Posted on 11/28/2022 7:20:39 AM PST by george76
I own a second home in Pagosa Springs, CO. A couple years ago the HOA for Pagosa Lakes went full dictator and declared war on short term rentals in Pagosa Lakes. We home owners were not able to vote on this; they simply declared it with minimal input from the owners. When I sent a scathing letter that included the “damn” word I was informed of another policy they enacted without input. If they don’t like your correspondence you are subject to a $500 fine for the first offense, $10,000 for the second and $20,000 for the third. Gee, what kind of message is that sending?
You can still offer up your home in Pagosa Lakes for a short term rental, but first you must buy a special expensive permit from the HOA and the county assessor will reassess your home at TRIPLE the market value and you will be taxed accordingly. Mission accomplished: most owners opted out of short term rentals.
When I bought my place five years ago approximately 70% percent of the homes in Pagosa Lakes were second homes for people living elsewhere (mostly Texas, according to our real estate agent), and I doubt that has changed much. This is what is called a resort community. Many of us purchased homes here because we wanted the option of short term rental income. The Board of Directors for the HOA laughably tried to rationalize their decision. The real reason is pure NIMBY; they and their friends can’t stand Texas riff-raff in Pagosa.
The Board says local workers cannot find affordable housing due to the homes being used for AirBNB. Sorry Board, not my problem. You are my HOA, not a social outreach program that I sponsor with my dues. I drove an hour each way to my job for most of my life and I had roommates until I was forty years old. You want to live in a resort community or other desirable place you got to suck it up.
Does the Board REALLY think those AirBNB homes will convert to long term rentals? Of course not! Those idiots know we want to visit our second home frequently and don’t want someone living there full time (whoops, give me a minute while I whip out a check for 500 clams, or am I up to ten grand?).
So how has this played out? No post-Covid recovery for Pagosa. The short term renters used to come in and spend like drunken sailors. It being a vacation they would bring extra money. They’d load up at the pot shops and the liquor stores because you can’t get pot in Texas, and because beer, wine, and liquor costs 30% more in The Lone Star State. They would ski at the nearby resort, because, you know, skiing sucks in Texas and they would enjoy the famous Pagosa hot springs. Imagine the rage this causes the Board. Texans in our hot springs! Gross!
Now the small businesses still surviving are largely up for sale. On top of that, 70% of the homes and businesses going dark in Pagosa attracted the tweakers from Durango, Sante Fe and Taos. Our home was recently broken into by a pair of meth heads from Taos, one of whom is currently in jail there. They lived in our shed for a week or two getting high on hand sanitizer and leaving a pile of cigarette butts and beer cans and broken glass on two doors. The responding sheriff’s deputies said this problem spiked shortly after the Board’s decision to eliminate short term rentals and is a continuing problem throughout Pagosa Lakes.
...
So the geniuses solved the worker rental housing crisis by eliminating many of the jobs. I picture the Board members sitting blissfully on their deck in the pines, wearing their masks, relieved at not having to hear rednecks or local workers living it up next door.
I offered this story to two “newspapers” in Pagosa Springs and received no replies. It probably radiated like nuclear waste from their screens, a veritable Cleveland Steamer. You see, advertising (i.e., survival) for these corndog wrappers comes mostly from the huge number of real estate firms in town. God forbid word gets out to potential buyers that the local HOA is fascist as Hell and does whatever they want with YOUR home and your home is not safe from tweakers.
It distresses me that I cannot ask these town newspapers to pursue important stories that affect their community. Their interests lie elsewhere.
You just described the situation my wife and I are in right now.
We bought our Condo in 2004, the complex built in 1989 had one building with 21 units, only one family lived there full time, quite often my wife and I would be the only people at the complex, in 2006 because of the building boom, 3 new buildings were built, now we have 78 total units.
Now we have 2 separate HOAs, one for building 1 and one for buildings 2,3,4.
Our building doesn’t allow short term rentals, 3 month minimum, but we had very few snowbirds coming down.
The other buildings allow one week and shorter rentals.
It’s worse in the summer when people rent a unit for 1 week for vacation, because they can’t really afford the rental, they pack 2 families into one unit and treat the place like it’s a pig pen.
I don’t really like the Snow Birds either, but at least they are older and retired and rent the units for 3-4 month and treat the complex like they live there, not something to be abused and discarded like the weekly summer renters.
Never ever buy property with an HOA.
You seem stressed.
My HOA allowed me to have a birdfeeder... until a new neighbor complained.
If you buy a home with HOA covenants, YOU DON’T OWN OUR HOME, PERIOD.
Sure, technically your name is on the deed, and you have to pay the taxes, but you don’t own it... When others can tell you what you can or cannot do to your property, how can you remotely claim you “own” it?
Some of the dumbest HOA board members I've come across are "conservative people" who refuse to enforce rules that they are obligated through their fiduciary duties to enforce. It was one attorney who specializes in HOA law who said it best:
"If you don't force one homeowner to remove the Ohio State flag that violates the HOA rules, you'll never be able to go back six months later and tell the guy next door to him to take down his Nazi flag."
I used to live in an HOA neighborhood. First thing they did to piss me off was to say that we couldn’t have a potted plant sitting in front of the house.
'nuff said
> There are always ways to get people to leave. <
Yes. My friend in post #28 is very fond of guns. To this day I’m surprised he didn’t resort to violence to eject his Airbnb squatter. Maybe he wanted to spare his wife if things got wildly out of control.
I want the secrets of how someone grows a weed plant in under a couple of weeks.
That’s ludicrous. It’s like saying you don’t own your home if it is located in a town with a zoning code.
My neighborhood has a community club... (no HOA thank goodness) just a volunteer organization who does things...
Well the old guard complained for years that the younger folks weren’t getting involved, finally younger folks came and took over, and long story short there was a contentious issue that divided the neighborhood because the way the old Community Club had been handling things (financially 501c3) had actually been violating some laws (unintentionally, but still, had been doing so)... the new board tried to do things the right way, which caused a huge schism...
Needless to say the new folks got fed up with the BS and all quit... now the club is back to the old guard who are slowly dying and the younger folks now, truly do want nothing to do with it.
Not all of them, I've been in one for over 20 years now and they've been great.
When I first moved in there was one elderly jerk on the board but he was usually over ruled and eventually voted off.
As far as banning rentals, I can understand that. We had two cases where the houses were rented out and the renters trashed them.
I’ve been to numerous HOA meetings that nearly came to blows.
Our primary residence is in a gated community with 24/7/365 security with a guard and gates to get in/out.
Since our neighborhood has very little common area, the majority of the HOA fees cover the cost of security.
We had a couple of owners years ago that began complaining about how much of the HOA fees were going to security and wanted to get rid of the guards and go to security gates only.
We had near universal attendance at the next HOA meeting, the response overwhelming to keep the security guards and the complainers could kiss our collective ass, in that case it was a beautiful thing.
The leader of the Malcontent faction complained that the HOA had been financially mismanaged for years. One of the Veterans pointed out that he just got on the board last year -- and SHE HERSELF had been the president of the HOA board for 8 years prior to that.
Is this guy wanting folks to feel sorry for him.
You bought a “rental/income property”, not a second home, in a place controlled by the locals that live there.
Bad on him for thinking that they’d allow landlords to do what they want.
Back to the article...
The short term renters used to come in and spend like drunken sailors. It being a vacation they would bring extra money. They’d load up at the pot shops and the liquor stores because you can’t get pot in Texas, and because beer, wine, and liquor costs 30% more in The Lone Star State. They would ski at the nearby resort, because, you know, skiing sucks in Texas and they would enjoy the famous Pagosa hot springs. Imagine the rage this causes the Board. Texans in our hot springs! Gross!
Hmmmmmm....spend like drunken sailors and for damned sure act like them. Houses full of drunk and stoned Texans and I’m sure they just all sat in their rentals and meditated. I’m betting that subdivision was an unmitigated disaster come ski season. And the renters didn’t have any f**ks to give. They were there for a weekend or a week. Ski all day. Get drunk as hell and stoned to the bejesus, pack their stuff and head home. Leaving behind a train wreck. While, there were some folks there, that actually lived there, had to go to work in the morning and had a family.
Thanks for pointing this out. I was wondering whether the HOA in the article was running rampant over Colorado law since I knew here in Florida there are restrictions on HOAs.
I understand why the HOA would want to have some control over short term rentals but there are ways to go about that which balance the community way of life with a property owner’s use of their property. In my opinion one way would be to clearly define short term rental to require a minimum 1 week rental. Another way would be for the town (not the HOA) discuss whether such rentals should be subject to impact fees. Simply punishing the property owner is the wrong (and possibly illegal) solution.
I don’t feel too sorry for the author he probably should have bothered to find out if the HOA had violated any laws or covenants.
But if you want to live in a guard gated community -- a very good thing in these days of rising crime -- you can't avoid an HOA.
Let me ask Audrey.
Short term rentals or long term?.............
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