involved.
> So there really is no difference at all other than the number of steps that it takes to get to that point. >
Other than the fact that they are doing what every creditor does? Do you also consider your credit card company a form of government? Because they can force the sale of your house to pay your debts, and if you don't leave the house the cops will forcibly remove you.
Any creditor can do that. I fail to see why you think the HOA is special in that regard. > > Second, there is no "meeting of the minds" with regards to HOAs because there is no other mind. The HOA CC&Rs are established by the original developer long before anyone joins, and they are take-it-or-leave-it.
Believe it or not, that actually is a contract. If you take it, that's a meeting of minds. Look it up.
> There is no negotiation.
No one said there was, nor does there have to be. All that is required is that both parties agree. If you take it, you agree and it's a contract like any other contract.
> Joining an HOA is exactly the same as becoming a legal resident or naturalized citizen of a country.
Or signing a contract.
> There are restrictions on your behavior.
Just like the clauses in every contract.
> Whether those restrictions are called "laws" or "HOA rules" is immaterial.
They are very material - criminal offences are processed differently to civil suits.
> If you choose to join, you have to abide by those restrictions or face punishment.
In the form of fines, certainly. And if those fines don't work, then the HOA has to sue you like any other creditor would.
> If you don't like the terms, your only recourse is to try to effect change via the governing body or leave. > > Third, you are factually incorrect about the nature of laws against allowing people to camp on your lawn. Those are generally zoning or public health laws, and violating them is generally a civil offense, not a criminal one.
I'll grant you this, because I am not sure which jurisdiction you are in. In my jurisdiction pulling down your drawers in your front lawn is a criminal offense. Then proceeding to defecate is also a criminal offense. My understanding is that, in the US, you can get onto the Sex Offenders List just by peeing in public - that's a criminal offense.
> But violations are nonetheless generally prosecuted by the state. Even in private lawsuits, an individual has to show that a law was violated in order to prevail.
Depends on the suit - if you are suing someone for contempt of court (because they refuse to follow through on a judgement against them) then that is criminal. If you are suing to get that judgement in the first place, it's purely civil. Law enforcement does not get involved when you ignore the HOA and they sue you (because it is not a crime). Law enforcement only gets involved when you don't adhere to the judgement (because not adhering to a court order is a crime).
> You are correct that HOAs are not bound by Constitutional constraints, but I fail to see how that is germane to the matter at hand. Different governmental and quasi-governmental entities have different powers. So what? That doesn't change the central point: either you get decide what you can and can't do with your house, or someone else does.
Having one less outside party having authority over you is relevant. If you view outside parties as an irritation, the more parties there are that get to tell you what to do, the more irritation there is.
> It really is that simple. Attaching a label to the entity that makes the decisions changes nothing. If it quacks like a government...
Accuracy matters. Precision matters. HOA are not anywhere close to being some sort of government. They lack too many of the legal requirements.
Will all that being said, I'm probably not in your jurisdiction, so the cases I've presented to the court (in both criminal and civil matters) may not matter to you. The best way to proceed, if you want to stick to the claim that HOA have quasi-governmental powers, is for you to list the ways that they differ from any other contract that you sign, and then breech.
Because, from what I can see, the consequences of breeching the HOA rules is no different to the consequences of breeching any other contract.
In what way are the HOA rule-violations different from other contract-violations?
There is a difference: you can incur a debt to the HOA under a much wider variety of circumstances than you can incur an ordinary debt. An ordinary debt is incurred as a result of a one-off transaction, usually in exchange for a specific good or service, and requires your specific consent. An HOA can impose a fine on you at any time for a wide variety of reasons, some of which may not have even been in place when you bought your house.
> Any creditor can do that. I fail to see why you think the HOA is special in that regard.
It isn't special in that regard. That's the whole point. There is no distinction between something being "illegal" and something being "against HOA policy". That's the whole point.
The difference between an HOA and a regular creditor is not the enforcement mechanisms, it's the circumstances under which the debt is incurred in the first place.
> > Joining an HOA is exactly the same as becoming a legal resident or naturalized citizen of a country.
> Or signing a contract.
Yes, but again, the salient difference is not the contract, it's the terms of the contract. What distinguishes HOA "contracts" and the "contracts" that govern legal residency and citizenship from ordinary run-of-the-mill contracts is that the terms of HOA/goernment "contracts" are specifically open-ended. You don't know what your actual obligations are under the terms of this "contract" because they can (and often do) change after the contract is signed. But the power to change the rules is asymmetric. The HOA and the government can change the rules. You can't.
> criminal offences are processed differently to civil suits
So what? What does that have to do with the fact that both HOAs and governments can change the rules mid-game?
> HOA are not anywhere close to being some sort of government.
I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree about that.
edit: I think I understand why people are reading it this way, so I added a bit onto my original post.
Many HOA bylaws (house color, RV parking, minimal landscaping requirements, etc etc etc) aren't material harms. They are "harms by association" -- e.g. my house value goes down because you have bad taste in paint colors. Hence "Home Owner Associations".
Laws are a baseline. People can build on top of that. Just like there are laws that define what should happen when a couple divorce, many people will sign a prenup to add extra rules they mutually agree to that not EVERYONE would agree to, for each other's benefits. You or I certainly don't get to decide what's reasonable or what's silly in someone else's prenup. HOA bylaws are just a bigger version of that.
If I haven't updated my house in 60 years, paint falling off, lawn completely dead, park my rusted out 1983 honda civic with flat tires on my front lawn, and have a pile of garbage 10 feet high in the driveway...
Does that cause harm to you, or do you just define that as "chill"?
It's going to entirely depend on who you're asking, at what stage of life they are in, etc.
I'm glad HOA neighborhoods exist for people who are at a position in their life (generally financially well off) to enjoy one. On the other hand, I'm glad not all neighborhoods are that way and you can find some where being a bit behind on maintenance isn't a crime.
IMO, a reasonable viewpoint is that an HOA is a communal way to fix the “out of your control” part at the cost of some personal freedoms. But some people err on the side of the personal freedoms. I know it’s easy to say on an online forum and bad experiences can change one’s mind, but I am comfortable in saying that I would most likely keep this viewpoint in the face of challenges, and instead prefer to push for the law to be amended if it is necessary...
So yes, I think the answer here is no even regardless of whether you would prefer an HOA, but I still upvoted your comment though as I think it raises the important question.
The connection to property values is a bit ethereal IMO.
One of the benefits of living in a middling-urban city in a state where government more or less works is that it's really difficult to build up a 10 foot pile of garbage -- because once a week the town sends a refuse truck and a recycling truck to pick up things at the end of your driveway.
I had a neighbor up the street with a commercial dumpster in their driveway for about six months; I assume they were doing interior construction and demolition. I'm sure nobody complained about it. Construction debris doesn't attract rats and raccoons the way food debris does.
Ehh, not everyone's that selfish.
I for one am perfectly happy with compromising so that my neighbors are happier with what I do, but only if they return the favor. At a small scale we can have a handshake agreement, but for something more long term or with a lot more people, it's great to be able to put it on paper.
Otherwise, the only other way to ensure neighbors don’t bother you without an HOA is to live somewhere with lots of land around homes so that neighbors are very spaced out, and hopefully they will be far enough from you to not be bothered by their filth, and putting up high hedges and trees should be enough to block them from your sight.
Local Governments traditionally played this role. Problem is that some people hate governments simply because they are governments so they make private governments. I guess that makes sense to them?
In my (non HOA) neighborhood leaving shingles on your lawn comes with a $100/day fine.
The people who were cleaning out the house next door to me (they inherited it) were leaving piles of garbage outside. I saw the blight officer leave a notice in their mailbox and the garbage was gone the next day. (I assume it was a warning rather than a fine, but idk.)
That’s why you live in an HOA area, but become the ruler.
Rules for thee, but not for me!
And I am not American and I'm pretty socialist myself.
Like yeah, this stuff might be irritating. Maybe you wanted pinker shutters. But who really cares? Imagine getting bent out of shape about the color of your shutters or having to put up curtains.
And yes, you can say that he has to because he's signed the papers, but you'd still be missing the point.
No, I don't think they are. The key thing is that you sign the papers and so does everyone else.
Ive had my car towed multiple times when I was parked in my designated spot with my parking tag in my window. They didn't care, they just towed it and claimed they coudln't see the tag. Every time it cost me > $300.
I've had the HOA manager show up when I had friends over because it was technically over the allotted "2 guest maximum" for the area. I was just having a game night, it wasn't even an outdoor party.
I've had them literally show up with a measuring tape to check the distance from the curb one of my guests was parked and then come knock on the door to inform me that they were illegally parked and would be towed in the next hour if they didn't move.
yeah, all of that? That's a horror story. Basically every HOA I've ever interacted with or lived under has been nothing but a thinly veiled legally-backed racket to kick back money to towing and lawn care companies.
How is it even possible that something like that exists...
I sure would. Where I live, you do you, I do me, they do them.
It is great!
Sometimes we have a chat. Berry vines out of control, or maybe someone needs something. Whatever. That gets done and people are pretty happy.
Want to pick the shutter and trim colors? Several people here would be happy to entertain that so long as the ones wanting to pick are paying.
Me? Nope. And the bonus is nobody will hear from me about the colors, unless it is complementary. Who doesn't like that sort of thing?
Crazy cat lady down the street has a whole garden growing in the easement in front of her house. Passersby will pick and eat some of it. Pretty sure that makes her happy.
I could go on, but the place is very human, at times vibrant and has soul.
Yeah, bent right out of shape. There is just not enough time and energy to deal with all the meta associated with the more strongly regulated neighborhoods.
I basically have every other possible thing to do before worrying about what the other people are doing and so forth. Mutual respect and consideration are lean, easy, human, and definitely the way I want to play it.
All that said, yeah! Some people seem to need all that meta mess. Great! We have places for them to get it, thankfully.
No need to imagine, as that seems to be exactly what their HOA does.
If you think that that is trivial, imagine how much more trivial and petty it is to get bent out of shape about the color of someone elses shutters.
He's not complaining about not being allowed pink shutters, he's complaining that his neighbours are far too petty because they're getting bent out of shape about the color of someone elses shutters.
I've been upvoting as I see cases of it.
Perhaps a cooling off period after 4 or so.
Lately tho, I can't ascribe many DVs to anything - reasonable or not. It's fairly baffling.
One interesting thing they do is that for things like new decks or replaced ones, you need to submit an application for approval which should include a building permit by the county. It gives prospective home buyers assurance that certain things were done correctly. Before a house is sold, the seller needs to provide an HOA disclosure which triggers an inspection for which a seller needs to ensure all changes were made with the approval of the HOA. Our seller (an investment property management company) had to fix several things in our house to being them up to code to get those approvals, which helped me as a home buyer.
Besides that, the HOA has been very responsive, we did replace our windows without their approval but it was relatively easy to fix given that they were similar windows.
edit: here is one of the notices if curious: https://i.imgur.com/xJABpPf.jpg
They ran a contest to see who had the most amazing yard. The first, second, and third place finishers all ended up with massive fines, and had to tear out tens of thousands of dollars worth of landscaping.
It turns out that their wonderful yards had not complied with every policy and procedure of the HOA.
We purposely have bought in non HOA areas now and almost every year hear horror stories from co-workers and friends that confirm our choice.
Incidentally, when we moved out of the rental and bought our non HOA house, our car insurance dropped substantially. The crime in the HOA town was much higher.
My HOA is $100/yr and the only common property are some pillars at the 2 entrances. We do have rules that I actually like, for example:
- don't leave your trash cans visible from the street
- no driveway basketball goals or other sports equipment
- no motor homes or boats parked in driveways
- no long-term parking on the street; guests for parties are fine
- fences have to be approved. We have 5-6 different kinds that they accept, but not 30
- sheds and other detached storage buildings have to be approved. Anything attached to the house doesn't require approval
These rules to me are to maintain property values of the neighborhood. It's not like the HOA's that insist you get a new roof every 10 years or paint your house every 5 years, or the HOA hires someone to do it and sends you the bill. My sister was in one of those in FL for a vacation home and she sold it, not just for that reason, but it was definitely a factor.
Yeah well that's a lot of price to be paying for a couple of pillars. I'd rather pay $0. I'm not paying $100 to some random dude. They aren't the IRS.
> We do have rules that I actually like, for example:
That doesn't mean I have to like them. I shouldn't have to pay my $100 to be subject to restrictions.
> - no driveway basketball goals or other sports equipment
> - no motor homes or boats parked in driveways
What? Why do you care? It's not your home, let them do what they want
> - fences have to be approved. We have 5-6 different kinds that they accept, but not 30
I'll build my own damn fence. I'll build my fence how I like it.
> - sheds and other detached storage buildings have to be approved. Anything attached to the house doesn't require approval
I think this is a city building code issue for safety reasons, in any case the HOA should have no say over it.
> These rules to me are to maintain property values of the neighborhood.
I have ZERO responsibility to maintain YOUR property value. And if I truly own it (i.e. not under mortgage), I have ZERO responsibility to maintain my own property value. I only have responsibility to be a good citizen and not be a nuisance or public health hazard to you. A boat in my driveway does nothing to you, and it's not upto you to tell me where to put my boat.
I liked it - mostly sensible rules designed to preserve heritage for everyone.
Conceptually, that sounds similar to these HOAs in the US, so I don’t get why the difference in attitude towards them.
Edit: a sibling comment mentionned something about a village where you can't freely change the color of your blinds. We also have that, usually on the municipal level, to preserve heritage/the way a place look. For example, some communes from the "Pays des Pierres Dorées" have strict rules about this https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierres_dor%C3%A9es
You -> HOA -> City/Town -> State -> Federal
You pay fees and taxes to all of them.
Postpone all HOA meetings indefinitely... Let all requests go to voicemail, etc...
If anyone accosts you about HOA matters in the street say "I think that's best bought up after the next HOA presidential election"
Usually, there's a process to change the rules or extinguish the HOA by majority vote. If no one thinks it is important enough to be worth running, extinguishment sounds like a good idea.
Not volunteering for the job would probably help move that process along.
> My next house will be in a hoa-free area So i can avoid having to work for free.
Most HOA’s have plenty of people willing to fill leadership positions (and then hire an HOA management company to do virtually all the actual work.)
For some, the house they want happens to be in an HOA neighborhood, so they oblige. For others, they like the "order" that the HOA demands of the homeowners that live in that zone - grass and roofs and paints are all "approved" which definitely provides some semblance of consistency.
In my experience, HOAs are exactly like this article describes. People that like power for power's sake becoming anal about the people they have control over, under the guise of "consistency" and "order".
It's easy to say this if you've never been on one, where you see how unbelievably petty and stupid people can be about sliding their own exceptions by, or just trying to get away with not obeying the rules until someone demands they do, or you have to mediate a real dispute between neighbours that's sort-of-but-not-really covered by the rules.
Nothing has corroded my belief that humanity is capable of governing itself in a sane, common sense manner, as much as serving on Strata (Canadian version of an HOA for a condo building) for several years.
People cannot govern without injecting extreme bias. With regard to something like home ownership, I'd like my home to be subject to only my own biases. Power corrupts absolutely, even at the smallest scale.
> "I keep hearing how Americans love their freedom and hate being told what to do and how to behave"
Consider that most Americans do not live under HOAs. Don't you think it likely that the Americans who exemplify the stereotypical traits you list are likely not the ones choosing to live under HOAs?
If that's the definition of willingly, than i suppose most citizens of dictatorships are willing participants.
This is exactly the reason we're in our current HOA home. It was the only viable option at that time.
It's been a fairly terrible experience w/ the HOA inventing absurd crap some times (non-existent shed on thimble-sized front lawn) and selectively enforcing other times (reporting my kid's grad sign & residents' Biden signs but not Trump signs).
It's also common for HOA boards members to post their friends for elections. I was on the board in our last neighborhood. All members are pals after a few months.
Not from my experience. Try finding a non-HOA house near any major city. From all the friends I know who are homeowners, not a single one got into HOA willingly.
One managed to find a home about 20 miles from Seattle that wasn't HOA-managed. The others had to settle for an HOA house, because there were none available within a reasonable driving distance from the city that weren't HOA.
Sure, this is just my anecdata. But you should check how many people explicitly are looking for HOA vs. how many just settle for it. I hate HOAs with passion, but when I decide to buy a house, I am already mentally getting ready to settle for an HOA one, simply because of the location.
Somebody living in an HOA neighborhood might reasonably claim to regret their decision, but it was their decision. Some people want to have their cake and eat it too; they want to live in that nice pretty HOA neighborhood but don't want the HOA that made it a nice neighborhood. Such people are immature. You may as well choose to live in the woods, then complain about trees.
At no point I claimed it was concealed ahead of purchase. It wasn't, it was known.
>Somebody living in an HOA neighborhood might reasonably claim to regret their decision, but it was their decision.
Yeah, it was their decision. They did it, despite hating the idea of joining an HOA. Simply because there were no houses for acceptable prices within a driving distance from the city. That's the complaint. No one is saying "they got tricked into it" or something.
In all seriousness though, I hate the bureaucracy but being on the board gives me the opportunity to keep things in check.
Dynasty is what you're thinking, and really, our federal system is designed so one person can't have much power at all, other than the power of the pulpit.
Nothing like a lifetime, and multi-generational monarchy.
It's very hard to sell homes for top dollar when your next door neighbor has old toilets in their drive way, or parked cars on cinder blocks. Or someone who wants to raise chickens in their backyard. Just makes the entire place look bad and property values will diminish, affecting one of your biggest investments.
If the HOA don’t like you, it seems there little recourse.
In the 70s (I think) and before, HOA were definitely active gatekeepers though against PoC, and then after that with new laws passed, moved to these more "subtle" methods.
Unfortunately in my experience it's the exact opposite. Here they're used and abused by exclusively rich, mostly-white neighborhoods to keep them that way.
I've lived in both HOA and non-HOA neighborhoods. If there's a barrier to entry such as price, then generally a more successful (and hopefully more refined) type of person will move in, and generally the homes will stay nice-looking without rules. Without that, then an HOA to try to maintain an aesthetic baseline can be very helpful. All the homeowners benefit from maintaining an attractive neighborhood, in that their home values will be higher.
However the supreme court also ruled that was unenforceable too.
But that didn't happen before developers realized that they could use HOA's as a cash cow. You sell a house once. But you can collect HOA dues for a couple of decades after. There is a case in Daily City where it took decades for home owners to get rid of the HOA. That collected dues and provided absolutely nothing in return.
I like order, and I do not trust most people to behave responsibly. I am more than happy to be told when to cut my grass if it also comes with the guarantee that my next-door neighbor is not going to be throwing wild house parties after dark, or turning his driveway into a junkyard, or running a kennel in his backyard, etc. Some people might be willing to tolerate this kind of barbarism, but not me, so I will gladly consign myself to the restrictions of HOAs.
If my neighbours were throwing a loud party past 10pm I could simply call the police/ Ordnungsamt (police light) and they’d tell them to quiet down.
Several years ago, our next door neighbour decided to get into the meat delivery business and parked his van in his front yard overnight. It had a petrol engine for a refrigeration unit that ran constantly. The Police came around and advised them to switch it off or move it somewhere else.
An HOA itself also falls under various systems of control, from interpersonal social control e.g. within its board, to the levels of legal systems inside of which it operates.
The benefits really depend on you. Some people like the HOA for perfectly fine social reasons. Are you after status? Maybe the strictest HOA neighborhood just has it. Are you after structure and control at a fine-grained level? Great, and might as well get on the board while you are at it. More structure makes a lot of people feel safer and even more free inside their own skin (freedom to see one's preferred perspectives celebrated! Feels good in that you can be yourself); that's just how psychology works.
Another important factor: Will you even be home much? Do you just need a place to stay that's orderly, pleasant, and convenient, and you can afford to hire people to take care of upkeep? Or is your home more of the main place for you, a subjectively calibrated environment? A big part of your identity?
Instead of bashing HOAs I think it's a good idea to educate people in living and lifestyle design. You can then find your best-fit from the inside (of you) out, and it's less about avoiding stuff like the HOA.
I think you answered your own statement. Americans don't blanket hate being told what to do, they hate being told to do X when they haven't agreed beforehand what they could be nagged to do X. Seems pretty reasonable.
For completeness, I'm sure that there is also a segment that on joining an HOA is a "temporarily inconvenienced dictator" that imagines themselves ascending to the HOA board and being able to write the rules, so they won't ever have to be told what to do, they'll do the telling.
Try Japan. Could tell you plenty of stories, but patio11's stories about being an entrepreneur and trying to rent an apartment sum it up pretty well.
I don't necessarily want to live in one, but there are essentially no houses built in the last 50 years in my area for sale that don't sit in an HOA.
Most "buildable lots" tend to be in subdivisions ... which already have HOAs. "Infill lots" tend to either be in terrible neighborhoods or amazing neighborhoods that are out of reach, budget-wise, for most.
Building on a rural "plot of land" is often more restricted than you'd think, due to zoning regs on minimum lot sizes and rules about water meter availability. And frankly, buying and caring for 10 acres puts the whole project out of reach for most.
Not to mention internet availability is problematic as you get into rural locations with more flexibility.
Sometimes a developer builds a group of homes, offers parks, gym, walkways, street lights etc, and until all homes are not sold yet, or build, manages those common things. Buyers of those houses willingly by a house with a perspective HOA. Once all homes are sold, developer hands over the maintenance responsibility to group of elected home owners.
Now if a colony already has a HOA and somebody sells their house, the buyer has to be in the HOA in most of the cases, very few exceptions like if seller fails to disclose that it's HOA, seller does not give the HOA paperwork to sign and such.
I think there's a price difference also between a HOA homes and non HOA homes.
Also, don’t forget that not all HOAs make the stereotypical idiotic rules about grass length and garbage bins. Some of them have invented entirely novel classes of idiotic rules! And many of them are just boring and stick to maintaining common areas for the use of residents. Cleaning the neighborhood pool, mowing the median of an avenue or two, trimming the trees, and so on.
I'll never live in an HOA neighborhood if I can help it!
I could imagine costs of policing being lower and various kinds of complaints being dealt with by the HOA before it gets up to the city.
If you ever thought you want single party rule, you might be able to look to HOAs as a cautionary tale.
I’m biased, lived in one that a lemonade stand war that would have made Animal Farm seem like a lesson in good government. The sex scandal and the embezzlement didn’t help change my opinion later.
Some of the money also goes to utilities (water, sewer, trash) which I suspect are cheaper to do communally than individually
Some fees also include water and trash.
It just depends how nice the services are, and/or how old the building is.
Also, deferred maintenance will destroy a condo, and the ability for any owners to sell. If the board has to recover from previous years of deferred maintenance while also building a fund for the future, people will simply have to face the reality and pay until the problem is fixed.
The HOAs are so high they also make the economics of rental income very hard, so unless they provide amenities that have resale or rental pricing value you are just paying a monthly compliance fee. How they became so common boggles my mind.
> What I'm going to focus on from here on are mandatory HOAs in non-condominium neighborhoods.
They tend to handle all the common space issues like roofs and elevators, so they serve a real purpose other than being the property value police, which is also why they cost more.
Because you’re shoulder to shoulder with more people, rules enforcement is more important as well, although as always YMMV.
As a data point contrary to all the horror stories, I’ve been in a HOA in a small building for years and always appreciated what they got done.
> condominiums are a different animal entirely in which you share ownership of the home with the HOA, who provides very specific and substantial services. As well, with condos most people recognize that property use is both restricted and totally necessary due to the communal nature of the arrangement.
> What I'm going to focus on from here on are mandatory HOAs in non-condominium neighborhoods
If you buy a house, you don’t pay those fees, but you still pay to replace the roof, paint the house, deal with water intrusion, etc. Such are the joys of being a homeowner.
Largely, just read the rules and make sure you want to live by them. Most are very reasonable at least in the city.
Buildings with a reputation for being well-run sell for a higher price per square foot. Buildings that are really poorly run sell for cash only - banks refuse to write mortgages on them. In between the two extremes is just about everything else.
My advice is to look for a building that has lots of kids and lots of dogs. If the HOA is filled with crazy people that want to control every bit of your life, parents and dog owners will move out long before the single people will.
The usual narrative is the evil HOA trustees who enforce their selfish greedy wants on everyone else and rule with an iron fist. The reality though is that in most HOAs, they have very little discretionary power beyond what's in the bylaws. What's in the bylaws is agreed upon by the owners. If "everyone hates being told what to do", it's pretty simple to get the rules changed or to vote out the trustees. But it doesn't happen. Why?
Generally one of three things
A) The inhabitants aren't the owners and thus can't change the rules. Ok, fair enough if that's the situation, that's going to suck.
B) People hate the rules, but they don't hate them ENOUGH to go through the trouble of changing them, and some people who likes the rules are enforcing them. IMO ignoring rules you don't like shouldn't be an option (and is why we have so many bad laws at all levels of governments. If everyone who hates them got together to change them, not even the super rich could prevent it from happening).
C) The most common one from my experience: turns out a whole lot of people actually agree with the rules. All the talk of freedom, but that includes the right of consenting adults to come into a legal agreement about...stuff. As long as nothing they agree on is illegal to put in your contract, why shouldn't they be allowed? If a bunch of people want to sign an agreement to reach a global maximum instead of a bunch of local maxima that make everyone miserable, why not?
Turns out not everyone is cool with the "I do whatever I want and you do whatever you want", and "let's get together and make a compromise so we can both be a little happier" is actually fairly popular too. And thus HOAs are a thing.
But I hear the reply already: "In X area everything's governed by HOAs! We have no choice!". Well, either change the rules (after all, if they're THAT damn, it shouldn't be too hard to get enough votes to get them changed), or buy elsewhere. We're talking about buying here, so it implies a certain level of privilege, after all.
In my experience discussing the topic, the people who claim there are absolutely no properties anywhere not in an HOA are not very truthful. Similarly, they're also makes outlandish claims about how there is only one job they can do and it's only located in this one city so they have absolutely no choice in the matter. It is simply impossible for them to live anywhere else except in this one town that only has HOA properties. The reality is that they want to live in an HOA but they don't want any of the obligations that come with it. They want their neighbors all bound by the rules but they should be granted exceptions because they're special.
Personally I would never live in an HOA with tons of rules and design standards but that's what some people like and are free to join. It's their choice. There are plenty of HOAs that just want you to keep your yard mowed twice a month and not keep junk cars and old appliances outside. It's a continuum but far too many want the surroundings of a strong intrusive HOA and the obligations on them of a weak or non-existent HOA.
But I didn't want to, I want to spend my life doing other things, but now I've been forced into being a local politician simply because I can't run the risk of some nosy moral (racist) busy-bodies putting a lien on my home because the tree in the front yard died.
Right, because you have to convince people of what you want. If it was absolutely no brainer obvious and everyone felt the same way as you, you wouldn't have to do that. The election would come up, people would vote and it would be over. You also knew there was an HOA when you got into it.
That's my point. People in posts like these make it sound like NO ONE wants this. If it was true, it would be gone pretty quick. Turns out people are generally either happy with the status quo, or at least don't hate it enough to change it without some convincing.
Btw, I don't know about your bylaws, but usually you don't have to be on the HOA board to change the rules. If you get the votes you can get them changed. Get a lawyer to write a new set of bylaws as per your state's requirements, get people to vote on them, register them, don't even need to change the board to gut it.
This is a terrible argument because under this argument everyone really is "okay with the massive warrentless government wiretapping going on because they aren't voting against it." People are "okay with the Chinese genocide of the Uighers because they aren't doing anything to stop it."
It's not that they want it that way it's that most people are in the business of living their lives and don't want to constantly have to dedicate their lives to vicious neighborhood politics and so they tolerate it for now because it is a higher barrier to do something about it.
It's probably a bad idea to become part of an association you don't want to deal with. To continue with the awful government analogies, in an HOA, you're not just a citizen. You're a governor of your state (or part of the senate or whatever you want to use: you are the representative leader of your "state"). So yeah, you're gonna have to be involved. Unless you don't care anyway.
The people who run these organizations would literally rather die than see a few corn stocks drying in the backyard of a neighbor.
Similarly, while I am for solar panels and flying the American flag, I don't like politicians who pass laws forcing HOAs to allow both:
https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/720.304#:~:text=...
and
https://www.solarunitedneighbors.org/florida/learn-the-issue....
I feel if I was smart/savvy enough to buy a home where I'm allowed to fly a flag or have a solar panel, the people who agreed not to should have to suffer with the devalued property they chose to create.
Imagine that your grandfather bought a house in an HOA, then he died and you inherited it. You're now bound by a "contract" that you never signed or agreed to. Actual contracts can't bind next of kin, only those who actually signed them.
You always had the option to say no after all, and not take the house.
For example "Bob agrees to lend $5k to Fred, and to ensure Fred is given flowers every day for 10 years. Fred agrees to repay Bob $10k in 10 years time".
If bob dies, bobs heir can take on bobs side of that contract of delivering flowers, and getting the 10k end-of-contract payment from Fred.
Most legally binding agreements require all parties to know and understand what they are singing up to.
If the HOA can make new rules anytime about anything, can you really claim that the house owner knew what they were signing up to when they bought the house?
Selective enforcement is a great evil. You’re fine until you make someone on the committee mad, and they have an unusually high degree of power or you.
Over the years, two rules have come into tension. First, in order for a new candidate to be elected, they have to get a majority (not just a plurality) of the votes - 50% + 1. I think the original thought was that if a large number of candidates ran and no one got over 30% of the votes or something, they shouldn't be eligible for the board. If not enough new candidates get 50% support, then the incumbent can keep their seat, in order of votes.
The second rule is that you can only vote for a number of candidates matching the number of openings. So if there are only three openings, and seven people are running, you can only vote for three of them. If you vote for more, your ballot gets thrown out.
The board has had problems lately so we had a lot of candidates in a recent election. I remember liking five of them, but I could only vote for three. There were roughly 1000 votes, and the most popular "reform" candidates got around 490, 460, 450, 420 votes, so none of them made it in (they clearly had split the vote). The incumbents that retained their seats got vote totals like 350, 275 - one incumbent got the second lowest of all running candidates, but got to keep his seat.
Obviously anti-democratic - as interest increases in replacing board members, it becomes less possible to do so. There are remedies such as Instant Runoff voting, but the way we vote and count is that you get your ballot in the mail, put a checkmark next to the names you want, and then counting teams count up the checkmarks (discarding the ballots with "too many" checkmarks). Manually counting IRV was deemed too onerous for our process.
Another, and my favored solution for this sort of scenario, is Approval Voting, where you simply put a checkmark next to all the candidates you approve of, and then all the checkmarks are counted by the same counting teams, without discarding the ballots with "too many" checkmarks, since it's no longer possible for there to be "too many" checkmarks on a ballot.
We gave presentations to the board, explained it as thoroughly as possible, made the case that what the elections were doing (due to the 50% rule) was measuring the level of support for each candidate, and that only Approval Voting was capable of measuring that accurately, subject to our other restrictions.
It failed on a 4-3 vote. Of the votes against, one was "it's been working fine the way it is", another was "It sounds funny", one gave no explanation, and one indicated the lawyers were of the opinion it wasn't allowable. In the next election, the three "yes" votes chose not to run for re-election and were replaced.
From what I've observed from only one board, talking with various property managers, industry reading, and reading legal case summaries, I do believe there is a lot of variability in different areas and corporations. Which to a degree makes sense, these are basically small businesses government by a board of random strangers with no special qualifications and are managing $125 million in assets or more. In my building we need to find 5 boards members out of ~150 units. Sure, you hire a property management company and a property manager to do day to day operations, but ultimately the board is responsible for all financial and strategic decisions. It's especially tricky because many of those decisions are going to be based off of imperfect and limited information.
Having done this for several years, I do believe many don't understand their requirements by purchasing a property government by a condo or HOA, and the notion that it's their own property they should be able to do what they want. I certainly did not understand my obligations when I bought my unit compared to several years on the board. With freehold it might be a different story, but in a highrise shared structure I think it's clear that we need some sort of contract that outlines the requirements, and that contract to be enforceable to the property owner.
One of our lawyers explained it to me once in a way that really resonated. The Condominium Act (The legislation in Ontario that governs condos) is designed as consumer protection law. But it's not consumer protection law in the sense of a consumer vs the corporation, it's consumer protection law as a protection from having to bear costs created by your neighbors. So there are lots of rules in place on how you get a board, how you pass rules, how you manage disputes through tribunals or the courts, what types of liabilities the board can take, what types of expenses go to an individual unit owner (IE damage), with the ultimate outcome meant to protect owners from costs created by their neighbors. So the example of someone losing their job and not wanting to pay the maintenance fee's, well the structure of the contractor is everyone pays their share, if you don't, it means a neighbor would have to. Who would want to take on liabilities of shared spaces if their neighbors might be insolvent and the remaining are left holding the expenses. And yes, part of this bears the requirement to manage a community and disputes that may arise.
Are their bad boards... definitely, there are plenty to go around. Are there ways for boards to create lots of hidden debt which will impact the owner... absolutely, I'd suspect mostly by deferring or not understand required maintenance, not paying attention to poor vendor performance and maintenance practices, and in some cases not understanding the differences in bids and picking the lowest bid from someone clearly going to cut corners. It's also happened to us once where all bids were so high that we couldn't understand, so we split up the project and rebid for 50% of the cost... other boards may have just accepted it. Are there board members who join to take advantage of the corporation to break the rules or take advantage of the decision making power, I'm sure there are plenty of example as well.
But on average I would expect most people join the boards in a good faith effort to protect their own investments and the common interest of all owners.
If living by this set of community rules isn't for you, then don't buy into a condo or HOA. But if you want the advantages of what a HOA/Condo provides, understand the risks, sometimes don't mind volunteering the work yourself (join the board), then a condo or HOA might be for you.
And try and give those random strangers some credit, and understand that they're probably making the best decisions they can on the information they have available to them (doesn't mean be hands off or not to ask questions, just make a good faith effort). They might also be tackling significant problems, like a health crisis, or having to lobby the government to prevent a 39% increase in utility rates by reclassifying the common elements from residential to commercial utility rates.
s.17(3) of the act: The corporation has a duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the owners, the occupiers of units, the lessees of the common elements and the agents and employees of the corporation comply with this Act, the declaration, the by-laws and the rules.
People use "neighbors paint their house pink" as some sort of canonical example here, but I've lived in neighborhoods with pink houses and ugly houses and unkempt lawns and so-over-the-top-it-borders-on-creepy Christmas decorations and it has never bothered me enough to care.
Why does it actually bother you?
It's an expensive durable good, policy should be focused on making it cheaper over time.
(while maintaining or increasing suitability/utility, not by letting it decay)
My argument is that treating housing as an investment drives costs up over time and that at a policy level we should not seek to do that, we should seek to lower the cost of housing (while maintaining quality and so on).
In terms of policy I totally agree, but as an individual, nothing has done more for my personal wealth than my real estate transactions. Of course, a lot of that is my location, but in general, real estate (much like stock) goes up.
Depends entirely on what the particularly awe inspiring monstrosity is.
Obviously I don’t have any issues with it in a practical sense. It’s just the difference between hanging a nice oil painting and the latest abstract fetish. Some people love it, and others do not.
If it’s on the outside of the house everyone has to enjoy it regardless of whether they want to do so.
While I’m mostly on the side of letting someone do what they want, I think there is a limit.