Flock cameras aside, I would never buy a home that’s part of an HOA. There have been too many stories over the last 10 years of these terrible people abusing their power, up-to and including stealing people’s home out from under them. That neighborhood is unlivable.
I’ve recently just understood what a HOA is. As a Canadian I thought they were “Unincorporated Municipalities” or there’s also “Rate Payers Associations” which is like a proto-town where there’s a group providing town-like services amongst themselves. Which to me is some sick ass anarchist shit. But an HOA is just letting your neigbours tell you what to do? That’s lame.
I don’t have an HOA but my property operates under deed restrictions that limit property owners in meaningful ways, establishing usage of the wells, easements, number of structures and so forth.
One of my neighbors repeatedly referred to herself as “the head of the HOA” and I told her she needed to stop saying that because we don’t have one. I didn’t say as much but I would hire an attorney to send a C&D if she were to keep that up.
Well, the quote I butchered was meant to denigrate HOA’s and say that municipalities were indeed a form of governance whereas HOA’s are a form of tyranny. So I’m not sure what point your making, but high five!
My neighborhood is deed restricted but most of the rules are just how to be a good neighbor. Trash cans can only be out from this time to this time. Your grass can’t be over grown. Personally, I like the structure and I like living on a street where everyone agrees we want our immediate environment to look and feel nice. I’ve never heard of anything ever having to be enforced because everyone just does it, and when someone doesn’t, it usually just means they need to be checked on.
The grass thing would frustrate me as someone anti lawn and want to engage in more sustainable alternative methods of maintaining a yard. I also dislike rules on how you can paint your house.
You also have to keep in mind that whoever enforces this stuff can easily go from “neighbors checking in” to “neighborhood nutjob brings a ruler on walks to issue fines” with some changes in neighbors
HOAs vary a lot. In my city, every new development has one as a condition of getting permits from the city. That’s mainly because cars and their infrastructure are stupidly expensive, the city just can’t afford to maintain it all without raising property taxes. I have friends who live in an HOA neighborhood, and basically they just pay an extra monthly bill to cover snow removal, maintenance of common areas, and such. For them, it’s nothing like the horror stories of HOAs that can take your house if your mailbox is the wrong color. It is just a group providing services that the city can’t afford anymore.
So they aren’t a proto-city like an unassumed municipality, they are like a posto-city where late stage capitalism goes to retire and find a new revenu stream.
This is like the dumbest shit I have ever heard. You are no authority of anything. Why should anyone care what you think? Lots of people are immigrants. We have kids in cages and you are a insane person. You sound like a cop or a human who has lost its instinct to survive. Yeah the grass is greener but that is just because it is made of plastic.
HOAs or something of similar form exist in a lot of places. They require residents to be involved though. Anybody who lives in an HOA or similar and doesn’t participate (go to meetings, read their bylaws etc.) contributes to the organization being abused.
I’m in Canada. As it says further down that Wikipedia article, HOAs for detached homes are very rare. Condo boards exist, but mostly by necessity if sharing a building.
Closest we have is strata when an apartment or condo is owned by all the owners having a share.
You have yearly vote for who sits on council, and bylaws can be changed by voting. The Strata does not have to approve your purchase into the unit like HOAs do to restrict the type of person who can own.
Both stratas and HOAs can have bylaws that allow them to approve buyers. The most significant difference between an HOA and a Strata Corp. is that in Strata’s the owners have a financial interest in the common property.
Looks like only financial approval (to ensure you can afford strata fees), and occupant count approval (like not a 10 person family in a 1 bedroom apartment) but Canada doesnt allow discriminatory buyer approval like HOAs in the states…strata just can’t say no because no.
HOAs in the US are governed by the Fair Housing Act and can’t just say “no because no”.
The 1968 act expanded on previous acts and prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental, and financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, and since 1974, sex. Since 1988, the act protects people with disabilitiesand families with children. Pregnant women are also protected from illegal discrimination because they have been given familial status with their unborn child being the other family member.
I have heard many municipalities only allow new construction as planned communities because they don’t want to do the trash and local roads and simplifies connections water/sewer wise and they require water run off management and such.
The municipalities know the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme and don’t want to be left holding the bag. Single-family homes on large lots simply don’t generate enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure they use.
I’d imagine it varies greatly by municipality but I’ve known of a number of new developments where I am where the local laws required developers to establish and manage an HOA while they build.
The developer hands it over to the property owners to run after a determined amount of time.
I bought a home built in the 90s that technically had an HOA because the town required one when the subdivision was built. The HOA was defunct until 2010 or so when someone wanted to add an addition to their house. They put in for permission from the town. Town said “did the HOA approve it?” Homeowner went “HOA? Oh, I guess we should have one of those.” After that, the HOA existed to rubber stamp home additions and send out email reminders to get your septic tank pumped. No fuss, no fees.
Current home is a condo with a shared roof. HOA is much more hands on and my biggest complaint is they suck at communicating expectations. Like, I’m fine following rules. I’m autistic, it’s kind of my thing. Just tell me what they are before you yell at me for breaking them. (note: I’m easy to yell at because I have a history of abuse, yelling is more a tone of voice than a volume thing.)
On the other hand, anything outside my walls isn’t my problem and it’s way cheaper than renting was. And I go to the monthly meetings.
Just tell me what they are before you yell at me for breaking them.
This is perfectly reasonable, as well as warning requirements and remediation time before any penalties apply.
I would never buy a house in an HOA if the state it’s in doesn’t have disclosure laws like mine. Where we live you get the CC&Rs, bylaws, articles of incorporation, rules and regulations, recent meeting minutes, the current budget and reserve study, the assessment schedule, any special assessments, pending litigation, and an estoppel certificate from the management company prior to purchase.
Daily reminder that one of the most famous serial killers stopped killing after he became president of an HOA because he got just as much satisfaction from it as he did torturing people to death.
Can’t remember if it was Dahmer or the BTK killer but the point is still there
Was he president of an HOA? I thought he was just a very annoying municipal compliance officer. I can see how people would cross those streams, given both roles are built for assholes who want to measure your grass height with a ruler and check your house paint against a swatch.
My HOA seems to be one of the best options - $300/year and zero rules about bins being x inches from the house, paint restrictions, etc. The money goes towards the subdivision pool and that’s it.
But I’m worried that the two trustees (who are in their 70s) will kick it and someone less hands off will take over.
Nobody thinks THEIR HOA can turn to shit, but all it takes is maybe five people to take over and fuck it entirely. I moved into a one of these shitbag neighborhoods because it was the only thing available at the time that fit the budget and met the other criteria. Buying during late covid was a mess.
I’ve spent a LOT of time pouring over the legal documents, charters, etc and pulling as many docs out of the county recorder’s website as I could find. The pastiche of state and local laws that interleave into HOAs is a confusing mess at best. In the case of mine, the board members got something through that changed the voting requirements for dissolution of the HOA from 60% to 95%. No, they did not hold a vote to do it, they just did it via the procedures laid out in the founding documents. I’ve NEVER witness or been invited to any voting activities, yet we have a new board president somehow. It’s the same group of ten white boomers that just trade back and forth. Right now, the only thing that’s holding them down is that they pissed away all the money so they have little to nothing left to engage in any sort of legal battles with homeowners. However, they did just raise the fees (again, no voting that I am aware of) so that may change.
Your HOA may be benign now, but all it takes are a handful of assholes to fuck up the whole thing and create misery in the process. A few boomer busybodies, maybe one lawyer and you’re fucked.
Also, many of these things will “sell” the management to a 3rd party that will run them like a slumlord. They will send people out to generate infractions and fines that they get to keep. Grass too long, fine. Mailbox not right, another fine. Garbage out too early/late, that’s a fine. Most of the money goes to the management company, the board trustees will put the rest into the HOA funds, but there is almost zero oversight for what happens to the money.
HOAs are bullshit I would love to burn mine down; I’m half tempted to start a legal battle with mine just because I know that they dont’ have a lot of money and I might be able to bully them into something, but I’d never get rid of it. Plus it would be an expensive gamble.
One of the most basic people I know lives in one and when I asked him why, he just said the properly values are high. He not the most creative person and doesn’t really care about politics or anything really, so it works for him.
You say that until you live next to someone who literally parks multiple vehicles in their front yard, blasts loud music all day (and most of the night), has dogs running loose, and then starts building a second house on the edge of your property.
Many Americans are selfish, stupid people who will do whatever they want until someone stops them. We all know calling the cops is useless and often just escalates the assholery. I’d rather deal with an HOA run by geriatrics than a pissed off trashy person who has endless access to gasoline.
Ordinances and laws don’t matter in many places. Until his pitbull bit a kid walking in the street, the cops AND animal control never came out once despite multiple complaints. Cops don’t care and animal control had other problems (wildlife in the nearby nature preserve). My eife wouldn’t take our dog out because we’d get swarmed.
I don’t know why your first assumption is that this is all somehow my fault.
music would be a problem but I won’t complain about the cars in their front yard if they don’t complain about the giant garden in mine. Besides, maybe they’d let me borrow their jack stand or help me change my rotors.
I appreciate that you want to see the potential positives, but it’s just not realistic. If it’s a cool person, like the kind that would help you out, they’re probably not the same person who acts so obnoxiously and rudely.
And OP I’m responding too isn’t making a sweeping generalization? It’s not a false equivalency to compare an actual experience without an HOA to someone’s made-up generalization about HOAs. The fact that people so blindly repeat this broken line of thinking proves that most people have never actually dealt with an HOA. Sure, there are bad ones, but not every single one.
It’s a circlejerk of uninformed people who just want to hate on something they really know nothing about.
Flock cameras aside, I would never buy a home that’s part of an HOA. There have been too many stories over the last 10 years of these terrible people abusing their power, up-to and including stealing people’s home out from under them. That neighborhood is unlivable.
Something like 35% of all homes in the US are governed by HOAs and roughly 2/3 of all new developments are adopting HOAs.
Reason number 4629 why I’ll never be immigrating to the US. “Land of the free” my ass.
I’ve recently just understood what a HOA is. As a Canadian I thought they were “Unincorporated Municipalities” or there’s also “Rate Payers Associations” which is like a proto-town where there’s a group providing town-like services amongst themselves. Which to me is some sick ass anarchist shit. But an HOA is just letting your neigbours tell you what to do? That’s lame.
I don’t have an HOA but my property operates under deed restrictions that limit property owners in meaningful ways, establishing usage of the wells, easements, number of structures and so forth.
One of my neighbors repeatedly referred to herself as “the head of the HOA” and I told her she needed to stop saying that because we don’t have one. I didn’t say as much but I would hire an attorney to send a C&D if she were to keep that up.
HOA’s! Fuck me. I mean, say what you want about the tenets of municipalities, Dude, at least it’s a system of governance!
Local governments are subject to monitored elections and the bill of rights.
HOAs are neither. Their elections can easily be cheated, and they’re under no legal obligation to respect the civil rights of their members.
Well, the quote I butchered was meant to denigrate HOA’s and say that municipalities were indeed a form of governance whereas HOA’s are a form of tyranny. So I’m not sure what point your making, but high five!
My neighborhood is deed restricted but most of the rules are just how to be a good neighbor. Trash cans can only be out from this time to this time. Your grass can’t be over grown. Personally, I like the structure and I like living on a street where everyone agrees we want our immediate environment to look and feel nice. I’ve never heard of anything ever having to be enforced because everyone just does it, and when someone doesn’t, it usually just means they need to be checked on.
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The grass thing would frustrate me as someone anti lawn and want to engage in more sustainable alternative methods of maintaining a yard. I also dislike rules on how you can paint your house.
You also have to keep in mind that whoever enforces this stuff can easily go from “neighbors checking in” to “neighborhood nutjob brings a ruler on walks to issue fines” with some changes in neighbors
you’d both be morons in that situation
Sure, but there’s a chance they could become the ones fucking their neighbors over for cheap thrills! That makes it okay! /s
HOAs vary a lot. In my city, every new development has one as a condition of getting permits from the city. That’s mainly because cars and their infrastructure are stupidly expensive, the city just can’t afford to maintain it all without raising property taxes. I have friends who live in an HOA neighborhood, and basically they just pay an extra monthly bill to cover snow removal, maintenance of common areas, and such. For them, it’s nothing like the horror stories of HOAs that can take your house if your mailbox is the wrong color. It is just a group providing services that the city can’t afford anymore.
So they aren’t a proto-city like an unassumed municipality, they are like a posto-city where late stage capitalism goes to retire and find a new revenu stream.
Some of them, yeah.
So, instead, everybody gets to pay HOA fees. I guess as long as you don’t call it a ‘tax’ people will go along with it.
kinda funny though in that the city only exists to do that stuff so why not get rid of it and have the county run all the little developer cities.
It is free, but that privilege doesn’t come for free.
As long as you have enough money and don’t step on the toes of other people who have money, you can seemingly get away with everything.
“With freedom and justice for all who can afford it.”
More like land of free to be asses.
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Don’t let the internet scare you. The USA is still amazing. I’m an immigrant myself and I could’ve never asked for a better place.
What are you comparing it to?
This is like the dumbest shit I have ever heard. You are no authority of anything. Why should anyone care what you think? Lots of people are immigrants. We have kids in cages and you are a insane person. You sound like a cop or a human who has lost its instinct to survive. Yeah the grass is greener but that is just because it is made of plastic.
Ok
HOAs or something of similar form exist in a lot of places. They require residents to be involved though. Anybody who lives in an HOA or similar and doesn’t participate (go to meetings, read their bylaws etc.) contributes to the organization being abused.
And fuck you if you’ve got a job, right?
That’s why all these HOAs are run by retirees with too much time on their hands.
Seems like the typical Americans apathy towards electing their representation in government applies other areas too.
I’m in Canada. As it says further down that Wikipedia article, HOAs for detached homes are very rare. Condo boards exist, but mostly by necessity if sharing a building.
Strata’s in Canada and HOAs in the US largely serve the same purpose with the biggest difference being financial interest in common property.
HOA are not in Canada.
Closest we have is strata when an apartment or condo is owned by all the owners having a share.
You have yearly vote for who sits on council, and bylaws can be changed by voting. The Strata does not have to approve your purchase into the unit like HOAs do to restrict the type of person who can own.
Both stratas and HOAs can have bylaws that allow them to approve buyers. The most significant difference between an HOA and a Strata Corp. is that in Strata’s the owners have a financial interest in the common property.
Looks like only financial approval (to ensure you can afford strata fees), and occupant count approval (like not a 10 person family in a 1 bedroom apartment) but Canada doesnt allow discriminatory buyer approval like HOAs in the states…strata just can’t say no because no.
And rental bylaw got squashed with COVID
HOAs in the US are governed by the Fair Housing Act and can’t just say “no because no”.
You might be confusing deed covenants with HOAs.
Mostly my info was based on a documentary of HOAs that were still saying no, probably with excuses, to keep black people out of their neighborhood
I have heard many municipalities only allow new construction as planned communities because they don’t want to do the trash and local roads and simplifies connections water/sewer wise and they require water run off management and such.
The municipalities know the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme and don’t want to be left holding the bag. Single-family homes on large lots simply don’t generate enough tax revenue to pay for the infrastructure they use.
I’d imagine it varies greatly by municipality but I’ve known of a number of new developments where I am where the local laws required developers to establish and manage an HOA while they build.
The developer hands it over to the property owners to run after a determined amount of time.
I bought a home built in the 90s that technically had an HOA because the town required one when the subdivision was built. The HOA was defunct until 2010 or so when someone wanted to add an addition to their house. They put in for permission from the town. Town said “did the HOA approve it?” Homeowner went “HOA? Oh, I guess we should have one of those.” After that, the HOA existed to rubber stamp home additions and send out email reminders to get your septic tank pumped. No fuss, no fees.
Current home is a condo with a shared roof. HOA is much more hands on and my biggest complaint is they suck at communicating expectations. Like, I’m fine following rules. I’m autistic, it’s kind of my thing. Just tell me what they are before you yell at me for breaking them. (note: I’m easy to yell at because I have a history of abuse, yelling is more a tone of voice than a volume thing.)
On the other hand, anything outside my walls isn’t my problem and it’s way cheaper than renting was. And I go to the monthly meetings.
This is perfectly reasonable, as well as warning requirements and remediation time before any penalties apply.
I would never buy a house in an HOA if the state it’s in doesn’t have disclosure laws like mine. Where we live you get the CC&Rs, bylaws, articles of incorporation, rules and regulations, recent meeting minutes, the current budget and reserve study, the assessment schedule, any special assessments, pending litigation, and an estoppel certificate from the management company prior to purchase.
Time to go live on the other 65%.
I’ll live in a goddamn cardboard box before I live in an HOA house.
Daily reminder that one of the most famous serial killers stopped killing after he became president of an HOA because he got just as much satisfaction from it as he did torturing people to death.
Can’t remember if it was Dahmer or the BTK killer but the point is still there
Was he president of an HOA? I thought he was just a very annoying municipal compliance officer. I can see how people would cross those streams, given both roles are built for assholes who want to measure your grass height with a ruler and check your house paint against a swatch.
Honestly I don’t remember but like you said it’s along the same vein
Edit: Just looked it up and you are correct. It was the BTK killer.
My HOA seems to be one of the best options - $300/year and zero rules about bins being x inches from the house, paint restrictions, etc. The money goes towards the subdivision pool and that’s it.
But I’m worried that the two trustees (who are in their 70s) will kick it and someone less hands off will take over.
Oh sweet summer child.
Nobody thinks THEIR HOA can turn to shit, but all it takes is maybe five people to take over and fuck it entirely. I moved into a one of these shitbag neighborhoods because it was the only thing available at the time that fit the budget and met the other criteria. Buying during late covid was a mess. I’ve spent a LOT of time pouring over the legal documents, charters, etc and pulling as many docs out of the county recorder’s website as I could find. The pastiche of state and local laws that interleave into HOAs is a confusing mess at best. In the case of mine, the board members got something through that changed the voting requirements for dissolution of the HOA from 60% to 95%. No, they did not hold a vote to do it, they just did it via the procedures laid out in the founding documents. I’ve NEVER witness or been invited to any voting activities, yet we have a new board president somehow. It’s the same group of ten white boomers that just trade back and forth. Right now, the only thing that’s holding them down is that they pissed away all the money so they have little to nothing left to engage in any sort of legal battles with homeowners. However, they did just raise the fees (again, no voting that I am aware of) so that may change.
Your HOA may be benign now, but all it takes are a handful of assholes to fuck up the whole thing and create misery in the process. A few boomer busybodies, maybe one lawyer and you’re fucked.
Also, many of these things will “sell” the management to a 3rd party that will run them like a slumlord. They will send people out to generate infractions and fines that they get to keep. Grass too long, fine. Mailbox not right, another fine. Garbage out too early/late, that’s a fine. Most of the money goes to the management company, the board trustees will put the rest into the HOA funds, but there is almost zero oversight for what happens to the money.
HOAs are bullshit I would love to burn mine down; I’m half tempted to start a legal battle with mine just because I know that they dont’ have a lot of money and I might be able to bully them into something, but I’d never get rid of it. Plus it would be an expensive gamble.
Would it hurt to sound less condescending?
No, that post is factual.
Yep. Doesn’t matter if this HOA is ‘one of the good ones’. It can become a horror show at any time whenever the leadership changes.
Mine failed to file the correct paperwork with the state and lost all their enforcement power over land they don’t directly own.
But it’s FOR THE GREATER GOOD.
More like the gated good
Your point is not invalid, but in this case I was referencing Hot Fuzz.
thegreatergoood
… before you could say ‘gypsy scum’ we were knee deep in dog muck, thieving kids and crusty jugglers!
The Greater Good.
“for the entire history of HOAs” fixed that for you
One of the most basic people I know lives in one and when I asked him why, he just said the properly values are high. He not the most creative person and doesn’t really care about politics or anything really, so it works for him.
You say that until you live next to someone who literally parks multiple vehicles in their front yard, blasts loud music all day (and most of the night), has dogs running loose, and then starts building a second house on the edge of your property.
Many Americans are selfish, stupid people who will do whatever they want until someone stops them. We all know calling the cops is useless and often just escalates the assholery. I’d rather deal with an HOA run by geriatrics than a pissed off trashy person who has endless access to gasoline.
Most municipalities have ordinances for noise and leash requirements. I doubt you even bothered to call the cops on them
Ordinances and laws don’t matter in many places. Until his pitbull bit a kid walking in the street, the cops AND animal control never came out once despite multiple complaints. Cops don’t care and animal control had other problems (wildlife in the nearby nature preserve). My eife wouldn’t take our dog out because we’d get swarmed.
I don’t know why your first assumption is that this is all somehow my fault.
music would be a problem but I won’t complain about the cars in their front yard if they don’t complain about the giant garden in mine. Besides, maybe they’d let me borrow their jack stand or help me change my rotors.
I appreciate that you want to see the potential positives, but it’s just not realistic. If it’s a cool person, like the kind that would help you out, they’re probably not the same person who acts so obnoxiously and rudely.
Well, that’s a false equivalency if I ever saw one.
And OP I’m responding too isn’t making a sweeping generalization? It’s not a false equivalency to compare an actual experience without an HOA to someone’s made-up generalization about HOAs. The fact that people so blindly repeat this broken line of thinking proves that most people have never actually dealt with an HOA. Sure, there are bad ones, but not every single one.
It’s a circlejerk of uninformed people who just want to hate on something they really know nothing about.