Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mcv | Hacker News Reader

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HOAs are great and necessary for maintaining common property. For the building I live in, it would be awkward if everybody had to hire their own painters for the outside woodwork, for example. Parts of the building would be maintained poorly, and that ultimately affects everybody. If you want to change something structurally about your house (for example, we wanted to cut some windows in a blind wall), that could also influence the structural integrity of the building as a whole, so you need permission for the HOA for that (we did).

Our HOA does a lot more than that: organise the occasional party, drink, or movie, manage a street-side gallery that's part of the building, manage a commonly owned apartment that can be rented for guests or other purposes, etc.

But regulating people's gardens is just weird. Well, trimming the commonly owned greenery is also something the HOA members do together and we're always asked to help (and never do), and of course we discuss stuff that affects our neighbours with those neighbours, and we barely have gardens because we live in a city, but anything interesting garden-wise is generally welcomed. The idea of a HOA banning vegetable or eco-friendly gardens is nuts.

And this is in a single building. If you're talking US-style free-standing suburban houses, it quickly gets a lot more ridiculous.

We have the equivalent of HOAs in Norway, I think, for large buildings. You usually buy, not rent, an apartment, and the building has a board, or group of residents that manages the property, carries out infrastructure work (sewer and water plumbing, facade repairs, common area maintenance).

Usually when you buy the apartment you’re made aware of the outstanding balance on the building’s maintenance fund and everyone pays an equal share of this each month.

Sometimes they get a little picky on things but never to the craziness that I see in the US. Mostly it’s handled with common sense and the lives (and finances) of the residents in mind.

Most of these situations in the US are handled with common sense to the benefit of the residents. It's only the crazy overstepping situations you hear about because "community continues to exist peacefully" doesn't make the news.

If only people understood that principle applies to everything from child kidnapping by strangers to police brutality to voter fraud.

Our brains are primed for clickbait.

It’s essentially the same in the US for a large, multi-tenant building. Though in the US an apartment typically refers to a unit in a building with a single owner that rents the units and a condominium is a building where all the units are individually owned. In the latter case most states and/or municipalities require a condo association, much as you described, to jointly maintain the common elements of the building. Whereas in the case of an apartment building it’s much simpler as the owner of the building is responsible for all maintenance.

You're allowed to coordinate things with your neighbors without a HOA.

When we lived in an HOA, owners were responsible for their own paint, and I guess for their own tree work. (The builders planted a lot of Bradford pears, which are showy in the spring, but are structurally weak once they reach a certain height. It was not unusual to see about 30' of pear tree across somebody's lawn.)

> HOAs are great and necessary for maintaining common property

There is a fundamental, qualitative difference between rules and obligations for maintaining common areas, versus private ones. That for some reason both fall under the "HOA" term only confuses the discussion - it's not "a communal organization calling itself a HOA" that's the issue, but its intrusion on private property.

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