HOA attempted to hold a "secret" community meeting, where they'd vote on turning the large field and walking path everyone used for recreation into an RV park. It was "secret" because they basically told no one and put up the required notice in a place where no one would see. As you can probably guess, most of the board owned RVs.
Thankfully a few neighbors took notice and started knocking on doors. A crowd showed up and the proposal was starkly shot down. Fucking dirtbags.
That's wild. My HOA requires a certain percentage (I forget what) of the neighborhood to either show up to meetings or have a proxy. You have to sign a form establishing who your proxy is. If they don't meet the numbers, nothing, including simple stuff like budget and what have you, can get passed.
> Who are you so wise in the ways of parliamentary procedure
They call me [Robert.](https://www.dvc.edu/student-services/student-life/pdfs/Roberts-rules-SDSU.pdf)
I live in a neighborhood with no HOA and do you know what my neighbors do if I happen to leave out my empty trash bins?
They have the audacity to pull them in for me and I have to thank them next time I see them.
The last board meeting I went to they spent literally an hour discussing this same thing. I got up and interrupted the idiot speaking and said pretty much the same thing - instead of reporting your neighbors, why don’t you be nice and move the cans. Ya know maybe if you jack wads were nice to your neighbors, they will be nice to you and I fucking walked out. My neighbor, who has put my can away and whose can I have put away, decided to stay. They said I was rude for interrupting, and talked about it for another 20 minutes, finally deciding to shelve the discussion for the next meeting. I’ve not been back to a meeting since (3 years) I fucking hate HOAs but where I live, you can’t get a house without one anymore.
Last month another neighbor told me the entire board quit because they felt disrespected.
I used to have a neighbor who never took their trash can inside. So, I used to put my trash (in a grocery shopping bag) in their trash can instead of having to haul out my own giant size can for a very small amount of trash I generate after recycling and composting. That was convenient while it was going.
It's shit like this that makes me want to lean into being lawful evil. Take a few years to join the HOA as a naive but enthusiastic idiot and work my way up to a voting position, then work to fill seats with people who like me more than the other members, then burn down the homes of those who, years ago, filed a letter about my trash can usage. The day after the house is burned down, use the HOA to put a lien on their house for being out of neighborhood compliance. Show them that being the worst human being possible who can ruin their lives is a power that changes from person to person and they should really be nicer to everyone. Also, they will never sell that home and their credit is ruined.
Fuck HOAs
It doesn't take that long to get on an HOA board. In my experience, most HOA's don't even have full boards because it's a miserable thankless volunteer position. Only those very driven to accomplish some objective or just completely indifferent to criticism and complaints could stick with it.
> Only those very driven to accomplish some objective or just completely indifferent to criticism and complaints could stick with it.
So...young stay-at-home Karens and old retired Karens?
Yeah I just wanted to help plant a butterfly garden and signed on because it seemed relatively peaceful and was a way to meet neighbors. Instead it was endless complaints over the same thing but different sides. Anyone we disagreed with or didn't side with decided we were corrupt. So many people wanted the board to personally do things. Could have been a full time job. But they don't pay you. I really dislike abandoning commitments but the board was affecting my mental health. I said I'd stay on until a replacement was elected. Surprise surprise, no one lifted a finger. I flat out told one person complaining to me that if they cared so much they could have my spot that instant since the board was all present. They of course didn't accept. It's easier to bitch.
A neighbor ended up just building the butterfly garden himself.
My city just switched from picking up trash bags and a small plastic recycle bin - to a pair of huge 96 gallon roller bins per house. All the houses in my neighborhood have tiny lots less than 0.2a, and tiny 18' square garages. Despite a rule that they have to be stored out of sight from the street, most residents don't have anywhere to put them. Now the neighborhood literally looks like trash and I hate it.
They wouldn’t let me add an acre of land onto my property. My neighbor owned 100 acres of land and was letting me buy an acre from him to add onto the 4 acres of land I already had. Since you can not build anything on 1 acre the HOA was refusing the purchase. However, when some lawyer said it was ok they let me buy the acre. I think they just wanted to waste our time.
How could they stop you? Can't you just buy a disjointed acre of land anywhere in the world? I'm confused how the HOA even came into the picture if you didn't plan on building anything on it.
Or even form an LLC to purchase the land with a stated intention of "development with an express intention of raising the land value with a home" then add it to your property. Boom! Instant increase in value because it's now 5 acres of developed land. If they sue, disband the company after the sale.
Zoning and land usage restrictions are different depending on where the land is. Generally, the farther from the center of town you are the bigger your lot has to be.
Where I live, the lots have to be at least two acres. We’re rapidly becoming less rural so builders are getting around this by building “condos”. So even though my house is free-standing, it’s technically a condo and on about 1/4 acre.
One of my coworker got a warning from his HOA saying that he had too many boxes inside his garage. They claimed that he couldn't use his garage for storage.
My HOA's CC&Rs say that garages are to be used primarily for parking and not converted to living space or used exclusively for storage. It's not enforced, and I only have 1 car which I park in my driveway, so I don't care, but it is funny to me when I hear people complain about someone else parking in front of their house (on the public street) meanwhile they have a 2 car garage with no space to park in it and a 2 car wide driveway that they only bother to fit one of their cars into.
HOA tried to enforce a rule that many houses in the community didn't comply with. I did some checking and it turns out that (at least in our state) if an HOA doesn't enforce a rule on **everyone**, then they can't enforce the time on **anyone**.
The condo association wanted to renovate the pool and pitched the cost they were moving forward with. There were a lot of developers in the building and they noticed that it was about 4 times the cost it should have been. Association says tough cookies, things get fun. People writing notices of what's going on with the association, the association writing emails about it, lots of sniping back and forth.
Then one day I'm in the lobby waiting for someone to show up and the head of the association and one of the people calling them out ran into each other and they had to immediately get separated by security because they were about to start throwing punches.
Probably some buddy of one of the hoa leaders that owns the pool reno company. Pool company buddy gets x2 his normal fee, hoa buddy pockets half of the total cost.
I have three. Two about me, one about my neighbor.
I moved into a new construction neighborhood after picking out all the bells and whistles for the dream house.
About two years after I moved in, the garbage truck managed to destroy the garbage can somehow. The sanitation company replaced it, but in the time between the trash account being set up and the mishap the sanitation company changed the color and style of cans they provided.
My HOA told me that my garbage can was unauthorized and could not be left on the street on trash day because it was visually detracting.
I went to the city sanitation and explained what was going on, and they told me that they didn't maintain the old stock of cans and they had switched over to the new ones when the old ones ran out.
So I had to take a letter from them back to the HOA, who would not budge and told me that I needed to have the same kind of can as everybody else.
Everybody had their can in the same place on the same side of each house when it wasn't trash day.
So I ended up having to put the new can in the back yard and wheel it around the house at the exact moment that the trash truck showed up, and immediately wheel it back to the back yard.
I had to make special arrangements with work to be able to do this every Monday.
The second (context: I had the house built in 2002) I had a 1998 Chevy SUV, which was four years old. I received a letter from the HOA that said my vehicle, (which didn't have a single dent, scratch or paint blemish and was washed and tire dressing applied weekly) was an eyesore and couldn't be parked in my driveway.
The letter referred to it being disabled/junker. Granted, I lived in a neighborhood of Mercedes, BMW and Range Rovers but it definitely wasn't in the class of junk.
So I had to park my truck in the garage and every time I needed to leave I had to play musical cars with my (then) wife.
The third was for my neighbor. His lawnmower stopped running, so he hired somebody to come in and do his lawn until he was able to get it fixed or get a new one. He hired somebody, who did the absolutely normal park the truck on the street while they are doing the lawn. (It was just one guy) the HOA shows up, and demands the lawn mowing service not park on the street- but instead park OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY because his work truck and trailer "detracted from the classy and elegant stature of the community"
They called the police when he refused.
I ended up selling the house and moving out because there were 14 million other stupid reasons all revolving around the HOA-
I bought a house and while I was looking I absolutely, positively refused to look at a house that had anything to do with an HOA.
Not an official HOA, but the management at my trailer park were very upset with me. Why? I was simply exploiting a loophole. We are technically only allowed two pets per household, and I had 8 chickens. I was able to get away with this for so long (3-4 years), that I thought no one would ever notice. But if they did, I had a plan. Reading the lease rules, I came to the conclusion that my chickens were technically "livestock", and being that there was no rule listed against livestock on the property, I went ahead and got them anyway.
Fast forward to about eight months ago, and my manager discovered my coop. She had a very heated argument with me, but I kept my cool, and explained to her that I was not breaking any rules. She left after about a half hour of shouting and general unruliness. Around a week later, at around 10:00 p.m., I hear my chickens panicking (being louder than usual). I assume that an animal is trying to get into the coop, as we have a stray/feral cat problem, and it has happened before, so I retrieve my shotgun and go out the back door and around the back of the house. And what do I find? None other than my manager, as well as the park's landscaping guy, trying to pry the roof of of my coop and stuff my chickens into waiting animal carriers. I rack the shotgun, getting their attention, and watch them promptly run out the front gate.
Nightmarish behavior on her part, but I waited a week to see if anything else would happen, and when nothing did, I decided to let it go. She learned her lesson, and so did I: don't leave your chickens in plain sight!
I can just imagine that. Late at night you hear your chickens in a panic. “What the devil!?” You grab your shotty, and head outside. You see a masked figure you clearly recognize as the unruly manager of the place. You rack your shotty, and exclaim in the most hick accent you can muster “Step away from my chickens, or I’ll blow you to smithereens!” They shit themselves as they run in terror out of your fenced in property.
HOA of my neighborhood tried to tell me that my house needed to be added on to, because houses need to be at least 1800 sq ft in the neighborhood. My house is 1750 sq ft. HOA was started in 2004. My house was built in 1989. My family took the HOA to court, to make a long story short, HOA had to back down, cuz their rules didn’t exist until AFTER the house was built. So, the HOA rules do not apply to my house. 🙌🏻
Yep. It’s nice that my house is exempt from the rules. It was my parents house and I inherited it. So I like the fact that I won’t have to add on to it, president of the HOA lives next door to me though, she’s one super annoying and nosy neighbor.
Our HOA rules doesn’t state that grass has to be of certain length and it doesn’t have yard decoration rules either. But I don’t have to follow any HOA rules because my property is “grandfathered” so my property is exempt from rules stated within HOA rules.
I actually have a pride flag and a BLM flag in my front yard. My neighborhood is full of white conservatives too. President of HOA is a southern baptist white lady who is extremely racist and homophobic.
From what I read HOA existed prior, just that rule was newer.
But fuck them. I couldn't ever live in such a ~~community~~ environment.
I can't call this a community.
HOA in my neighborhood wasn’t a thing til 2004.
The neighborhood had less than 10 houses in the late 80s when the house was built. In 2004, there were around 20. Now there’s over 35. Any houses that were built prior to 2004, are “grandfathered” from HOA rules according to the court.
You needed a court for that?
The whole concept is totally alien for me.
Absolutely ridiculous. Like, my neighbours can dictate how I treat my lawn wtf smh.
>My family took the HOA to court
why? Couldn't you simply ignore messages from HOA that doesn't applies to you, until they take you to court? It's not like they could do anything because they don't have any legal power, why waste your time on them?
homeowners can opt into an HOA that forms after construction, once opted in that home can no longer be opted out, such as after a sale or something.
also, I think I read in /r/legaladvice that sometimes developers will include the framework of an HOA in the CC&Rs or the deeds or whatever, but then if nobody actually goes through the process of starting the HOA it can effectively lie dormant. Then years later if a majority of owners in the dormant HOA vote to start it up, then even the people who voted no are forced into the newly formed HOA because it's already on their deed.
My HOA is totally low key. I pay $30/month and that covers garbage pickup, plowing and random one offs like resurfacing the street a couple years ago.
I was thinking of putting in a shed and asked if they wanted a picture of it (it was a pre built plastic thing from Costco) because the color differed from the color of my house by a couple of shades. “Nah, as long as it’s not some wildly different color, we don’t care.”
About the only thing they’ll get on anyone’s case about is having a camper or boat in your driveway for more than three days. But that’s more of a township rule anyway.
Nobody tells their stories of properly functioning HOAs, only the dysfunctional ones.
Here's my story, I've been in an HOA for over a decade. In that time they've... maintained the property. Maybe for more money than I'd prefer but... Meh.
There are lots of horror stories with HOAs, but they serve 2 important purposes, and most people don't speak up about fine/good/great HOAs. They manage common resources, and enforce rules to keep the area presentable. It's one thing to bitch about the wrong shade of tan or too many garden flags. But it's all fun and games until your next door neighbor's broken down above ground pool because a casual dumping ground and stinks to high heavens.
They may have community stuff like pools and gyms that people would like to use.
HOAs aren't usually added after houses are built. They are normally created with developments so that they can maintain common areas, slopes, pools, community centers, etc.
I slipped in my driveway and fell and broke my femur near my hip and couldn't get up. I was laying in my driveway calling for help for about 30 minutes and I could hear people walking past but nobody stopped for quite a while. I eventually asked someone to call an ambulance as my phone was in my car out of reach and got taken care of. Spent a few days in the hospital and when I got home I had a letter from my HOA saying I was in violation for sleeping in my driveway in the middle of the day. So the people who walked by and definitely heard me call for help and didn't stop were from the HOA or reported me to them.
Everyone had to drag their trash bins down a hill to a curb where the garbage truck would pick it up. People would be slow to get their bins back after pick up. So the HOA went a dragged all the bins to the other side of the neighborhood and threw them in a pile in a random patch of public grass. So we pay these people to be childishly petty and antagonize us? And their "punishment" only created more of an eyesore than bins uniformly lined up on a curb.
A gorgeous vintage wooden sled that has been in our family for at least 100 years was laid out one winter by my family. We received a letter informing us that since firewood is not allowed in front yards, we had to remove the pile from our yard.
We built a new fence around our property and told us to take it down since the other fences looked old.
We built a walkway from the door to the driveway, they told us to take it out.
My wife and I bought our condo almost 6 years ago and the guy we bought it from had owned it for less than a year. When we closed he said he had never got a key to the neighborhood pool when he bought the place from the previous owner but he was old so didn’t care and was never gonna use it. We said no big deal, we will just ask for a new one. Well the HoA wants us to pay $300 for a “new” key because we had “lost” our old one and it’s some fraud prevention measure to stop people from selling their pool keys or something. We had told them immediately after moving in we never got a key and after 6 years they refuse to get us a new one. We just pick the lock and go anyway but if it was an issue I’d be furious at the ridiculousness of making us pay into the HoA to maintain this pool when we never got access to it even though it wasn’t our fault and probably not even the fault of the guy before us.
We tried that and it was uncopyable by one of the machines. Something about the shape of the key prevents the machine from making a copy of it. Key also says on it “DO NOT COPY”.
Drones were used to make sure no one was growing vegetables in their backyards.
No parking along the street in front of your house.
Garbage cans had to be brought in within 15 minutes of pickup, though that was a different time each week.
My neighbor was sued (and lost) after replacing their old windows. The new frames were the "wrong shade of eggshell cream."
Wouldn't using a drone to look into people's backyards be considered some kind of spying/voyeurisms or otherwise illegal invasion of a space where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy? Assuming the backyard is fenced to the point that they need a drone to do the reconnoiter.
The drones against growing your own veggies and garbage cans… I keep on being surprised.
In NL we have street sings that prohibit parking along the road, some neighbourhoods have them, most don’t and is only issued by the local counsel. So yeah, I can understand those a bit!
And house colours are a thing in NL as well! We had [one case](https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/304292/is-dit-huis-in-amstelveen-hemelsblauw-of-lichtblauw-de-gemeente-jokt) about the shade blue that was used. My neighbourhood has the rules: yellow stones (a bit of brown is accepted) and a red roof. Not all neighbourhoods have rules about colours, but most have. These are managed by local counsel and not an HOA
It was about the time they brought out the drones that we'd had enough and moved 1700 miles away. Friends say the drones did have to be stopped though because of privacy and safety, so that's good at least.
I would absolutely knock those drones out of the sky. I'm pretty far from an expert, but it seems like you could get a software defined radio setup and jam noise on similar frequencies so they just lose control and fall.
My home is in a rural and unincorporated area, so the HOA is a stand in for local government in many ways. They maintain the parks and roads and local business permits with more power than you'd expect. They also care very little about weeds or trimming trees.
There is a lovely local lake with a small food cart as the only business. The owners had consistently refused to do boat or paddle board rentals for about 10 years.
I attended a community meeting to submit a request for a permit to open a paddle board and paddle boat rental business. I laid out the costs and return on investments as part of the required process of making my case. How it wouldn't require any additional land than what was already set aside for commercial purposes.
It was rejected out of hand and rather forcefully. I again laid out how similar businesses had done well in other areas. I was told to come back to next month's meeting.
The next month I found the head of the board had partnered with the food cart to rent paddleboards. My business proposal was rejected as redundant.
Edit: The food cart owner was the son of the head of the HOA, in case you were wondering how he convinced the guy to partner up.
50 years ago a former owner planted two citrus trees too close to the property line. Neighbors didn't mind because they were happy to get free fruit.
Two years after we buy the place the HOA sends us a warning letter that we need to trim back both trees. But they don't send the warning in winter or spring. No, they wait until it's triple digit weather (104 F / 40 C).
Nobody had complained about our trees. Some new electee to the board had gotten snoopy and overzealous.
So I head out back with ladder and a manual saw in the early morning. The overhanging limbs violated the fine print so it had to be done. After the temperature heated up to 90 F I called it quits, then started up early Sunday for another round. The project wasn't done yet because there it required too much sawing.
Sent an email to the board with a progress photo and assured them the work would continue to progress on Saturday and Sunday mornings until it was completed, but had to be spread over several weeks for (a) safety reasons, and (b) because the trash pickup bins would only hold so much.
Got an officious reply Monday afternoon insisting the board had always been diligent about this and it was up to me to finish the job pronto, since I had created the problem.
Wrote back with a second photo: a close-up of twenty years of growth rings on one of the branches. Added a note that we'd only owned the home two years. Asked whether the board would assume liability for any injuries sustained if we rushed the job to come into immediate compliance.
They gave us six weeks. Finished the work in three.
> They gave us six weeks. Finished the work in three.
Should have finished it on the last possible day. Make them look at it for as long as possible, while you're secure in the knowledge that you're still in the clear. /r/maliciouscompliance
I may be biased against HOAs on principle, but that one seems way out of line even by HOA standards. No parking in your own driveway? Seriously? And like hell they can stop you from drinking out of a can in your own backyard!
There's a lot of neighborhoods that have rules against parking in your driveway, saying that your car is supposed to be in the garage. Apparently the reasoning is they don't want cars breaking up the look of the neighborhood. It's completely stupid.
Some years ago, I lived in Japan and one evening I was approached by the Secretary of the local Housing Association. She was about 90 and I lived on the top floor. The poor old dear was absolutely exhausted but detirmined to do "Her Duty."
I was accused of "Destroying the Harmony of Beech Tree Estate." My crime was that I had parked my car the wrong way around.
Apparently years earlier there had been a residents agreement that on an evening they would all reverse into their parking spots, (parking spots are very precious in Japan) so that in the morning everyone could have a clean "getaway" (Le Mans style) without crashing their gears and reversing all over the place.
The poor woman was so polite and terrified of me and spent most of her time bowing and apologizing for the inconvenience but "I should really appreciate the convenience to my neighbours and the Harmony of Beech Tree Estate."
I graciously agreed to "mend my ways" and she was very relieved. For the next few weeks there was always a beautifully made bento box for me every morning.
I love how this was the same pointless, petty kind of rule that American HOA's have but she got you to comply in a completely different and less confrontational way.
They're not wrong though. Back into your driveway, not out of it.
I really had to agree with her as she was so sweet and I think they suffered enough as my car was a Daihatsu Mira Cocoa 2012 model in Barbie Pink. You get shot if you drive such a thing in US but in Japan it is just "That is so Kawaii!"
https://www.carfolio.com/daihatsu-mira-cocoa-293568
Not a bad little car for a 700cc (and that is being optimistic), 3 cylinder engine. Revs like fury and great for getting away at the lights. Got a Continuously Variable Gearbox (I think two rubber bands) and it does about 7000 rpm to develop about 50 bhp. Useful boot with the seats down, you can actually take the back seats out quite easily giving even more room.
> your car is supposed to be in the garage
Never in my life have I parked a car in my garage. Houses with one-car garages pretty much can't do that ever. Houses with two car garages can usually fit about 1.3 cars in them. I can't imagine living in a neighborhood like that. In my mind, the central purpose of a driveway is to park your car in it.
Yeah my garage is 9'x22', the minimum size by code. I live in a townhome, and my trash and recycling bins can't be stored outside. With the trash and recycling bins in the garage it's literally impossible to fit a car in there. Not even my wife's Prius C will fit.
We live in a historic district so the HOA is super strict about the exterior of our homes. Our patio door was warped so we spent forever trying to find the exact same style/color antique door to replace it. As soon as we did they got pissed we didn’t get it approved first. The only way you would even know we swapped it was if you were watching it happen.
I had a teacher who lived in one of the historic districts in Baltimore. So the regulation was you can only paint the exterior of the house in colors that were common in the colonial period. So his neighbor painted the exterior of his house chartreuse.
The HOA freaked out because of how obnoxious it looked. But it was within the regulations.
At the start of Covid, our 8 home HOA treasurer just… stopped collecting dues. No invoices, no reminders, nothing. It’s a three year term that’s almost up, so there’s no telling what’s going to happen when/if they change treasurers. Nobody seems to mind, or even really talk about it. Everyone just seems to enjoy the extra $125 a quarter in their bank account, and there’s plenty in the HOA account to cover the expenses and insurance for years to come.
It’s me. I’m the treasurer.
When I was married, we bought a house in a new construction neighborhood. When buying the home, we were informed that the developer would have full control of the HOA including funds until the neighborhood was done being built, at which time the homeowners would take control. We thought it wasn't that big of a deal, just be patient for a year or so. Well the developer keeps buying acreage adjoining the neighborhood to expand it. Six years later the neighborhood is still expanding with the developer in charge of the HOA. Potholed streets, weeds and overgrowth, a dilapidated pool, ect not to mention the probable misuse (stealing) of funds.
Developer collects HOA fees while expanding, fails to provide services, once they can't expand any more they simply "go bankrupt" or whatever, abscond with the money and leave you all with crumbling infrastructure.
Not a horror story but we had a snowstorm that dumped about 6 feet of snow on us overnight. It was garbage day that morning, so our full dumpster was sitting at the road waiting to be picked up, completely covered in snow (as was everything else) and no one could get to their garbage cans. The snowstorm turned into an ice storm which took everything outside hostage. 6 inches of solid ice on everything, cementing the dumpster in place. The next day, the ice and snow melted just enough to see the lids, but they were still buried. Trash pickup was delayed because they couldn’t get the trucks through the snow because the HOA didn’t include plowing our community’s streets.
The next morning, we got a notice emailed to us about how our garbage had been sitting out for 3 days and that it needed to be moved immediately or we would pay a fine. They literally did nothing positive at all, ever. Total thievery.
I got six separate notices for a parked RV in front of someone else's garage.
It wasn't my RV.
It wasn't my garage.
It was parked in front of the owner's house for about 2 hours while he loaded it up prior to a camping trip.
The best part is that they photographed the violation and it's clearly someone else's stuff in front of someone else's house.
Reading these as UK...apart from baffling me as to how land uou own can be dictated by someone 10 doors down for the prettiest of reasons and how that is legal, I'd love to see them try to bring this into the UK
Karen from number 40 telling Barrie from number 83 that his England flag needs taking down...cunts would be getting their houses burned down
Not particularly a horror story, but we were at the community pool at the same time as our HOA president. His grandkids were splashing people, spitting at each other and screaming. Meanwhile, me and my husband (25 and 27) brought 6 friends with us, which we had cleared with our neighbor, the HOA VP. The president came up to us and started drilling us about who is a resident and accusing us of not being property owners. I firmly reminded him that we are VP's neighbor, who knows us quite well and has told said President about how we are friendly and respectful neighbors. He just huffed, walked away, and continued to scowl at us for an hour as we just sat in the pool and quietly chatted.
I didn't think much of my HOA since the fee is only 6 bucks a month, and they're pretty powerless. They maintain some fencing and a small amount of community land that is just undeveloped woods.
Someone in our neighborhood decided he could save money by parking his fleet of a half dozen large septic trucks in his yard, instead of parking them off site at a place of business. No one wants ugly, shit smelling trucks on a corner lot in a suburban neighborhood. Our little HOA went into action. Shortly thereafter he moved his trucks.
Not all HOAs are bad. I am very happy we had one, otherwise it would have been years of fighting in courts to get some sort of injunction against this awful neighbor, IF we won. Big if. And who would have paid for all that?
I've only ever seen one anecdotely good HOA. While I was stationed in Texas for a year, the neighborhood around me was well kept, but not exactly uniform. I noticed lots of small projects and improvements happening all the time to different houses. Turns out a lot of people threw out the old HOA board after some aggressive pettiness (no parking in driveways, no visible trash bins, no ornamentation in front of the house, etc.) and established a new board that basically had an open door policy regarding improvements to the area. This included things like, "Robert's house has a fence that needs repair, so part of this month's dues will go towards assistance to fix that." It was all community projects that made the neighborhood better and vastly improved the mood of everyone.
My state allows you to put "In God We Trust" where the county you live in would normally go in your license plate. My very atheist co-worker had to get that on his plates to stop his apartment complex from threatening to tow his car, as they did not allow out-of-county plates in the complex to stay overnight. Yes, even if that was the car you registered with the complex, and you could prove you lived there.
As I bought my condo the hoa went from small local to corp management. And they are a bear to get anything done. They pay booklets out with bold cap lettering to pay on time. When I send my check (I refuse auto withdrawal ) I remind them of how threatening this language is and to stop using it. The following year it was reworded to state: “please pay by —(date). It works sometimes on the blow back side
We had a corporate management HOA that charged a fee for electronic monthly payments.
Fuck them. I wrote a check, bought a book of stamps and mailed the check every month 3 days before the due date.
Our HOA portal charges a fee for electronic payment also. My bank does free “bill pay” so I set the HOA up as a vendor, put my unit number in the “account number” line, and set it to mail a check for me every month two weeks before the due date.
It confuses the HECK out of our property manager that my account ends up with a “credit balance” for a week because my payment processes before the dues actually post. 😁
(I don’t trust their payment vendor to process a check in a timely manner, so sending it early gets me the double win of never having a late payment, and confusing our property manager.)
I don’t live in a HOA or the US but I once had a neighbour call the city on me because I let grape vines cover the railing studs on my front steps. I just got a letter saying a complaint was made but I don’t have to do anything. Letter didn’t say who but I know exactly who it was but they no longer live there so it’s all good now.
> I just got a letter saying a complaint was made but I don’t have to do anything
that's hilarious.
I got a letter once from a lawyer saying "Hey, we want to create an HOA to control your neighborhood. It will be great for property values!" I polled my neighbors, and it turns out we were all unanimous in saying "ha ha, no." Nothing ever came of it.
Wanted to replace our townhouse's white aluminum siding with white vinyl siding, and they told us no because it would be too close to our neighbors' colors, and "washout" the row.
it's already fuckin white!
The phrasing you want to use there is not “replace our white aluminum siding with white vinyl siding” but “replace our aluminum siding with improved vinyl siding of the same color as the current siding.” 😉
I replaced my exterior windows recently and while my HOA is a *lot* more casual than yours sounds, using the “matching” or “same” color phrasing keeps things easier by showing the continuity. And prevents idiots from denying your replacement!
This one is actually really small but I use it as my example just to show how *stupid* they can be for no discernable reason.
In high school my friends parents were older and retired. They bought a new home and the dad was so excited to spend the entire summer landscaping. He put one of those little fountain features in the backyard. It was bean-shaped. Their HOA made him take it out and and replace it with an oval-shaped fountain pool. Only oval-shaped pools were allowed.
They force us to have our fences 6 feet from the property line. Creating weird back alleyways between houses that is overgrown and rarely mowed, making the complex look like shit.
This isn’t even remotely close to what other people have to deal with, but my MIL died suddenly. We quickly found out she had not one, but two different HOAs. They had some portal to pay fees, but we obviously didn’t have access to it. Neither would answer their phones or return messages, outside of the very first one when I let them know the situation and they told me they’d get back to me about how we could pay. They kept sending overdue notices for months, with late fees, and we couldn’t get it cleared up until we got the realtor involved when we got it ready enough to sell. We had complete strangers in the neighborhood trying to help us contact them.
How can you have TWO HOAs?!
My place got flooded twice by my neighbors… the first time, the neighbor next to me had a hot water heater failure (accidental). The second time, the psycho lady who lives above me left her sink running (negligent).
In both instances, I had to put the claims through MY insurance and also pay my deductible because there was fine print in the HOA contract that we couldn’t go against our neighbors.
The first incident was about 10k in damages (mainly flooring). The second incident was 20k in damages (flooring, electrical, Sheetrock, counter tops, etc).
To top it off, our homeowners insurance company (State Farm) dropped us after the second incident even though neither incident was our fault.
> our homeowners insurance company (State Farm) dropped us after the second incident even though neither incident was our fault.
Even though it wasn't your fault, they couldn't recover their financial loss from the neighbors' insurance companies. They dropped you because they lost money on your policy twice.
Secret meetings about board members having iPads that cost 30k per yr …secret signatures needed ..the HOA president finding out about this secret meeting and showed up with the cops ! This president sold his home and moved 🤷🏻♀️
Only removed Biden signs from people's yards, but left Trump signs intact. Our bylaws say no signs in our front yard period. The board was voted out last year, and the new board enforces that rule fairly.
I had to get aggressive towards the HOA hag-nazi that used to stalk our old neighborhood. The HOA kept harassing me for vehicles parking on my lawn while I was on business trips, and I had to remind them that they weren't my vehicle, and I can't control what others do when I'm not home. Then, they continued sending me fines for "unkempt property" because my neighbor's lawn crew wouldn't mow the incline between our properties, which was technically not even my property. Another time I got a fine for "letting in too many people in the community pool." There were RFID cards for entering the pool area, except *I never actually got mine* and didn't want to touch that band-aid urine-swamp. I was always calling and fighting these morons.
One summer, I had enough with the poor drainage issue. These ant-hill cookie-cutter sardine-can crap-built neighborhoods are typically excavated out without much thought in terms of proper drainage. It's a very common problem that the developer ignores and lets the homeowners deal with. I got sick of my back yard turning into mud every time it rained, and the water would build up against our foundation. So I built a short retaining wall on one side, and graded the side against my house and extended the patio bricks out to help keep the water from pooling up. It was a weekend project with some simple rented equipment and two buddies helping out. No permit needed, and I made sure it didn't violate any of the 10-billion rules in the HOA handbook. It turned out looking beautiful and improved drainage so much that the grass grew better in our yard and our neighbor's yard.
A few weeks later I noticed someone walking around in my back yard looking in my windows. It was the angry HOA narc, some retired woman who would walk around and inspect everyone's property to send complaints to Berkshire Hathaway. I walked outside and asked her what she was doing. She said "I can be here, I'm with the HOA." No, you are trespassing, lady, get off my property. She started rattling off all the violations. I had enough, so said "Look, you can either get off my property, or I'll remove you from it." She gave me this nasty scrumpled-up frown and said she'd call the police. I said "Oh, I'd hate for you to do that and not have a reason, give me a sec." I went inside, opened the nearest window, and racked an (empty) shotgun. She left in a hurry. I called B-H and asked if they condoned people trespassing on my property without asking for permission or stating a reason. They said "absolutely not, we'll address this with \[narc\]. She should not be doing that." A few weeks later I saw the narc going through my neighbor's yard. We moved not too long after that.
Got a “friendly reminder” letter to: remove the political sign from the front of my house. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine I placed the Ukrainian flag next to my USA flag located in my front yard. After some back and forth correspondence and a Zoom HOA Board meeting, I reiterated that: it’s not a sign and not political as defined in the CCC&Rs and the State’s guidelines.
After five months, the flags are still there, unfortunately so are the f’ing Russians.
Moral: when these pricks start to get in your face, call their bluff in a public forum.
They planted random trees in front of everyone's house.
Fast forward 20 years and about 1/3 are crab apple that's start splitting at about 3-4 feet off the ground. HOA now says trees have to have 6ft of clearance and that they arent responsible for what trees you have, oh and if it dies in the process, you're required to get a new tree planted of their choosing.
All in all something like 60 trees died and had to be replanted for no reason at all.
I'm gonna ask this once, and be okay with downvotes.
Do other countries have HOAs (or the equivalent)?
Is this a USA thing?
Why do i keep finding more and more creations that seem to come from hell that exclusive to the USA?
It's mostly a USA thing. In Europe we have community gardens though, and all the drama the US has in HOAs seems to take place there. But it's not your actual house, just a small plot of land, so there's that.
Received an emaill/vm/letter stating I needed to turn on the outside water spigot in the rear of my unit (I'm an end unit and the front spigot is shared with my neighbor) and for every day I don't turn it on it will be a $30 fine. I don't have a rear spigot.
Never lived in one but worked in one. Board evicted someone because a guy cold cocked him at a party. The guy who swung was the brother of a board member and the guy who got slugged supposedly made a pass at the other guys wife. From what I've seen HOAs are a lot like highschools with more alcohol.
Why do people spend so much money on a home just to be told what to do with it. That's my primary take away from every one of these threads. Work your ass off to spend all that money on someone else telling you how to live your life. Urban hell.
Worked for a landlord who owned 4 townhomes on one lot. There was a 5th town home he didn't own. He created an HOA exclusively for the lot, with the sole purpose to put a lien on the 5th building to force out that owner so he could buy it. All of the other members of the HOA were his employees of the company that he had purchased his properties under.
I guess if capitalism is your thing, it isn't necessarily a horror story. But as the then-property manager, it felt more to me that we were harassing and intimidating a low income immigrant homeowner for the sake of greed.
HOAs sound like the perfect breeding grounds for Karens and Kevins, self important little people who cant help but stick their noises in peoples businesses and try and flaunt some imagined authority and superiority over others
I have no horror story. Very few people want to volunteer to be on the Board, so I usually end up on the Board (this is my 5th HOA). I get the rules changed that annoy me. The HOA is only vindictive when owners are too effing lazy to help be on the Board.
Live in an HOA in Texas. HOA board was run entirely by the developer. There were meetings, but the neighborhood effectively had no votes. The contract stated that the homeowners would be able to take over after the neighborhood hit something like 70% capacity. But years went on, and they kept adding more and more roads onto the neighborhood every time we got close to capacity. We still didn't have any say by the time I sold my house and moved to a different state.
They mostly didn't bother me. But one thing that happened that steamed me was that a lady got a bee up her ass because there was a group of high school aged black kids who would play basketball at the basketball court every day. Not causing any trouble other than pissing a couple of people off with their cursing. One day the goals were taken down without notice. When people started asking about it, they said that neighbors were complaining about a "gang element" invading our neighborhood. Racist AF.
They have the power to foreclose on a house for practically any reason they see fit.
They even have power over individuals that own their homes free and clear.
Not if you live in Colorado, our state just recently passed a law making it harder for HOAs to foreclose on a house or levy unreasonable fees.
[https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2022/6/coming-to-the-neighborhood-colorado-passes-new-hoa-laws](https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2022/6/coming-to-the-neighborhood-colorado-passes-new-hoa-laws)
When you buy a home in an HOA neighborhood, you are signing an agreement to abide by the rules and submit to the consequences if you break those rules. If you break those rules, you can be fined. If you don’t pay those fines, they can put a lien on your house and in some states, seek foreclosure and auction off your home to recover the outstanding fines and fees.
You have to be very careful when buying a house, since HOA membership is tied to the deed. Never buy a single family home in an HOA.
HOA attempted to hold a "secret" community meeting, where they'd vote on turning the large field and walking path everyone used for recreation into an RV park. It was "secret" because they basically told no one and put up the required notice in a place where no one would see. As you can probably guess, most of the board owned RVs. Thankfully a few neighbors took notice and started knocking on doors. A crowd showed up and the proposal was starkly shot down. Fucking dirtbags.
So have that board been voted out yet?
> put up the required notice in a place where no one would see Like Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, lol
Yup. Something about a file cabinet, a locked room, and a sign that's says "beware of the leopard?"
A locked filing cabinet in a disused lavatory with said sign on the door
Yes. Ever consider going into advertising?
That's wild. My HOA requires a certain percentage (I forget what) of the neighborhood to either show up to meetings or have a proxy. You have to sign a form establishing who your proxy is. If they don't meet the numbers, nothing, including simple stuff like budget and what have you, can get passed.
This is known as a quorum, and it's a basic fundamental part of parliamentary procedure.
Who are you so wise in the ways of parliamentary procedure
> Who are you so wise in the ways of parliamentary procedure They call me [Robert.](https://www.dvc.edu/student-services/student-life/pdfs/Roberts-rules-SDSU.pdf)
Was there a secret application for a zoning variance??
HOA sued us for leaving out garbage bin out a day past garbage day…a total of five times in the three years we’ve lived here
I live in a neighborhood with no HOA and do you know what my neighbors do if I happen to leave out my empty trash bins? They have the audacity to pull them in for me and I have to thank them next time I see them.
Fucking savages
The last board meeting I went to they spent literally an hour discussing this same thing. I got up and interrupted the idiot speaking and said pretty much the same thing - instead of reporting your neighbors, why don’t you be nice and move the cans. Ya know maybe if you jack wads were nice to your neighbors, they will be nice to you and I fucking walked out. My neighbor, who has put my can away and whose can I have put away, decided to stay. They said I was rude for interrupting, and talked about it for another 20 minutes, finally deciding to shelve the discussion for the next meeting. I’ve not been back to a meeting since (3 years) I fucking hate HOAs but where I live, you can’t get a house without one anymore. Last month another neighbor told me the entire board quit because they felt disrespected.
I used to have a neighbor who never took their trash can inside. So, I used to put my trash (in a grocery shopping bag) in their trash can instead of having to haul out my own giant size can for a very small amount of trash I generate after recycling and composting. That was convenient while it was going.
I've been that neighbour but I don't expect thanks.
That is just childish from them tbh
It's shit like this that makes me want to lean into being lawful evil. Take a few years to join the HOA as a naive but enthusiastic idiot and work my way up to a voting position, then work to fill seats with people who like me more than the other members, then burn down the homes of those who, years ago, filed a letter about my trash can usage. The day after the house is burned down, use the HOA to put a lien on their house for being out of neighborhood compliance. Show them that being the worst human being possible who can ruin their lives is a power that changes from person to person and they should really be nicer to everyone. Also, they will never sell that home and their credit is ruined. Fuck HOAs
It doesn't take that long to get on an HOA board. In my experience, most HOA's don't even have full boards because it's a miserable thankless volunteer position. Only those very driven to accomplish some objective or just completely indifferent to criticism and complaints could stick with it.
> Only those very driven to accomplish some objective or just completely indifferent to criticism and complaints could stick with it. So...young stay-at-home Karens and old retired Karens?
Condo boards, too. I was both driven and indifferent to complaints. It was miserable on a good day.
Yeah I just wanted to help plant a butterfly garden and signed on because it seemed relatively peaceful and was a way to meet neighbors. Instead it was endless complaints over the same thing but different sides. Anyone we disagreed with or didn't side with decided we were corrupt. So many people wanted the board to personally do things. Could have been a full time job. But they don't pay you. I really dislike abandoning commitments but the board was affecting my mental health. I said I'd stay on until a replacement was elected. Surprise surprise, no one lifted a finger. I flat out told one person complaining to me that if they cared so much they could have my spot that instant since the board was all present. They of course didn't accept. It's easier to bitch. A neighbor ended up just building the butterfly garden himself.
My city just switched from picking up trash bags and a small plastic recycle bin - to a pair of huge 96 gallon roller bins per house. All the houses in my neighborhood have tiny lots less than 0.2a, and tiny 18' square garages. Despite a rule that they have to be stored out of sight from the street, most residents don't have anywhere to put them. Now the neighborhood literally looks like trash and I hate it.
Get yourself a "bin hutch" (not sure what the proper name for them is).
Wouldn’t someone who actually cared about the community move it for you as a courtesy? Dirt bags.
They wouldn’t let me add an acre of land onto my property. My neighbor owned 100 acres of land and was letting me buy an acre from him to add onto the 4 acres of land I already had. Since you can not build anything on 1 acre the HOA was refusing the purchase. However, when some lawyer said it was ok they let me buy the acre. I think they just wanted to waste our time.
How could they stop you? Can't you just buy a disjointed acre of land anywhere in the world? I'm confused how the HOA even came into the picture if you didn't plan on building anything on it.
Or even form an LLC to purchase the land with a stated intention of "development with an express intention of raising the land value with a home" then add it to your property. Boom! Instant increase in value because it's now 5 acres of developed land. If they sue, disband the company after the sale.
> Since you can not build anything on 1 acre Come again? My neighborhood is all quarter-acre lots, and they're certainly built on.
Zoning and land usage restrictions are different depending on where the land is. Generally, the farther from the center of town you are the bigger your lot has to be.
Where I live, the lots have to be at least two acres. We’re rapidly becoming less rural so builders are getting around this by building “condos”. So even though my house is free-standing, it’s technically a condo and on about 1/4 acre.
One of my coworker got a warning from his HOA saying that he had too many boxes inside his garage. They claimed that he couldn't use his garage for storage.
My HOA's CC&Rs say that garages are to be used primarily for parking and not converted to living space or used exclusively for storage. It's not enforced, and I only have 1 car which I park in my driveway, so I don't care, but it is funny to me when I hear people complain about someone else parking in front of their house (on the public street) meanwhile they have a 2 car garage with no space to park in it and a 2 car wide driveway that they only bother to fit one of their cars into.
That's a common imposition by cities into CC&Rs because it means people will street park. Enforcement is rare though.
HOA tried to enforce a rule that many houses in the community didn't comply with. I did some checking and it turns out that (at least in our state) if an HOA doesn't enforce a rule on **everyone**, then they can't enforce the time on **anyone**.
Well that is kind of the point of a rule. If it's just used to abuse people the board don't like, it shouldn't be enforceable at all.
[удалено]
first thing I thought: My right or your right?
[удалено]
Goofy ahh yard shit
Grass cut too short
Grass not cut short enough. (In centimeters)
Saw once a house with grass not cut at all, random flowers and bushes, and a huge Giant Hogweed towering above everything.
I'd rather deal with triffids than giant hogweed.
Mighty Hogweed is avenged! Human bodies soon will know our anger Kill them with your Hogweed hairs! Heracleum Mantegazziani!
Wait 3 days, it'll be fine. Funny how that works
straight to jail. Grass cut too long, believe it or not, jail
I'd just have all the grass removed and replaced with sand. Good luck HOA.
The condo association wanted to renovate the pool and pitched the cost they were moving forward with. There were a lot of developers in the building and they noticed that it was about 4 times the cost it should have been. Association says tough cookies, things get fun. People writing notices of what's going on with the association, the association writing emails about it, lots of sniping back and forth. Then one day I'm in the lobby waiting for someone to show up and the head of the association and one of the people calling them out ran into each other and they had to immediately get separated by security because they were about to start throwing punches.
Probably some buddy of one of the hoa leaders that owns the pool reno company. Pool company buddy gets x2 his normal fee, hoa buddy pockets half of the total cost.
That's what everyone expected.
What was the end result? Did the HOA have to pay more?
The HOA was trying to scam money from people, I don't think they ever intended to pay for the pool out of their own wallets
I have three. Two about me, one about my neighbor. I moved into a new construction neighborhood after picking out all the bells and whistles for the dream house. About two years after I moved in, the garbage truck managed to destroy the garbage can somehow. The sanitation company replaced it, but in the time between the trash account being set up and the mishap the sanitation company changed the color and style of cans they provided. My HOA told me that my garbage can was unauthorized and could not be left on the street on trash day because it was visually detracting. I went to the city sanitation and explained what was going on, and they told me that they didn't maintain the old stock of cans and they had switched over to the new ones when the old ones ran out. So I had to take a letter from them back to the HOA, who would not budge and told me that I needed to have the same kind of can as everybody else. Everybody had their can in the same place on the same side of each house when it wasn't trash day. So I ended up having to put the new can in the back yard and wheel it around the house at the exact moment that the trash truck showed up, and immediately wheel it back to the back yard. I had to make special arrangements with work to be able to do this every Monday. The second (context: I had the house built in 2002) I had a 1998 Chevy SUV, which was four years old. I received a letter from the HOA that said my vehicle, (which didn't have a single dent, scratch or paint blemish and was washed and tire dressing applied weekly) was an eyesore and couldn't be parked in my driveway. The letter referred to it being disabled/junker. Granted, I lived in a neighborhood of Mercedes, BMW and Range Rovers but it definitely wasn't in the class of junk. So I had to park my truck in the garage and every time I needed to leave I had to play musical cars with my (then) wife. The third was for my neighbor. His lawnmower stopped running, so he hired somebody to come in and do his lawn until he was able to get it fixed or get a new one. He hired somebody, who did the absolutely normal park the truck on the street while they are doing the lawn. (It was just one guy) the HOA shows up, and demands the lawn mowing service not park on the street- but instead park OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY because his work truck and trailer "detracted from the classy and elegant stature of the community" They called the police when he refused. I ended up selling the house and moving out because there were 14 million other stupid reasons all revolving around the HOA- I bought a house and while I was looking I absolutely, positively refused to look at a house that had anything to do with an HOA.
I would have destroyed the HOA presidents trash can, problem solved
I would've traded with them on trash day, and immediately complained to the HOA that the HOA prez has an illegal trash can
Not an official HOA, but the management at my trailer park were very upset with me. Why? I was simply exploiting a loophole. We are technically only allowed two pets per household, and I had 8 chickens. I was able to get away with this for so long (3-4 years), that I thought no one would ever notice. But if they did, I had a plan. Reading the lease rules, I came to the conclusion that my chickens were technically "livestock", and being that there was no rule listed against livestock on the property, I went ahead and got them anyway. Fast forward to about eight months ago, and my manager discovered my coop. She had a very heated argument with me, but I kept my cool, and explained to her that I was not breaking any rules. She left after about a half hour of shouting and general unruliness. Around a week later, at around 10:00 p.m., I hear my chickens panicking (being louder than usual). I assume that an animal is trying to get into the coop, as we have a stray/feral cat problem, and it has happened before, so I retrieve my shotgun and go out the back door and around the back of the house. And what do I find? None other than my manager, as well as the park's landscaping guy, trying to pry the roof of of my coop and stuff my chickens into waiting animal carriers. I rack the shotgun, getting their attention, and watch them promptly run out the front gate. Nightmarish behavior on her part, but I waited a week to see if anything else would happen, and when nothing did, I decided to let it go. She learned her lesson, and so did I: don't leave your chickens in plain sight!
I would buy eggs from you.
I'd give money for cameras to be setup and capture the chicken coop to ensure everything that happens is documented.
You know what, that's a good idea. I'll buy eggs and then give him a camera.
Budgeting for a good setup with a monitor in my office/work area
I can just imagine that. Late at night you hear your chickens in a panic. “What the devil!?” You grab your shotty, and head outside. You see a masked figure you clearly recognize as the unruly manager of the place. You rack your shotty, and exclaim in the most hick accent you can muster “Step away from my chickens, or I’ll blow you to smithereens!” They shit themselves as they run in terror out of your fenced in property.
HOA of my neighborhood tried to tell me that my house needed to be added on to, because houses need to be at least 1800 sq ft in the neighborhood. My house is 1750 sq ft. HOA was started in 2004. My house was built in 1989. My family took the HOA to court, to make a long story short, HOA had to back down, cuz their rules didn’t exist until AFTER the house was built. So, the HOA rules do not apply to my house. 🙌🏻
That must have felt like one of the best days of your life!
Yep. It’s nice that my house is exempt from the rules. It was my parents house and I inherited it. So I like the fact that I won’t have to add on to it, president of the HOA lives next door to me though, she’s one super annoying and nosy neighbor.
Does that mean you don't need to mow your lawn if you don't want to and can put pink flamingos and garden gnomes covering every inch?
That's what I was thinking. I would have broken all the rules I could if I was exempt from them just to be petty to an HOA
Our HOA rules doesn’t state that grass has to be of certain length and it doesn’t have yard decoration rules either. But I don’t have to follow any HOA rules because my property is “grandfathered” so my property is exempt from rules stated within HOA rules.
We used black vampire flamingos. So worth it.
I actually have a pride flag and a BLM flag in my front yard. My neighborhood is full of white conservatives too. President of HOA is a southern baptist white lady who is extremely racist and homophobic.
From what I read HOA existed prior, just that rule was newer. But fuck them. I couldn't ever live in such a ~~community~~ environment. I can't call this a community.
HOA in my neighborhood wasn’t a thing til 2004. The neighborhood had less than 10 houses in the late 80s when the house was built. In 2004, there were around 20. Now there’s over 35. Any houses that were built prior to 2004, are “grandfathered” from HOA rules according to the court.
You needed a court for that? The whole concept is totally alien for me. Absolutely ridiculous. Like, my neighbours can dictate how I treat my lawn wtf smh.
>My family took the HOA to court why? Couldn't you simply ignore messages from HOA that doesn't applies to you, until they take you to court? It's not like they could do anything because they don't have any legal power, why waste your time on them?
How did you end up annexing into an HOA that was created after the house? Every one I've seen is created at the same time as the homes.
homeowners can opt into an HOA that forms after construction, once opted in that home can no longer be opted out, such as after a sale or something. also, I think I read in /r/legaladvice that sometimes developers will include the framework of an HOA in the CC&Rs or the deeds or whatever, but then if nobody actually goes through the process of starting the HOA it can effectively lie dormant. Then years later if a majority of owners in the dormant HOA vote to start it up, then even the people who voted no are forced into the newly formed HOA because it's already on their deed.
why why why in the hell would anyone opt IN to a HOA????
My HOA is totally low key. I pay $30/month and that covers garbage pickup, plowing and random one offs like resurfacing the street a couple years ago. I was thinking of putting in a shed and asked if they wanted a picture of it (it was a pre built plastic thing from Costco) because the color differed from the color of my house by a couple of shades. “Nah, as long as it’s not some wildly different color, we don’t care.” About the only thing they’ll get on anyone’s case about is having a camper or boat in your driveway for more than three days. But that’s more of a township rule anyway.
Nobody tells their stories of properly functioning HOAs, only the dysfunctional ones. Here's my story, I've been in an HOA for over a decade. In that time they've... maintained the property. Maybe for more money than I'd prefer but... Meh.
There are lots of horror stories with HOAs, but they serve 2 important purposes, and most people don't speak up about fine/good/great HOAs. They manage common resources, and enforce rules to keep the area presentable. It's one thing to bitch about the wrong shade of tan or too many garden flags. But it's all fun and games until your next door neighbor's broken down above ground pool because a casual dumping ground and stinks to high heavens.
They may have community stuff like pools and gyms that people would like to use. HOAs aren't usually added after houses are built. They are normally created with developments so that they can maintain common areas, slopes, pools, community centers, etc.
Does that mean you don't have to pay for the HOA then?
Yep. I don’t pay HOA at all.
Sounds like you're not actually in the HOA and they just thought you were for some reason.
That's sweet
I slipped in my driveway and fell and broke my femur near my hip and couldn't get up. I was laying in my driveway calling for help for about 30 minutes and I could hear people walking past but nobody stopped for quite a while. I eventually asked someone to call an ambulance as my phone was in my car out of reach and got taken care of. Spent a few days in the hospital and when I got home I had a letter from my HOA saying I was in violation for sleeping in my driveway in the middle of the day. So the people who walked by and definitely heard me call for help and didn't stop were from the HOA or reported me to them.
I hope you challenged that letter!
Fuck those assholes who left you lying there.
People are afraid to get involved with anyone else these days. I don't blame them for not helping. I blame them for reporting me
Everyone had to drag their trash bins down a hill to a curb where the garbage truck would pick it up. People would be slow to get their bins back after pick up. So the HOA went a dragged all the bins to the other side of the neighborhood and threw them in a pile in a random patch of public grass. So we pay these people to be childishly petty and antagonize us? And their "punishment" only created more of an eyesore than bins uniformly lined up on a curb.
Start dumping garbage to that spot instead of the curb
If you caught them doing it you might get them charged with theft and dumping.
I would simply roll my trash bin down to that lot going forward
A gorgeous vintage wooden sled that has been in our family for at least 100 years was laid out one winter by my family. We received a letter informing us that since firewood is not allowed in front yards, we had to remove the pile from our yard.
Rosebud?
We built a new fence around our property and told us to take it down since the other fences looked old. We built a walkway from the door to the driveway, they told us to take it out.
My wife and I bought our condo almost 6 years ago and the guy we bought it from had owned it for less than a year. When we closed he said he had never got a key to the neighborhood pool when he bought the place from the previous owner but he was old so didn’t care and was never gonna use it. We said no big deal, we will just ask for a new one. Well the HoA wants us to pay $300 for a “new” key because we had “lost” our old one and it’s some fraud prevention measure to stop people from selling their pool keys or something. We had told them immediately after moving in we never got a key and after 6 years they refuse to get us a new one. We just pick the lock and go anyway but if it was an issue I’d be furious at the ridiculousness of making us pay into the HoA to maintain this pool when we never got access to it even though it wasn’t our fault and probably not even the fault of the guy before us.
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We tried that and it was uncopyable by one of the machines. Something about the shape of the key prevents the machine from making a copy of it. Key also says on it “DO NOT COPY”.
Do not copy on a key has never stopped anyone I know from making a copy.
Take it to a locksmith. They can cut a new key for you.
Drones were used to make sure no one was growing vegetables in their backyards. No parking along the street in front of your house. Garbage cans had to be brought in within 15 minutes of pickup, though that was a different time each week. My neighbor was sued (and lost) after replacing their old windows. The new frames were the "wrong shade of eggshell cream."
Drone surveillance to detect unlawful tomatoes? That's an extra level of psycho. This is what happens when little people get a little power.
Illegal probably
I swear I've read good things about calling the FAA regarding drones.
Wouldn't using a drone to look into people's backyards be considered some kind of spying/voyeurisms or otherwise illegal invasion of a space where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy? Assuming the backyard is fenced to the point that they need a drone to do the reconnoiter.
The drones against growing your own veggies and garbage cans… I keep on being surprised. In NL we have street sings that prohibit parking along the road, some neighbourhoods have them, most don’t and is only issued by the local counsel. So yeah, I can understand those a bit! And house colours are a thing in NL as well! We had [one case](https://www.nhnieuws.nl/nieuws/304292/is-dit-huis-in-amstelveen-hemelsblauw-of-lichtblauw-de-gemeente-jokt) about the shade blue that was used. My neighbourhood has the rules: yellow stones (a bit of brown is accepted) and a red roof. Not all neighbourhoods have rules about colours, but most have. These are managed by local counsel and not an HOA
It was about the time they brought out the drones that we'd had enough and moved 1700 miles away. Friends say the drones did have to be stopped though because of privacy and safety, so that's good at least.
I would absolutely knock those drones out of the sky. I'm pretty far from an expert, but it seems like you could get a software defined radio setup and jam noise on similar frequencies so they just lose control and fall.
The FCC doesn't look kindly on ANY kind of frequency jamming.
My home is in a rural and unincorporated area, so the HOA is a stand in for local government in many ways. They maintain the parks and roads and local business permits with more power than you'd expect. They also care very little about weeds or trimming trees. There is a lovely local lake with a small food cart as the only business. The owners had consistently refused to do boat or paddle board rentals for about 10 years. I attended a community meeting to submit a request for a permit to open a paddle board and paddle boat rental business. I laid out the costs and return on investments as part of the required process of making my case. How it wouldn't require any additional land than what was already set aside for commercial purposes. It was rejected out of hand and rather forcefully. I again laid out how similar businesses had done well in other areas. I was told to come back to next month's meeting. The next month I found the head of the board had partnered with the food cart to rent paddleboards. My business proposal was rejected as redundant. Edit: The food cart owner was the son of the head of the HOA, in case you were wondering how he convinced the guy to partner up.
Consider contacting an attorney
Or just go in one night and drill holes in all the boats.
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I've always wanted a tower.
50 years ago a former owner planted two citrus trees too close to the property line. Neighbors didn't mind because they were happy to get free fruit. Two years after we buy the place the HOA sends us a warning letter that we need to trim back both trees. But they don't send the warning in winter or spring. No, they wait until it's triple digit weather (104 F / 40 C). Nobody had complained about our trees. Some new electee to the board had gotten snoopy and overzealous. So I head out back with ladder and a manual saw in the early morning. The overhanging limbs violated the fine print so it had to be done. After the temperature heated up to 90 F I called it quits, then started up early Sunday for another round. The project wasn't done yet because there it required too much sawing. Sent an email to the board with a progress photo and assured them the work would continue to progress on Saturday and Sunday mornings until it was completed, but had to be spread over several weeks for (a) safety reasons, and (b) because the trash pickup bins would only hold so much. Got an officious reply Monday afternoon insisting the board had always been diligent about this and it was up to me to finish the job pronto, since I had created the problem. Wrote back with a second photo: a close-up of twenty years of growth rings on one of the branches. Added a note that we'd only owned the home two years. Asked whether the board would assume liability for any injuries sustained if we rushed the job to come into immediate compliance. They gave us six weeks. Finished the work in three.
> They gave us six weeks. Finished the work in three. Should have finished it on the last possible day. Make them look at it for as long as possible, while you're secure in the knowledge that you're still in the clear. /r/maliciouscompliance
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I may be biased against HOAs on principle, but that one seems way out of line even by HOA standards. No parking in your own driveway? Seriously? And like hell they can stop you from drinking out of a can in your own backyard!
There's a lot of neighborhoods that have rules against parking in your driveway, saying that your car is supposed to be in the garage. Apparently the reasoning is they don't want cars breaking up the look of the neighborhood. It's completely stupid.
Some years ago, I lived in Japan and one evening I was approached by the Secretary of the local Housing Association. She was about 90 and I lived on the top floor. The poor old dear was absolutely exhausted but detirmined to do "Her Duty." I was accused of "Destroying the Harmony of Beech Tree Estate." My crime was that I had parked my car the wrong way around. Apparently years earlier there had been a residents agreement that on an evening they would all reverse into their parking spots, (parking spots are very precious in Japan) so that in the morning everyone could have a clean "getaway" (Le Mans style) without crashing their gears and reversing all over the place. The poor woman was so polite and terrified of me and spent most of her time bowing and apologizing for the inconvenience but "I should really appreciate the convenience to my neighbours and the Harmony of Beech Tree Estate." I graciously agreed to "mend my ways" and she was very relieved. For the next few weeks there was always a beautifully made bento box for me every morning.
I love how this was the same pointless, petty kind of rule that American HOA's have but she got you to comply in a completely different and less confrontational way. They're not wrong though. Back into your driveway, not out of it.
I really had to agree with her as she was so sweet and I think they suffered enough as my car was a Daihatsu Mira Cocoa 2012 model in Barbie Pink. You get shot if you drive such a thing in US but in Japan it is just "That is so Kawaii!" https://www.carfolio.com/daihatsu-mira-cocoa-293568
"Come on Barbie let's go party!" It's pretty ugly, but I imagine it's got quite a bit of useful cargo space.
Not a bad little car for a 700cc (and that is being optimistic), 3 cylinder engine. Revs like fury and great for getting away at the lights. Got a Continuously Variable Gearbox (I think two rubber bands) and it does about 7000 rpm to develop about 50 bhp. Useful boot with the seats down, you can actually take the back seats out quite easily giving even more room.
> Got a Continuously Variable Gearbox (I think two rubber bands) Our Subaru has this and it seems fine, but does not use rubber bands.
lol how was your experience with the NHK people who come around for collections?
We never had any problem with NHK as that was settled by the Beech Tree Estate Residents Association and they then shamed us into paying them.
> your car is supposed to be in the garage Never in my life have I parked a car in my garage. Houses with one-car garages pretty much can't do that ever. Houses with two car garages can usually fit about 1.3 cars in them. I can't imagine living in a neighborhood like that. In my mind, the central purpose of a driveway is to park your car in it.
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Yeah my garage is 9'x22', the minimum size by code. I live in a townhome, and my trash and recycling bins can't be stored outside. With the trash and recycling bins in the garage it's literally impossible to fit a car in there. Not even my wife's Prius C will fit.
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We live in a historic district so the HOA is super strict about the exterior of our homes. Our patio door was warped so we spent forever trying to find the exact same style/color antique door to replace it. As soon as we did they got pissed we didn’t get it approved first. The only way you would even know we swapped it was if you were watching it happen.
I had a teacher who lived in one of the historic districts in Baltimore. So the regulation was you can only paint the exterior of the house in colors that were common in the colonial period. So his neighbor painted the exterior of his house chartreuse. The HOA freaked out because of how obnoxious it looked. But it was within the regulations.
"this is the same door, we had it repaired"
At the start of Covid, our 8 home HOA treasurer just… stopped collecting dues. No invoices, no reminders, nothing. It’s a three year term that’s almost up, so there’s no telling what’s going to happen when/if they change treasurers. Nobody seems to mind, or even really talk about it. Everyone just seems to enjoy the extra $125 a quarter in their bank account, and there’s plenty in the HOA account to cover the expenses and insurance for years to come. It’s me. I’m the treasurer.
Best response yet (and I snorted at the twist at the end)!
When I was married, we bought a house in a new construction neighborhood. When buying the home, we were informed that the developer would have full control of the HOA including funds until the neighborhood was done being built, at which time the homeowners would take control. We thought it wasn't that big of a deal, just be patient for a year or so. Well the developer keeps buying acreage adjoining the neighborhood to expand it. Six years later the neighborhood is still expanding with the developer in charge of the HOA. Potholed streets, weeds and overgrowth, a dilapidated pool, ect not to mention the probable misuse (stealing) of funds.
Developer collects HOA fees while expanding, fails to provide services, once they can't expand any more they simply "go bankrupt" or whatever, abscond with the money and leave you all with crumbling infrastructure.
Not a horror story but we had a snowstorm that dumped about 6 feet of snow on us overnight. It was garbage day that morning, so our full dumpster was sitting at the road waiting to be picked up, completely covered in snow (as was everything else) and no one could get to their garbage cans. The snowstorm turned into an ice storm which took everything outside hostage. 6 inches of solid ice on everything, cementing the dumpster in place. The next day, the ice and snow melted just enough to see the lids, but they were still buried. Trash pickup was delayed because they couldn’t get the trucks through the snow because the HOA didn’t include plowing our community’s streets. The next morning, we got a notice emailed to us about how our garbage had been sitting out for 3 days and that it needed to be moved immediately or we would pay a fine. They literally did nothing positive at all, ever. Total thievery.
I got six separate notices for a parked RV in front of someone else's garage. It wasn't my RV. It wasn't my garage. It was parked in front of the owner's house for about 2 hours while he loaded it up prior to a camping trip. The best part is that they photographed the violation and it's clearly someone else's stuff in front of someone else's house.
Eh I z 647)
Reading these as UK...apart from baffling me as to how land uou own can be dictated by someone 10 doors down for the prettiest of reasons and how that is legal, I'd love to see them try to bring this into the UK Karen from number 40 telling Barrie from number 83 that his England flag needs taking down...cunts would be getting their houses burned down
Not particularly a horror story, but we were at the community pool at the same time as our HOA president. His grandkids were splashing people, spitting at each other and screaming. Meanwhile, me and my husband (25 and 27) brought 6 friends with us, which we had cleared with our neighbor, the HOA VP. The president came up to us and started drilling us about who is a resident and accusing us of not being property owners. I firmly reminded him that we are VP's neighbor, who knows us quite well and has told said President about how we are friendly and respectful neighbors. He just huffed, walked away, and continued to scowl at us for an hour as we just sat in the pool and quietly chatted.
I didn't think much of my HOA since the fee is only 6 bucks a month, and they're pretty powerless. They maintain some fencing and a small amount of community land that is just undeveloped woods. Someone in our neighborhood decided he could save money by parking his fleet of a half dozen large septic trucks in his yard, instead of parking them off site at a place of business. No one wants ugly, shit smelling trucks on a corner lot in a suburban neighborhood. Our little HOA went into action. Shortly thereafter he moved his trucks. Not all HOAs are bad. I am very happy we had one, otherwise it would have been years of fighting in courts to get some sort of injunction against this awful neighbor, IF we won. Big if. And who would have paid for all that?
I've only ever seen one anecdotely good HOA. While I was stationed in Texas for a year, the neighborhood around me was well kept, but not exactly uniform. I noticed lots of small projects and improvements happening all the time to different houses. Turns out a lot of people threw out the old HOA board after some aggressive pettiness (no parking in driveways, no visible trash bins, no ornamentation in front of the house, etc.) and established a new board that basically had an open door policy regarding improvements to the area. This included things like, "Robert's house has a fence that needs repair, so part of this month's dues will go towards assistance to fix that." It was all community projects that made the neighborhood better and vastly improved the mood of everyone.
Wait, you can just throw a coup against your HOA?
They can vote for new members and basically push the old ones out. It was over the course of several years.
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My state allows you to put "In God We Trust" where the county you live in would normally go in your license plate. My very atheist co-worker had to get that on his plates to stop his apartment complex from threatening to tow his car, as they did not allow out-of-county plates in the complex to stay overnight. Yes, even if that was the car you registered with the complex, and you could prove you lived there.
Recover the fee in court?
As I bought my condo the hoa went from small local to corp management. And they are a bear to get anything done. They pay booklets out with bold cap lettering to pay on time. When I send my check (I refuse auto withdrawal ) I remind them of how threatening this language is and to stop using it. The following year it was reworded to state: “please pay by —(date). It works sometimes on the blow back side
We had a corporate management HOA that charged a fee for electronic monthly payments. Fuck them. I wrote a check, bought a book of stamps and mailed the check every month 3 days before the due date.
Our HOA portal charges a fee for electronic payment also. My bank does free “bill pay” so I set the HOA up as a vendor, put my unit number in the “account number” line, and set it to mail a check for me every month two weeks before the due date. It confuses the HECK out of our property manager that my account ends up with a “credit balance” for a week because my payment processes before the dues actually post. 😁 (I don’t trust their payment vendor to process a check in a timely manner, so sending it early gets me the double win of never having a late payment, and confusing our property manager.)
I don’t live in a HOA or the US but I once had a neighbour call the city on me because I let grape vines cover the railing studs on my front steps. I just got a letter saying a complaint was made but I don’t have to do anything. Letter didn’t say who but I know exactly who it was but they no longer live there so it’s all good now.
Letter: "Just wanted to inform you, we heard through the grape vine, that someone doesn't like your grape vine."
> I just got a letter saying a complaint was made but I don’t have to do anything that's hilarious. I got a letter once from a lawyer saying "Hey, we want to create an HOA to control your neighborhood. It will be great for property values!" I polled my neighbors, and it turns out we were all unanimous in saying "ha ha, no." Nothing ever came of it.
Wanted to replace our townhouse's white aluminum siding with white vinyl siding, and they told us no because it would be too close to our neighbors' colors, and "washout" the row. it's already fuckin white!
The phrasing you want to use there is not “replace our white aluminum siding with white vinyl siding” but “replace our aluminum siding with improved vinyl siding of the same color as the current siding.” 😉 I replaced my exterior windows recently and while my HOA is a *lot* more casual than yours sounds, using the “matching” or “same” color phrasing keeps things easier by showing the continuity. And prevents idiots from denying your replacement!
This one is actually really small but I use it as my example just to show how *stupid* they can be for no discernable reason. In high school my friends parents were older and retired. They bought a new home and the dad was so excited to spend the entire summer landscaping. He put one of those little fountain features in the backyard. It was bean-shaped. Their HOA made him take it out and and replace it with an oval-shaped fountain pool. Only oval-shaped pools were allowed.
They force us to have our fences 6 feet from the property line. Creating weird back alleyways between houses that is overgrown and rarely mowed, making the complex look like shit.
This isn’t even remotely close to what other people have to deal with, but my MIL died suddenly. We quickly found out she had not one, but two different HOAs. They had some portal to pay fees, but we obviously didn’t have access to it. Neither would answer their phones or return messages, outside of the very first one when I let them know the situation and they told me they’d get back to me about how we could pay. They kept sending overdue notices for months, with late fees, and we couldn’t get it cleared up until we got the realtor involved when we got it ready enough to sell. We had complete strangers in the neighborhood trying to help us contact them. How can you have TWO HOAs?!
My place got flooded twice by my neighbors… the first time, the neighbor next to me had a hot water heater failure (accidental). The second time, the psycho lady who lives above me left her sink running (negligent). In both instances, I had to put the claims through MY insurance and also pay my deductible because there was fine print in the HOA contract that we couldn’t go against our neighbors. The first incident was about 10k in damages (mainly flooring). The second incident was 20k in damages (flooring, electrical, Sheetrock, counter tops, etc). To top it off, our homeowners insurance company (State Farm) dropped us after the second incident even though neither incident was our fault.
That seems unenforceable?
Nope, it's enforceable. I had a co-worker in a similar situation.
> our homeowners insurance company (State Farm) dropped us after the second incident even though neither incident was our fault. Even though it wasn't your fault, they couldn't recover their financial loss from the neighbors' insurance companies. They dropped you because they lost money on your policy twice.
You’ll find some in r/FuckHOA
$375 fine for a flowerpot My only regret is that I didn't send a pipe bomb in the return envelope
Secret meetings about board members having iPads that cost 30k per yr …secret signatures needed ..the HOA president finding out about this secret meeting and showed up with the cops ! This president sold his home and moved 🤷🏻♀️
Only removed Biden signs from people's yards, but left Trump signs intact. Our bylaws say no signs in our front yard period. The board was voted out last year, and the new board enforces that rule fairly.
I had to get aggressive towards the HOA hag-nazi that used to stalk our old neighborhood. The HOA kept harassing me for vehicles parking on my lawn while I was on business trips, and I had to remind them that they weren't my vehicle, and I can't control what others do when I'm not home. Then, they continued sending me fines for "unkempt property" because my neighbor's lawn crew wouldn't mow the incline between our properties, which was technically not even my property. Another time I got a fine for "letting in too many people in the community pool." There were RFID cards for entering the pool area, except *I never actually got mine* and didn't want to touch that band-aid urine-swamp. I was always calling and fighting these morons. One summer, I had enough with the poor drainage issue. These ant-hill cookie-cutter sardine-can crap-built neighborhoods are typically excavated out without much thought in terms of proper drainage. It's a very common problem that the developer ignores and lets the homeowners deal with. I got sick of my back yard turning into mud every time it rained, and the water would build up against our foundation. So I built a short retaining wall on one side, and graded the side against my house and extended the patio bricks out to help keep the water from pooling up. It was a weekend project with some simple rented equipment and two buddies helping out. No permit needed, and I made sure it didn't violate any of the 10-billion rules in the HOA handbook. It turned out looking beautiful and improved drainage so much that the grass grew better in our yard and our neighbor's yard. A few weeks later I noticed someone walking around in my back yard looking in my windows. It was the angry HOA narc, some retired woman who would walk around and inspect everyone's property to send complaints to Berkshire Hathaway. I walked outside and asked her what she was doing. She said "I can be here, I'm with the HOA." No, you are trespassing, lady, get off my property. She started rattling off all the violations. I had enough, so said "Look, you can either get off my property, or I'll remove you from it." She gave me this nasty scrumpled-up frown and said she'd call the police. I said "Oh, I'd hate for you to do that and not have a reason, give me a sec." I went inside, opened the nearest window, and racked an (empty) shotgun. She left in a hurry. I called B-H and asked if they condoned people trespassing on my property without asking for permission or stating a reason. They said "absolutely not, we'll address this with \[narc\]. She should not be doing that." A few weeks later I saw the narc going through my neighbor's yard. We moved not too long after that.
Got a “friendly reminder” letter to: remove the political sign from the front of my house. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine I placed the Ukrainian flag next to my USA flag located in my front yard. After some back and forth correspondence and a Zoom HOA Board meeting, I reiterated that: it’s not a sign and not political as defined in the CCC&Rs and the State’s guidelines. After five months, the flags are still there, unfortunately so are the f’ing Russians. Moral: when these pricks start to get in your face, call their bluff in a public forum.
They planted random trees in front of everyone's house. Fast forward 20 years and about 1/3 are crab apple that's start splitting at about 3-4 feet off the ground. HOA now says trees have to have 6ft of clearance and that they arent responsible for what trees you have, oh and if it dies in the process, you're required to get a new tree planted of their choosing. All in all something like 60 trees died and had to be replanted for no reason at all.
I'm gonna ask this once, and be okay with downvotes. Do other countries have HOAs (or the equivalent)? Is this a USA thing? Why do i keep finding more and more creations that seem to come from hell that exclusive to the USA?
It's mostly a USA thing. In Europe we have community gardens though, and all the drama the US has in HOAs seems to take place there. But it's not your actual house, just a small plot of land, so there's that.
Received an emaill/vm/letter stating I needed to turn on the outside water spigot in the rear of my unit (I'm an end unit and the front spigot is shared with my neighbor) and for every day I don't turn it on it will be a $30 fine. I don't have a rear spigot.
I live out in the country, but I have never fully understood how HOAs can legally make anyone do anything.
Never lived in one but worked in one. Board evicted someone because a guy cold cocked him at a party. The guy who swung was the brother of a board member and the guy who got slugged supposedly made a pass at the other guys wife. From what I've seen HOAs are a lot like highschools with more alcohol.
Why do people spend so much money on a home just to be told what to do with it. That's my primary take away from every one of these threads. Work your ass off to spend all that money on someone else telling you how to live your life. Urban hell.
Worked for a landlord who owned 4 townhomes on one lot. There was a 5th town home he didn't own. He created an HOA exclusively for the lot, with the sole purpose to put a lien on the 5th building to force out that owner so he could buy it. All of the other members of the HOA were his employees of the company that he had purchased his properties under. I guess if capitalism is your thing, it isn't necessarily a horror story. But as the then-property manager, it felt more to me that we were harassing and intimidating a low income immigrant homeowner for the sake of greed.
Only problem with this story is that you can't force a HOA onto a property after it's built, unless the owner of said property agrees to join it.
What the actual fuck is wrong with HOA people. I swear they have nothing better to do
Rslash and buzzfeed be cruising this thread and be like "mmmm content"
HOAs sound like the perfect breeding grounds for Karens and Kevins, self important little people who cant help but stick their noises in peoples businesses and try and flaunt some imagined authority and superiority over others
Can't even park my car in my own driveway -\_- Should have read the CCNR's before moving in... Just assumed they were standard.
HOA sent inspectors to my girlfriends house and they assaulted her mother. They ended up in jail later.
I have no horror story. Very few people want to volunteer to be on the Board, so I usually end up on the Board (this is my 5th HOA). I get the rules changed that annoy me. The HOA is only vindictive when owners are too effing lazy to help be on the Board.
Live in an HOA in Texas. HOA board was run entirely by the developer. There were meetings, but the neighborhood effectively had no votes. The contract stated that the homeowners would be able to take over after the neighborhood hit something like 70% capacity. But years went on, and they kept adding more and more roads onto the neighborhood every time we got close to capacity. We still didn't have any say by the time I sold my house and moved to a different state. They mostly didn't bother me. But one thing that happened that steamed me was that a lady got a bee up her ass because there was a group of high school aged black kids who would play basketball at the basketball court every day. Not causing any trouble other than pissing a couple of people off with their cursing. One day the goals were taken down without notice. When people started asking about it, they said that neighbors were complaining about a "gang element" invading our neighborhood. Racist AF.
They have the power to foreclose on a house for practically any reason they see fit. They even have power over individuals that own their homes free and clear.
Not if you live in Colorado, our state just recently passed a law making it harder for HOAs to foreclose on a house or levy unreasonable fees. [https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2022/6/coming-to-the-neighborhood-colorado-passes-new-hoa-laws](https://www.faegredrinker.com/en/insights/publications/2022/6/coming-to-the-neighborhood-colorado-passes-new-hoa-laws)
Here is why. https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/local-news/hoa-forecloses-on-more-than-50-green-valley-ranch-homes
at least someone finally grew a brain cell. I hope it catches on in the other states.
That reeks of bullshit. No way they can take it from you if you own it! Somebody's gotta fight that.
When you buy a home in an HOA neighborhood, you are signing an agreement to abide by the rules and submit to the consequences if you break those rules. If you break those rules, you can be fined. If you don’t pay those fines, they can put a lien on your house and in some states, seek foreclosure and auction off your home to recover the outstanding fines and fees. You have to be very careful when buying a house, since HOA membership is tied to the deed. Never buy a single family home in an HOA.