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Question out of curiosity: I’m German so I don’t know the US law that well but don’t you for example have laws that forbid being noisy after a certain hour of the day?

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.

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It depends on where you live. In an incorporated area (town/city) generally yes. An issue though is in a city the enforcement of these kinds of things can be low priority, an HOA is generally more effective from that standpoint.

Local noise ordinances are only as effective as the police force which enforces them. Where I live, the police do not take this responsibility seriously. The hammer of the HOA is a necessity to ensure that peace and quiet is maintained.

You could also swap out the sheriff, there's a vote for that. Conversely, I once rented from a landlord who was financially overextended, and the first sign of that was that he stopped paying for trash removal. The following week, the heating failed. One call to code enforcement (this was NY State) was enough to get things fixed until we moved out. It's hard to imagine tenant's safety and comfort to be high priority in a HOA, their purpose is to keep property values up.

I'm in Sydney Australia and whole-city laws cover noise. Yes, Police can be called for excessive noise outside the permitted hours.

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.

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