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Comment by satori99 | Hacker News Reader

Can I ask what a HOA is for and what it does? I don't think they exist in my country. We have body corporate entities for strata title blocks, but freestanding houses pay rates to local government directly for services.

Does a HOA provide garbage removal, street maintenance, etc?

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The nominal answer is that HOAs are membership associations to which owners in a condo building or neighborhood are sometimes obligated to join. The homeowners pool dues every month to cover things like garbage collection, building maintenance, etc. The HOA also acts as a governing body over the building's residents, and is free to impose any number of rules and restrictions on usage, design, etc., in anything defined as a "common area" (chiefly, any part of the building that is outside the airspace of the condo interiors). Some HOAs set additional restrictions on what you can do inside your condo, provided that activity, construction, design, etc., affects the neighboring units in any way. Above and beyond their common-area jurisdictions, many HOAs are free to establish "house rules," which are arbitrary and binding restrictions on just about anything that the HOA board happens to dislike.

The cynical answer is that HOAs are legal fictions set up to shelter building developers from the financial burdens and liabilities of having to pay for, or be on the hook for, any of those services or maintenance needs. HOAs are the greatest invention in favor of real estate developers since the timeshare.

I'm not entirely sure if this is different in the US, however where I live (The Netherlands) the owners make up the HOA in the end. So if a majority of the owners doesn't want a specific rule or board member it's easy (and possible) to override that decision and put a new/better board member there.

Where I live the HOA board only gets to decide on the 'small stuff' (for big purchases like said Pool renewal above they still need a majority vote.) I try to 'activate' HOA members (everyone that contributes) and remember them that a HOA is made up of its members in the end. If you don't like anything about it you should either talk with your HOA representative / board member AND/OR contribute by opting to become a board member yourself.

Source: I'm one of the five HOA board members in our small (60apt) apartment building.

HOA systems vary pretty dramatically in the US, in terms of how they operate exactly.

Some HOAs operate by pretty weak by-laws, and can only decide trivial things. Others have obnoxious levels of control.

Typically an HOA board consists of community members or home owners (if that's the type of development), and sometimes a company that either developed (and owns) the neighborhood or one that manages it will have seats.

Some HOA boards are easy to toss out, others are not.

The vast potential variances make it important to try to get to know more about the HOA ahead of time if you're thinking about moving into a development with such.

So do you rent the buildings from the HOA? Or do you own them? And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?

As I understand it, it can be either case. Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it, probably some obscure law, but it's obvious enough if you're renting from them.

> Not sure how they can screw you around if you own it

The sale of the residence includes (and requires) contracting with the HOA.

> probably some obscure law

No need for laws, you've signed a contract.

They can screw you around pretty easily and legally, even if you are an owner. They levy fines for noncompliance, and if you don't pay the fines and comply, they can put liens on your property -- even if you own the property outright. It's all part of the contract you enter into upon purchasing the property. Membership in the HOA is compulsory in many cases, and your purchase of the property comes with the obligation to join the HOA and be subject to its Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions (CC&Rs).

So why in the hell would you sign that sort of deal in the first place? Well, if you don't have to, you shouldn't. But in some cities, such as SF, it's extremely hard to buy a condo that doesn't come with an HOA.

HOAs are as prevalent as they are because in most cases they are highly beneficial, both legally and financially, to building or subdivision developers. So more and more developers are using them.

> So do you rent the buildings from the HOA?

You buy from the developer or the previous owner.

> And surely if you own them, they have no legal right to tell you want to do unless it breaks the law?

Membership to the HOA is required by and included into the building sale, contracts are binding.

You own the property same as you would without an HOA. They are a form of real covenant [0], are tied to the property, and are enforceable against any owner of the property. In the US, the bundle of covenants used are also referred to as "deed restrictions". [1]

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_%28law%29#Covenants_re...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Covenant_%28law%29#Covenants_in...

I mostly agree with you, my HOA is more of just a community group for our subdivision (or development if you're an east coaster). Members of the board live in the neighborhood and they encourage everyone in the neighborhood to hold a position at some point (2 year term). Our fees are only over 100 bucks a year and cover maintenance of the common areas and the like. We meet once a year, vote on a few things (like to have a spring cleaning event where we rent a dumpster for the community). That's about it. I was afraid of buying a house that had an HOA but I'm ok with the way ours is done, no company owns it just the community.

A collection of people in your building who have nothing fulfilling in their own lives, and thus relish the prospect of telling you how many flowers you can have in your front window or how heavy your dog can be. They manage the common property, services and insurance for a building where there is a tenancy-in-common situation, like a condominium. They are usually elected, although the people who would run for this kind of position tend to be the last people you want to have any kind of power.

They were largely meant for keeping black (or jewish) people from moving into neighborhoods (and called "white homeowners associations.") They also set up common standards for yard maintenance, how your house could be painted, parking, visitors etc. - and were a vehicle for cooperating to invest in shared neighborhood infrastructure. Everyone signed an agreement which gave the HOA legal claim against the homeowner for violations of those standards, and when you sold your house, the prospective homeowner would have to be approved by the HOA and would have to sign the same agreement.

Like many bureaucracies, they survived the obsolescence of their original purpose. They provide little beyond (sometimes) a way to arbitrate homeowner disputes.

Huh? What HOAs are you talking about? At least in Texas, every HOA I know of is just allowed to pass rules about upkeep of a persons property (they also manage community resources). They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area. Also, HOA rules can never supersede any local/state/federal law/ordinance.

> Huh? What HOAs are you talking about?

http://depts.washington.edu/civilr/covenants.htm

> They have zero say about who can and cannot live in a given area.

Because they've been barred to by the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Parent said "they were", not "they are".

Homeowner association http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

I've always assumed it was the equivalent of Australia's strata management fees and the resulting decisions you get with strata-titled properties.

Sadly, I think any time you have amateurs involved with administration and decision making, you cop the resulting amateur politics and it can quickly make the process miserable.

I wonder if somehow anonymising the process and removing personalities could even help? Leave it purely about the issues, funds and votes?

It's like a Body Corporate, but they tend to be a lot more intrusive, both in their reach and how much they wield their power. They do stupid shit like fine people for not having perfect grass, even during droughts, that sort of rubbish. They also tend to have more power to approve who lives in the building/complex, rather than just what you can and can't change on the property.

HOA's are generally required to maintain community storm drains. They also perform other functions like maintaining common areas such as pools and enforce conformity requirements as decided by the community. HOA members are exempt from certain taxes and pay assessment fees to the HOA to provide these services.

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