Posted on 11/20/2013 2:45:59 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
If I’ve learned anything from this site over the years, it’s that homeowners’ associations are evil and to be avoided. Sometimes you don’t have a choice, though: the home of your dreams or basic neighborhood amenities require it. And sometimes, as one Kentucky woman discovered, not joining the HOA means you can lose your house. If that sounds farfetched, well, a quick look through the Consumerist archives shows us that it’s happened before. In one horrific case, a man set his house on fire after a court awarded ownership of it to his HOA over a dispute regarding…unpaid dues and fines he racked up during a dispute over a fence.
This happened in Lexington, Kentucky. According to TV station LEX 18, the 75-year-old bought the house back in 2007, but works as a horse trainer and isn’t home all that much. Apparently she didn’t have anyone grabbing her mail: the HOA claims that they’ve sent her dozens of letters and legal summonses since 2009.
The HOA dues in her neighborhood? $48 per year. She owes a total of $288. The homeowner says that she just tossed the letters she received, assuming that the HOA was some kind of social organization that collected money from residents to access the pool or something. “I didn’t know it was mandatory to join this…homeowners’,” she says with some distaste. “I told them, I’m not joining.”
The good news, if there is any in this situation, is that the company that now owns her house did not immediately throw her out in the street. Also, she did get some of the proceeds: about $80,000. She paid $125,000 cash up front for the house in 2007, and that’s about what the house should have sold for today.
HOAs do often foreclose on abandoned homes, but there’s a difference between “owner is frequently away on business and not good about reading her mail” and “owner has completely abandoned her house.”
But in this case? The woman is an idiot.
More here.
http://www.lex18.com/news/lex-18-investigates-small-debt-costs-lexington-woman-her-home
LEX 18 Investigates: Small Debt Costs Lexington Woman Her Home
Ingrid Boak did not realize participation in her homeowner’s association was mandatory. It seems like a minor oversight, but it was a mistake that ultimately cost the 75-year-old German immigrant her Lexington home.
The Masterson Station Neighborhood Association sold Boak’s house on Winding Oak Trail last month after she failed to pay six years worth of membership fees - or $48 per year.
Now, Boak is packing up a lifetime worth of memories and keepsakes while she prepares to find a new place to live. Meanwhile, she is renting her home from the company that bought the property, for which she paid $125,000 in 2007.
“I’m paying rent on my own house...” she said. “There is something wrong with that system.”
The homeowner’s association and attorneys sent at least 20 letters, notices and summonses to Boak’s home since 2009, but the some of the mail never reached her, according to court documents. Boak, a horse trainer and business owner, is rarely home.
When letters did reach her, Boak says she threw them away because she thought the homeowner’s association was a solicitous social group, and the $48-per-year was a fee to use the pool. She paid cash up-front for her house, and no one explained to her that the fee was mandatory, she said.
“I’m very cautious how I spend my money,” she said. “If it is frivolous, I don’t go for it.”
She acknowledges that was a mistake, but she said she can’t come to terms with the fact that her home was legally sold without her permission, or even her knowledge. She was first alerted to the sale when a neighbor found a note taped to her door from the buyer, who paid $93,500 for the house at a Master Commissioner’s sale.
“I believe that if a house can be sold without me personally getting something in my hand or signing something ... it is almost like communism,” Boak said.
Nathan Billings, an attorney for the Masterson Station Neighborhood Association, said the association did not know anyone lived at the house. The court appointed a “warning order attorney,” whose job it is to make an effort to track down defendants in debt cases.
The warning order attorney also tried reaching Boak by certified mail, but the letter was returned. Despite a warning from that attorney that Boak “has not been notified of the nature and pendency” of the foreclosure, the case proceeded anyway.
The home was sold and the proceeds were divided up, according to court documents, among the homeowner’s association, attorneys, the master commissioner and Boak. Boak received about $88,000 from the sale of her house, about $40,000 less than it was worth.
Routinely, homeowner’s associations foreclose on abandoned homes once the owner has moved away or died, and those cases proceed much the same way as Boak’s - with numerous letters sent out and no reply.
“Because of her failure to respond, the association had no way of knowing otherwise,” Billings said.
However, Billings said he didn’t know if anyone from the homeowner’s association asked any of Boak’s neighbors if she still lived there.
Jeff Jackson, who lives next door to Boak, said no one ever asked him if the home was vacant.
Jackson, a Lexington police officer, said it was common knowledge that Boak lived there, at least among her next-door and across-the-street neighbors.
He said he and others mowed her lawn and kept an eye on her property when she was travelling the country with her racehorses, and Boak would often leave presents and keepsakes for his kids when she was home.
“It’s really a shame that such a quiet, sweet lady is getting put out on the street,” he said.
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OK, maybe I was harsh in calling her an idiot. That depends on how long she has lived in this country. She may have just arrvived from Germany and had NO CLUE how real estate works here in the US.
Damn ...
How do you buy a house without knowing about the homeowners association? I wouldn’t want to live in an HOA community, but she must have known going in that there were HOA dues, and just chose to ignore them.
Happened to some guy too. Rather than turn it over to the HOA he burned it down. Or up. Whichever.
Hi Buddy!
HOA’s are commie organizations usually ran by Nazi wannabes.
Only morons live with one in my opinion.
good grief
If you don’t want to abide by HOA agreements DON’T BUY A PROPERTY IN A HOA NEIGHBORHOOD
It’s hard to feel sorry for people this stupid
Exactly. I can just about guarantee you that the necessary HUD forms signed at closing disclosed she was buying into a HOA. The article indicates she is stubborn and she threw away the letters and legal notices she received in the mail.
Bad idea.
When you “buy” a house that is under a HOA, you aren’t owning the house - you’re leasing it for whatever amounts to the HOA’s whim. Likewise when you have to pay “property taxes” in a country you “own” land in. You don’t own land in such a jurisdiction if you pay periodic rent in the name of taxes, which is pretty much in all of America.
What amazes me is the HOA’s action when the amount, while ignored by the owner, was not really very much when the HOA foreclosed. Our HOA’s first foreclosure started a couple of years ago, after one owner (who rented the home out) intentionally didn’t pay for over 3 decades, just letting the liens and interest pile up until it was over $40k. With attorneys fees a bit more. They collected it all.
Makes sense actually.
Where I come from a summons has to be served in person. I think these news stories are leaving out some information in order to get people agitated.
It's not the dollar amount, but the amount of time spent in arrears. She would have been informed of the HOA and her obligations to it at closing - and if not then, then certainly via her mail received at the house. Going 2+ years w/o paying on her obligation means her past-due bills went to court, then again when a lien was placed on her house, then again when her home was put up for auction to pay off the lien. It's not about the money. It's about the repeated avoidance of responsibility.
I know HOAs that themselves go into bankruptcy, defaulting on their own debts because the HOA won't take that final action to collect on years-delinquent accounts. I have little sympathy for the homeowner for allowing her property to go into foreclosure because she can't be bothered to pay $48 a year. She had multiple chances to make it right, and she failed every one of them.
Those who don’t want to be subject to a homeowners association should not move into a neighborhood subject to one. Easy.
People that but homes knowing it's a HOA get what they deserve.
BTW, who grants HOA's authority to seize property?
She paid cash, so maybe there weren't any forms. I wonder if she went through a title company.
Agreed! Ignorance is no defense, if it applied here at all, and HOAs are specifically created for these instances.
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