Posted on 11/20/2013 2:45:59 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
Don’t blame you if you refuse to put up with a home owners’ association BUT
I’ve been on the board of a small association and have been on FR for a good twelve years.
All of the board members I’ve worked with had a simple goal—a liveable neighborhood with as few and as reasonable regulations as possible. I’ve seen none of the petty tyrants often complained about and who no doubt exist. On the other hand, can you blame us if we don’t want cars on cinderblocks in front yards.
Guess what else? Our association wrapped up its annual meeting an hour ago. One of the current board members recently spent two days (during the daylight hours) doing landscaping that would have cost $900 if done by the landscaping contractor.
Our past president watched every penny as does the current board. The past president got along with nearly everyone except for one lady, now deceased from health problems and probable drug abuse, who, when asked to keep her garage door closed when inside the house (how unreasonable is that?) decided to place all her garage clutter on her driveway out of spite. The association had to take her to court. She then placed her belongings back in the garage and, when all was said and done, I don’t know if she had to pay the association’s legal fees. She was also consistently late with her dues.
I can understand the points some have made. In my neighborhood, you can buy houses two streets away and be free of any association.
As a local tea party member, I’m completely opposed to ICLEI and Agenda 21 and have worked to elect a board of supervisors member who holds similar positions.
There are plenty here on FR who are brighter than I am and have more practical skills as well but, I’m no moron, having scored a 1350 on the old SAT in 1966.
Buying a home with HOA is a nightmare waiting to happen.
Small minded people with a little authority going out of control.
while I can see an HOA (if someone is dumb enough to buy a home that has deed restriction requiring membership in an HOA) being able to go to court for the debt of unpaid HOA dues, but an HOA, unlike the governmental unit that property taxes are paid to, is, to my mind NOT a party to whom a debt owed to them should be collectible by TAKING THE PROPERTY.
They could place a lien on the property, which would require that lien be paid IF AND WHEN, AND OUT OF THE SALE OF THE HOUSE, WHEN THE PERSON SELLS THE HOUSE, but such a lien should not, unlike unpaid property taxes, be cause to FORCE that sale (for a $248 debt).
With HOS fees that low, there is clearly NOT a hell of a lot that the HOA is providing.
MOST of what MOST HOAs do IS NOT in the area of what services they provide, but in their Nazi-like rules about
what the HOMEOWNERS CANNOT DO. Their biggest goal is in preserving the utopian cookie-cutter look of the neighborhood as designed and planned by the developer.
We lived in an HOA neighborhood outstide of Houston, Texas once. Never again.
Nope. Rural Virginia.
Woman is at fault. Pretty simple.
I would rather live in a dumpster than be at the mercy of the wannabe tinhorn dictators of an HOA.
That is all. :)
I rather live under an interstate overpass than a place that has a hoa.
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.
This is the part that gets me - court was warned that she was not notified. No one asked the neighbors if she lived there. But the sale was allowed to go through.
Very little likelihood that our rural Virginia HOA would be able to stop stuff like that. They could send a sternly worded letter provided nobody on the board was friends with the dog trainer. We had a commercial dog trainer (hunting dogs) in our HOA.
Some posters don't seem to understand how HOA's originate. Basically if you want to subdivide a large property you must form an HOA or you don't get permission to do it from the county.
“The agents just gloss over the details and say sign here, initial there, sign here, etc. English is not her first language——”
—
So what. That’s the excuse a lot of people who should never have been given mortgages used.
That’s what lawyers are for.
Not one ounce of sympathy here.
.
Oh please. It says this woman was “frequently away on business”. Doesn’t sound like a poor, confused, immigrant to me. She knew there was an HOA moving in. She got many notices including legal notices from attorneys telling her she was up for foreclosure. She chose not only not to respond but not to even check it out. And she got most of her money back. She’s not a victim.
And double dumb ass on you too!
People who want an HOA also want to control their neighbors
:
I wish all the little control freaks lived in one place where
they could enjoy all the restrictive rules.And leave the rest of us free.
):
Can you e-mail me the name of your private benefactor? I'd like to snuggle up to this source of funding.
But until then, I suspect we will continue to have to provide for ourselves. And I don't really think you can come through with a name in any case.
I bought a hous
e in Wyoming back in 1990 and didn’t know that there was a HOA until after I moved in.
In fact, I'm wondering what a homeowner in an HOA gets for the $48/year that is paid in dues.
It did say there was a pool.
Well the information is in your deed and also in the title search information and usually you have to sign that you’ve read the HOA covenenants when you purchase property, so if people don’t know they are buying in a HOA neighborhood they didn’t read the paper work when they bought the place.
Usually it's the HOA's bylaws, the deeds of the individual homes, and the laws of the state in question that allow this.
In defense of HOA's I will point out that the whole concept of an HOA is very flawed in so many ways. As a result, state laws that apply to them are often very deficient in addressing common issues that are faced by HOAs themselves as well as by individual owners.
The most important thing to remember is that an HOA is usually a corporation constructed for the sole purpose of managing common areas and maintaining the property to a level of care specified in the HOAs governing documents. Because it's a corporation it is subject to Federal and state laws that often conflict with each other, and they are also subject to different aspects of real estate and corporate law that may not overlap very well.
If you pay only $450/year in HOA fees, I have to ask this: Does your association have other major sources of income that are used to pay for the common area maintenance?
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