I lived under one for 2 decades. Never again.
They’re endemic where I live now, unless I wanted to move to the boonies, along with all the javelina, rattlers, scorpions, etc. No thank you.
I have said people need to start anti-HOAs.
These look like HOAs but they have no powers, expressly no way to amend their charters to add powers, no fees as well.
The only things the anti-HOA might do could be rules for a quarterly or so pot-luck picnic ... that way it did SOMETHING so if folks the street over started getting uppity you could say: no thanks, we actually have an HOA of our own.
It would be like incorporating a neighborhood so a nearby town couldn’t gobble it up.
Might as well rent an apartment or condo if one is considering an HOA.
The last thing I ever want is neighbors demanding or telling me to do ANYTHING. No way I’d ever buy into that.
If you have a street that naturally isolates itself, like up against a state park of near meadows, I highly suggest it. We did keep a law firm on retainer on any and all matters. The same law firm who had two partners on our private gated street. It does somewhat limit resale base of buyers however. It appeals to folks who think different.
Hopefully as the bottom falls out of the housing market the douchebags in the HOAs will get some comeuppance. Like empty unsold properties bleeding developers dry.
These people will be the ones to turn us all in when the time comes.
No problems with mine.
Never join an HOA. Never buy a house that already in an HOA. Little Hitlers. Its like high school and cliques and all that BS.
One time about 15-20 years ago I started getting emails from a private email discussion group. It was a bunch of people in south Carolina and they were discussing, plotting and planning how to perform a coup against their HOA.
I wrote an email to the group, telling everyone that I wasn’t a resident of their community or even their state. And they were including me in their email discussion. As it turned out, the reason why I was getting their emails was because I shared the exact same username of one of the co-conspirators. But his email domain was email.com and mine was gmail.com. Somehow one of their administrators changed it. They changed it back and I stopped getting their emails.
I do not know how their anti-HOA coup turned out.
I am mystified why anyone would want to have an HOA. What purpose do they serve other than to control how you live in your own home?
I used to live in empe AZ. There wasn’t an HOA, but the socialists city council acted as if there were.
Everyone wants a tyrannical organization as long as they get to run it, assist it, believe they benefit from it. They, as is human nature, never think what happens when tyrant focuses on them. I find that most people that are pro tyrannical HOA are women who will use gossip, shaming and rallying for their cause. Basically they make up false but damaging stuff, try to isolate their targets from supporters, then rallying the peripheral members of their power base in order to keep control and force others to fall in line or leave.
The actions of this particular HOA are totally out of line. We live under an HOA and I don’t mind it so much but we knew the rules before we bought. It is expensive, but it does keep the neighborhood nice looking. The restrictions are reasonable in our case. All the homes are custom, no two are alike, and you kind of need some rules to keep somebody from doing something weird.
Something doesn’t sound right, what I think happened was there was a rider on the deed for the property that said that once so many properties got sold at homeowners association would be established and there were Covenants that were adopted by the construction company as holding the covenants in trust until the homeowners association got created. So a lot of times at closing there’s no indication that there is a homeowners association but on the title it indicates that there are Covenants and at closing as part of the title insurance you should have signed a document recognizing what the covenants were and that you were recognizing their authority over the deed for the property that you were acquiring. This would have happened at the property close not necessarily at the closing on the house if you did a construction loan for your property separate it just depends on how the close was transacted. The construction company is the one that would have gave it approval for the basketball court and everything else, you can’t establish a homeowners association unless there was an ongoing Covenant right or on the deed that enabled that otherwise the homeowners association would have been informed from all the property owners which they can choose to do, why I don’t know but that’s what happens a lot of times. So I’d go back and look at your deed and look at the Covenants, I bet they were there the whole time and they just got overlooked. I bet they even have the homeowners signature on the paperwork.
Some people love being controlled by others, or they percieve they are the ones doing the controlling.
Glad to know what a HOA is.
My daughter is buying a house in a little town in Indiana. She ensured the house was not in a HOA area, but I’m going to show her this posting so she’ll know what to do if one ever moves into her neck of the woods.
Our semi rural neighborhood formed a neighborhood association to deal with an external problem, it was a good sign nobody wanted to be president so we drew straws, and once the problem was solved we disbanded it. We recently started it back up again because it gave us leverage on getting county maintenance done.
I lived in Reston, VA.
I found RHOA to be reasonable but time-consuming to deal with.
I once painted a fence what I thought was the cluster color but was told it was not.
I’m not too happy about the solar mess my Florida neighbor put on his roof. I realize he makes a living put on roofs and solar panels but ugly is ugly.
Virginia law required me to provide RHOA documents to the buyer. It cost me $100 in 1992.