[HN Gopher] Avoid buying in HOA neighborhoods (2014)
___________________________________________________________________
Avoid buying in HOA neighborhoods (2014)
Author : walterbell
Score : 144 points
Date : 2021-05-31 21:14 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (outofyourrut.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (outofyourrut.com)
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| HOAs could be studied as what happens with poor government
| models.
|
| If you ever thought you want single party rule, you might be able
| to look to HOAs as a cautionary tale.
|
| I'm biased, lived in one that a lemonade stand war that would
| have made Animal Farm seem like a lesson in good government. The
| sex scandal and the embezzlement didn't help change my opinion
| later.
| tyingq wrote:
| Also note that some HOA's are "voluntary". Check with a realtor
| first to make sure that means they have no teeth with regard to
| covenants, etc. Basically, if they can't put a lien on your
| property, they have no teeth.
| entire-name wrote:
| Unfortunately, in competitive markets like the Bay Area, HOA
| neighborhoods are the only option available to you in your price
| range for most people starting out. Your other options are to
| rent, or to move to a location far from where you work. (Or to
| live with your family if that is available to you, and all
| parties agree on it).
|
| Now, of course, if you can and prefer to permanently work
| remotely, then moving to a further location from where you work
| may be a good option for you. But then you will have to consider
| the risk of you being able to continue to have a job that allows
| permanent remote work.
| gnicholas wrote:
| What competitive Bay Area markets are you referring to? We've
| bought here a couple times, and although we looked at a few
| properties that were part of a 3-5 unit "HOA", most of the
| homes we saw (and both of the ones we bought) were not anywhere
| near HOAs. In fact, we currently live on a street that is not a
| public road, but which is apparently maintained by neighbors
| without resorting to an official HOA.
|
| Where are the HOAs around here?
| entire-name wrote:
| I guess it depends on what your price range is. For most
| people starting out, the price range is generally less than
| $1M. At that price, you will generally only have townhouses
| or condos available to you, which will generally have HOAs.
| It sounds like the properties you have been looking at are
| more akin to "multi-tenant" units in which it is much easier
| for all owners to collaborate. The properties I'm referring
| to are those with many more units, and in these communities,
| an official HOA is usually already set in place long before
| the first unit was purchased (agreement already set with the
| builders).
|
| That said, I should probably qualify my original comment with
| "Bay Area within 1 hour of typical office locations in the
| Bay Area on typical rush hour commute". Here, "typical office
| locations" will include San Francisco County, San Mateo
| County, and Santa Clara County. This then limits your
| property locations to San Francisco County, San Mateo County,
| Santa Clara County, and Alameda County. In _these_ locations,
| $1M can generally only get you a condo or townhouse with many
| units (at least the last time I checked).
| technick wrote:
| Yes and No, it could be worth it depending on the HOA board. I
| successfully penetrated my HOA board (24 years old with no
| experience) and in 2 years became the president. I then rewrote
| the HOA covenant to be more sensible and cut the fees by 50% with
| a plan to phase them out in 3-5 years. 98% of the neighborhood
| voted my changes in. I only put leans on houses that absolutely
| refused to cut their lawn for multiple months and pay their HOA
| dues.
| walterbell wrote:
| Could you share a bit about your motivation and resources,
| tools or mentorship that helped with this achievement?
| gedy wrote:
| This kind of reminds me of those for and against CoC (Code of
| Conducts). Some people find them unnecessary and insulting,
| others can't imagine working/contributing without them. Different
| strokes for different folks I suppose.
| void_mint wrote:
| Super interesting downvotes.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Unfathomable downvoting is recently endemic. IDK why.
|
| I've been upvoting as I see cases of it.
| void_mint wrote:
| I really wish HN would reapproach their strategy for
| downvoting. It seems like all too often users take the
| Reddit-esque "Downvote = Disagree" strategy, which is just
| absolutely terrible for cultivating legitimate conversation
| between people that might disagree (but are being
| respectful and have valid points like the post above).
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >I really wish HN would reapproach their strategy for
| downvoting.
|
| Perhaps a cooling off period after 4 or so.
|
| Lately tho, I can't ascribe many DVs to anything -
| reasonable or not. It's fairly baffling.
| gambiting wrote:
| What I find really interesting is that I keep hearing how
| Americans love their freedom and hate being told what to do and
| how to behave. Yet HOAs are such stereotypical American
| institution....I've lived in a few different countries and I
| can't think of anything as opressive to your homeowner rights as
| American HOAs. And people enter them willingly? Can someone
| explain why? Are the benefits of living in a managed
| neighbourhood really worth being told when to cut your grass and
| when you can take your bins out and what you can and cannot park
| in your own paid for driveway?
| dataflow wrote:
| The mundane answer is that you don't necessarily have a choice
| within your desired combination of budget + location + quality
| + ...
| icelancer wrote:
| >> I've lived in a few different countries and I can't think of
| anything as opressive to your homeowner rights as American
| HOAs.
|
| Try Japan. Could tell you plenty of stories, but patio11's
| stories about being an entrepreneur and trying to rent an
| apartment sum it up pretty well.
| db48x wrote:
| Don't forget that most people live in towns/cities, counties,
| states, etc. All levels can and have made idiotic rules. Does
| anyone really think that the FCC's current interpretation of
| Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 is anything other
| than the droolings of a moron? The congress that wrote the act
| was apparently not firing on all cylinders either, but at least
| the act is pretty coherent.
|
| Also, don't forget that not all HOAs make the stereotypical
| idiotic rules about grass length and garbage bins. Some of them
| have invented entirely novel classes of idiotic rules! And many
| of them are just boring and stick to maintaining common areas
| for the use of residents. Cleaning the neighborhood pool,
| mowing the median of an avenue or two, trimming the trees, and
| so on.
| void_mint wrote:
| > And people enter them willingly? Can someone explain why?
|
| For some, the house they want happens to be in an HOA
| neighborhood, so they oblige. For others, they like the "order"
| that the HOA demands of the homeowners that live in that zone -
| grass and roofs and paints are all "approved" which definitely
| provides some semblance of consistency.
|
| In my experience, HOAs are exactly like this article describes.
| People that like power for power's sake becoming anal about the
| people they have control over, under the guise of "consistency"
| and "order".
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| This is a truism that extends to any governing body. But
| there are people that having lived under the tyranny of power
| mongering HOAs, work to keep the rules to a minimum.
| fatbird wrote:
| _People that like power for power 's sake becoming anal about
| the people they have control over, under the guise of
| "consistency" and "order"_
|
| It's easy to say this if you've never been on one, where you
| see how unbelievably petty and stupid people can be about
| sliding their own exceptions by, or just trying to get away
| with not obeying the rules until someone demands they do, or
| you have to mediate a real dispute between neighbours that's
| sort-of-but-not-really covered by the rules.
|
| Nothing has corroded my belief that humanity is capable of
| governing itself in a sane, common sense manner, as much as
| serving on Strata (Canadian version of an HOA for a condo
| building) for several years.
| void_mint wrote:
| > Nothing has corroded my belief that humanity is capable
| of governing itself in a sane, common sense manner, as much
| as serving on Strata (Canadian version of an HOA for a
| condo building) for several years.
|
| People cannot govern without injecting extreme bias. With
| regard to something like home ownership, I'd like my home
| to be subject to only my own biases. Power corrupts
| absolutely, even at the smallest scale.
| supertrope wrote:
| When state institutions act in a way that benefits them (keep
| out the riff raff, support real estate appreciation) or they
| think the force of government will only fall on others there
| are fewer cries of "freedom"/"liberty." For another example see
| the reactionary movement "all lives matter."
| laretluval wrote:
| Is it bad to want state institutions to act in a way that
| benefits you? Isn't that "government for the people"?
| supertrope wrote:
| No. I guess my point is that self-interest trumps high
| minded ideals.
| [deleted]
| wearywanderer wrote:
| This is a weird comment. You acknowledge that people enter
| these arrangements willingly, yet call the arrangements
| oppressive and wonder why anybody would submit to them. People
| form or join HOAs _because they want to_. You ask whether the
| benefits are worth it... surely you realize "worth it" is
| inherently subjective and is up for any individual to decide
| themselves.
|
| > _" I keep hearing how Americans love their freedom and hate
| being told what to do and how to behave"_
|
| Consider that _most_ Americans do not live under HOAs. Don 't
| you think it likely that the Americans who exemplify the
| _stereotypical_ traits you list are likely not the ones
| _choosing_ to live under HOAs?
| bawolff wrote:
| It doesn't seem like they do it that willingly. You can't
| just buy a house in the HoA area and opt out.
|
| If that's the definition of willingly, than i suppose most
| citizens of dictatorships are willing participants.
| shakezula wrote:
| It's not always willingly, there are plenty of times I've
| been forced into moving into an HOA because of lack of choice
| and availability, or them being the only option in a given
| area, etc...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > It's not always willingly, there are plenty of times I've
| been forced into moving into an HOA because of lack of
| choice and availability, or them being the only option in a
| given area,
|
| This is exactly the reason we're in our current HOA home.
| It was the only viable option at that time.
|
| It's been a fairly terrible experience w/ the HOA inventing
| absurd crap some times (non-existent shed on thimble-sized
| front lawn) and selectively enforcing other times
| (reporting my kid's grad sign & residents' Biden signs but
| not Trump signs).
| midasuni wrote:
| Surely there's a separation of powers between those that
| make the rules and those who judge if they have been
| broken?
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| No. Just one board doing both.
|
| It's also common for HOA boards members to post their
| friends for elections. I was on the board in our last
| neighborhood. All members are pals after a few months.
| filoleg wrote:
| >People form or join HOAs because they want to
|
| Not from my experience. Try finding a non-HOA house near any
| major city. From all the friends I know who are homeowners,
| not a single one got into HOA willingly.
|
| One managed to find a home about 20 miles from Seattle that
| wasn't HOA-managed. The others had to settle for an HOA
| house, because there were none available within a reasonable
| driving distance from the city that weren't HOA.
|
| Sure, this is just my anecdata. But you should check how many
| people explicitly are looking for HOA vs. how many just
| settle for it. I hate HOAs with passion, but when I decide to
| buy a house, I am already mentally getting ready to settle
| for an HOA one, simply because of the location.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Done it many times, no problem. People who say "there are
| no HOA neighborhoods" typically mean there are not any
| neighborhoods that don't have HOAs but look like those that
| do have HOAs.
| wearywanderer wrote:
| Who do you think you're fooling? HOAs are not termite
| damage concealed from buyers at the time of purchase. The
| existence of HOAs is disclosed before the sale and _every
| single person_ who chooses to buy a home in an HOA
| neighborhood has weighed the pros and cons and decided the
| pros outweighted the cons. I have never lived in an HOA
| neighborhood and, for as long as my preferences remain the
| same, I never will. I have never and will never be forced
| to buy a home in an HOA neighborhood against my will.
|
| Somebody living in an HOA neighborhood might reasonably
| claim to regret their decision, but it _was_ their
| decision. Some people want to have their cake and eat it
| too; they want to live in that nice pretty HOA neighborhood
| but don 't want the HOA that _made it a nice neighborhood._
| Such people are immature. You may as well choose to live in
| the woods, then complain about trees.
| filoleg wrote:
| > Who do you think you're fooling? HOAs are not termite
| damage concealed from buyers at the time of purchase.
|
| At no point I claimed it was concealed ahead of purchase.
| It wasn't, it was known.
|
| >Somebody living in an HOA neighborhood might reasonably
| claim to regret their decision, but it was their
| decision.
|
| Yeah, it was their decision. They did it, despite hating
| the idea of joining an HOA. Simply because there were no
| houses for acceptable prices within a driving distance
| from the city. That's the complaint. No one is saying
| "they got tricked into it" or something.
| bawolff wrote:
| People who love freedom tend to also love the freedom to tell
| others what to do.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| You don't get the hoa for the rules, but for keeping the kind
| of people who wouldn't like those rules out.
| FPGAhacker wrote:
| Depending on the hoa of course, but my answer is yes. Yes it
| is. As long as I'm on the board ;)
|
| In all seriousness though, I hate the bureaucracy but being on
| the board gives me the opportunity to keep things in check.
| lostapathy wrote:
| In some regions of the country, HOA's are more or less a given
| if you want a newer house.
|
| I don't necessarily want to live in one, but there are
| essentially no houses built in the last 50 years in my area for
| sale that don't sit in an HOA.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| You can buy a plot of land and hire a homebuilder.
| lostapathy wrote:
| That ends up being easier said than done, too.
|
| Most "buildable lots" tend to be in subdivisions ... which
| already have HOAs. "Infill lots" tend to either be in
| terrible neighborhoods or _amazing_ neighborhoods that are
| out of reach, budget-wise, for most.
|
| Building on a rural "plot of land" is often more restricted
| than you'd think, due to zoning regs on minimum lot sizes
| and rules about water meter availability. And frankly,
| buying and caring for 10 acres puts the whole project out
| of reach for most.
|
| Not to mention internet availability is problematic as you
| get into rural locations with more flexibility.
| yabones wrote:
| Americans are full of contradictions like that. They formed
| their nation out of spite for monarchy, but every chance they
| get they try to install their own. The Bushes, the Clintons,
| the Kennedys.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| It protects property values for the entire neighborhood.
|
| It's very hard to sell homes for top dollar when your next door
| neighbor has old toilets in their drive way, or parked cars on
| cinder blocks. Or someone who wants to raise chickens in their
| backyard. Just makes the entire place look bad and property
| values will diminish, affecting one of your biggest
| investments.
| shakezula wrote:
| Americans love things that keep the "undesirable" people out.
| HOAs are basically just white gatekeepers. They're legally
| backed rackets in every instance I've ever had to interact with
| them.
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| This does not match my personal experience. I live in a
| 10,000 person neighborhood that is covered by an HOA, and it
| is a very diverse place. In fact, one of the things that I
| like about living here is that there are people from all over
| the world living here.
| shakezula wrote:
| I'm genuinely glad that is the experience you've had. I
| hope that model would be the one that's more common.
|
| Unfortunately in my experience it's the exact opposite.
| Here they're used and abused by exclusively rich, mostly-
| white neighborhoods to keep them that way.
| eplanit wrote:
| You may be conflating class and race (it's a common
| error). A neighborhood of wealthier, successful people
| (regardless of race) probably want their neighborhood to
| be a quieter, nice-looking, pleasant place.
|
| I've lived in both HOA and non-HOA neighborhoods. If
| there's a barrier to entry such as price, then generally
| a more successful (and hopefully more refined) type of
| person will move in, and generally the homes will stay
| nice-looking without rules. Without that, then an HOA to
| try to maintain an aesthetic baseline can be very
| helpful. All the homeowners benefit from maintaining an
| attractive neighborhood, in that their home values will
| be higher.
| shakezula wrote:
| I'm not conflating class and race, I'm establishing a
| connection between the two. I'm very aware that it's
| generally a "rich" thing. That doesn't mean that race
| plays no factor, and even then, if it's purely a class
| issue then it's still an issue in my eyes.
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| This matches my experience. Our neighborhood is rich in a
| mix of housing. There are large apartment buildings with
| small, relatively affordable apartments, townhouse of 2
| sizes, and then single family homes that run from large
| to very large. I assume that the many people who own one-
| bedroom condos are just as interested as the people who
| own the six-bedroom houses in keeping the common areas
| well maintained.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Please elaborate on how they keep "undesirable" people out -
| a statement like this has no meaning without any evidence.
| The HOA is not involved in the purchase of a house in any
| way.
| [deleted]
| Master_Odin wrote:
| The HOA can not restrict purchase sure, but can
| specifically target PoC for "violations" while ignoring the
| white households who are committing violations. This has
| the effect of working to force these folks out and
| maintaining the racial status quo of the HOA.
|
| In the 70s (I think) and before, HOA were definitely active
| gatekeepers though against PoC, and then after that with
| new laws passed, moved to these more "subtle" methods.
| jtbayly wrote:
| My HOA has rules designed to prevent blue collar people
| from living in the neighborhood. No work icons on any
| vehicle parked outside a garage.
| shakezula wrote:
| Yup! In a similar vein: My old HOA didn't allow you to
| have vehicles parked on your own driveway after 6pm until
| 6am.
| josephcsible wrote:
| They can't keep you from moving in, but once you do, they
| can nickel and dime you with fines and make your life
| miserable until you move out.
| shakezula wrote:
| And they absolutely will. After I moved out of my last
| HOA, I found out the towing company had a flat rate
| kickback to the HOA organization for every tow they made.
| Genuinely baffles me how it's even legal.
| shakezula wrote:
| Most HOAs have enough legalese baked into them that they
| can even hold eviction over tenants heads. It's absolutely
| a class weapon that gets used as a bludgeon. And if they
| can't technically evict you, they sure can make your life
| hell until you leave. Selective enforcement is the name of
| the game with these types.
| midasuni wrote:
| American Dad covered this - Roger decided to get back at
| Stan so corrupted the HOA and did all sorts of things
| like arranging trash pickup, installing a hydrant on his
| lawn, etc.
|
| If the HOA don't like you, it seems there little
| recourse.
| [deleted]
| davchana wrote:
| > people enter them willingly?
|
| Sometimes a developer builds a group of homes, offers parks,
| gym, walkways, street lights etc, and until all homes are not
| sold yet, or build, manages those common things. Buyers of
| those houses willingly by a house with a perspective HOA. Once
| all homes are sold, developer hands over the maintenance
| responsibility to group of elected home owners.
|
| Now if a colony already has a HOA and somebody sells their
| house, the buyer has to be in the HOA in most of the cases,
| very few exceptions like if seller fails to disclose that it's
| HOA, seller does not give the HOA paperwork to sign and such.
|
| I think there's a price difference also between a HOA homes and
| non HOA homes.
| bavila wrote:
| > Can someone explain why?
|
| I like order, and I do not trust most people to behave
| responsibly. I am more than happy to be told when to cut my
| grass if it also comes with the guarantee that my next-door
| neighbor is not going to be throwing wild house parties after
| dark, or turning his driveway into a junkyard, or running a
| kennel in his backyard, etc. Some people might be willing to
| tolerate this kind of barbarism, but not me, so I will gladly
| consign myself to the restrictions of HOAs.
| Item_Boring wrote:
| Question out of curiosity: I'm German so I don't know the US
| law that well but don't you for example have laws that forbid
| being noisy after a certain hour of the day?
|
| If my neighbours were throwing a loud party past 10pm I could
| simply call the police/ Ordnungsamt (police light) and they'd
| tell them to quiet down.
| foobar1962 wrote:
| I'm in Sydney Australia and whole-city laws cover noise.
| Yes, Police can be called for excessive noise outside the
| permitted hours.
|
| Several years ago, our next door neighbour decided to get
| into the meat delivery business and parked his van in his
| front yard overnight. It had a petrol engine for a
| refrigeration unit that ran constantly. The Police came
| around and advised them to switch it off or move it
| somewhere else.
| blabitty wrote:
| It depends on where you live. In an incorporated area
| (town/city) generally yes. An issue though is in a city the
| enforcement of these kinds of things can be low priority,
| an HOA is generally more effective from that standpoint.
| bavila wrote:
| Local noise ordinances are only as effective as the police
| force which enforces them. Where I live, the police do not
| take this responsibility seriously. The hammer of the HOA
| is a necessity to ensure that peace and quiet is
| maintained.
| HarryHirsch wrote:
| You could also swap out the sheriff, there's a vote for
| that. Conversely, I once rented from a landlord who was
| financially overextended, and the first sign of that was
| that he stopped paying for trash removal. The following
| week, the heating failed. One call to code enforcement
| (this was NY State) was enough to get things fixed until
| we moved out. It's hard to imagine tenant's safety and
| comfort to be high priority in a HOA, their purpose is to
| keep property values up.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| Throwing a late house party is barbarism?
| bavila wrote:
| Yes, it is--at least to those of us who respect our
| neighbors and do not think we have the right to impair
| their enjoyment of peace and quiet within the four corners
| of their residences.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| Freedom is generally understood to be a trade-off with various
| levels of control and power. There's a lot of subjectivity in
| the freedom concept, especially in America. In other countries
| it's treated more monolithically when talking about America,
| but that's not always fair.
|
| An HOA itself also falls under various systems of control, from
| interpersonal social control e.g. within its board, to the
| levels of legal systems inside of which it operates.
|
| The benefits really depend on you. Some people like the HOA for
| perfectly fine social reasons. Are you after status? Maybe the
| strictest HOA neighborhood just has it. Are you after structure
| and control at a fine-grained level? Great, and might as well
| get on the board while you are at it. More structure makes a
| lot of people feel safer and even more free inside their own
| skin (freedom to see one's preferred perspectives celebrated!
| Feels good in that you can be yourself); that's just how
| psychology works.
|
| Another important factor: Will you even be home much? Do you
| just need a place to stay that's orderly, pleasant, and
| convenient, and you can afford to hire people to take care of
| upkeep? Or is your home more of the main place for you, a
| subjectively calibrated environment? A big part of your
| identity?
|
| Instead of bashing HOAs I think it's a good idea to educate
| people in living and lifestyle design. You can then find your
| best-fit from the inside (of you) out, and it's less about
| avoiding stuff like the HOA.
| dnautics wrote:
| > Americans love their freedom and hate being told what to do
| and how to behave.... And people enter them willingly
|
| I think you answered your own statement. Americans don't
| blanket hate being told what to do, they hate being told to do
| X when they haven't agreed beforehand what they could be nagged
| to do X. Seems pretty reasonable.
|
| For completeness, I'm sure that there is also a segment that on
| joining an HOA is a "temporarily inconvenienced dictator" that
| imagines themselves ascending to the HOA board and being able
| to write the rules, so they won't ever have to be told what to
| do, they'll do the telling.
| jtbayly wrote:
| Typically there are _some_ benefits, like a community pool or
| just mowing common areas. But yeah, if I could have found a
| house without an HOA I would have.
| protomyth wrote:
| We love our freedom, but also love our property values and
| really don't seem to value the freedom of others as much as we
| should. Add the love of power tripping and some spots of actual
| corruption, and you get the American HOA. Its like the local
| PTA with fines. In a lot of ways, you can think of it as
| American who just want to be left alone taken advantage of by
| busy bodies with the rule of law on their side. When it breaks,
| it breaks badly.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Why are covenants allowed to run with the land? There's no other
| kind of ownership that can control people forever like it can.
| Regular contract law seems way more restrained in comparison. If
| there were a new blanket rule that covenants couldn't run with
| the land, wouldn't that completely and immediately defang every
| mandatory HOA (effectively turning them into the benign voluntary
| HOAs) with no other negative side effects?
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The side effect is that people who like their hoa's would vote
| you out.
|
| It isn't popular on the internet, but many people prefer their
| hoa. So you would be solving a problem that many people don't
| believe exist.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'm not talking about banning HOAs, just defanging them. So
| people who just like being in them wouldn't mind, since they
| could stay in them. The only people who would mind are those
| who like forcing all of their neighbors to be in them against
| their will.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| Of course they would mind. The fact that they can enforce
| their vision of the neighborhood is exactly why people like
| them.
|
| You make a choice to live in a neighborhood with an hoa. If
| you don't like it, love or don't buy. Not sure why we
| should pull the rug out from under those who choose to live
| their because others would prefer not to.
|
| And I say this as someone who does not live in a
| neighborhood with an hoa.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > with no other negative side effects
|
| Try that with townhomes with shared walls and ceilings and
| you'll see negative side effects pretty quick.
| philwelch wrote:
| Townhomes with shared walls and ceilings are closer to
| condominiums.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Okay, let me clarify/amend: keep condos and other cases of
| split ownership of a single building as they are now, but do
| what I said for single-family homes and other cases where
| every structure is wholly owned by a single person.
| shados wrote:
| A large amount of HOAs are on land leases, so they ARE
| shared ownership.
|
| If you made the rule you suggest, all it would change is
| that new HOAs would all be on long term land leases (and
| you'd have a lot of chaos in the current ones that didn't
| do this because with existing laws it was not necessary).
| [deleted]
| andrewzah wrote:
| I haven't had any issues with my HOA. There are bad HOAs, but I
| feel like for the average person they're fine. Beats having a
| neighbor that decides to put junk in the front yard, including a
| toilet. That happened to my parents, who don't live in an HOA
| neighborhood.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| You know what is worse than living with a HOA? Running one. I
| live in a small townhouse complex. Just a dozen units. Nobody
| wants to be HOA president but we legally need one. I've been de
| facto forced to run the HOA. It is a joyless thankless task. The
| number of times I've had to deal with improperly dumped furniture
| or the city inspector demanding fire extinguisher inspections in
| insane! My next house will be in a hoa-free area So i can avoid
| having to work for free.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Can you just be HOA president and route all emails about it to
| the Trash?
|
| Postpone all HOA meetings indefinitely... Let all requests go
| to voicemail, etc...
|
| If anyone accosts you about HOA matters in the street say "I
| think that's best bought up after the next HOA presidential
| election"
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Nobody wants to be HOA president but we legally need one.
|
| Usually, there's a process to change the rules or extinguish
| the HOA by majority vote. If no one thinks it is important
| enough to be worth running, extinguishment sounds like a good
| idea.
|
| Not volunteering for the job would probably help move that
| process along.
|
| > My next house will be in a hoa-free area So i can avoid
| having to work for free.
|
| Most HOA's have plenty of people willing to fill leadership
| positions (and then hire an HOA management company to do
| virtually all the actual work.)
| shados wrote:
| HOAs hate is a fascinating topic to me. Not because I care/don't
| care about HOAs themselves, but because it really shows how loud
| a vocal minority can be.
|
| The usual narrative is the evil HOA trustees who enforce their
| selfish greedy wants on everyone else and rule with an iron fist.
| The reality though is that in most HOAs, they have very little
| discretionary power beyond what's in the bylaws. What's in the
| bylaws is agreed upon by the owners. If "everyone hates being
| told what to do", it's pretty simple to get the rules changed or
| to vote out the trustees. But it doesn't happen. Why?
|
| Generally one of three things
|
| A) The inhabitants aren't the owners and thus can't change the
| rules. Ok, fair enough if that's the situation, that's going to
| suck.
|
| B) People hate the rules, but they don't hate them ENOUGH to go
| through the trouble of changing them, and some people who likes
| the rules are enforcing them. IMO ignoring rules you don't like
| shouldn't be an option (and is why we have so many bad laws at
| all levels of governments. If everyone who hates them got
| together to change them, not even the super rich could prevent it
| from happening).
|
| C) The most common one from my experience: turns out a whole lot
| of people actually agree with the rules. All the talk of freedom,
| but that includes the right of consenting adults to come into a
| legal agreement about...stuff. As long as nothing they agree on
| is illegal to put in your contract, why shouldn't they be
| allowed? If a bunch of people want to sign an agreement to reach
| a global maximum instead of a bunch of local maxima that make
| everyone miserable, why not?
|
| Turns out not everyone is cool with the "I do whatever I want and
| you do whatever you want", and "let's get together and make a
| compromise so we can both be a little happier" is actually fairly
| popular too. And thus HOAs are a thing.
|
| But I hear the reply already: "In X area everything's governed by
| HOAs! We have no choice!". Well, either change the rules (after
| all, if they're THAT damn, it shouldn't be too hard to get enough
| votes to get them changed), or buy elsewhere. We're talking about
| buying here, so it implies a certain level of privilege, after
| all.
| hpoe wrote:
| We will be moving soon, ended up with an HOA, I am currently
| doing everything in my power to end up on that HOA board to Ron
| Swanson it up hard, including throwing BBQs for neighbors,
| making contacts with everyone in the neighborhood and picking
| up trash.
|
| But I didn't want to, I want to spend my life doing other
| things, but now I've been forced into being a local politician
| simply because I can't run the risk of some nosy moral (racist)
| busy-bodies putting a lien on my home because the tree in the
| front yard died.
| shados wrote:
| > I am currently doing everything in my power
|
| Right, because you have to convince people of what you want.
| If it was absolutely no brainer obvious and everyone felt the
| same way as you, you wouldn't have to do that. The election
| would come up, people would vote and it would be over. You
| also knew there was an HOA when you got into it.
|
| That's my point. People in posts like these make it sound
| like NO ONE wants this. If it was true, it would be gone
| pretty quick. Turns out people are generally either happy
| with the status quo, or at least don't hate it enough to
| change it without some convincing.
|
| Btw, I don't know about your bylaws, but usually you don't
| have to be on the HOA board to change the rules. If you get
| the votes you can get them changed. Get a lawyer to write a
| new set of bylaws as per your state's requirements, get
| people to vote on them, register them, don't even need to
| change the board to gut it.
| hpoe wrote:
| I've found it's not a matter of "no one wants it" it is a
| matter of there are only so many hours in a day and most
| people are focusing on family, or career, or schooling or
| something else.
|
| This is a terrible argument because under this argument
| everyone really is "okay with the massive warrentless
| government wiretapping going on because they aren't voting
| against it." People are "okay with the Chinese genocide of
| the Uighers because they aren't doing anything to stop it."
|
| It's not that they want it that way it's that most people
| are in the business of living their lives and don't want to
| constantly have to dedicate their lives to vicious
| neighborhood politics and so they tolerate it for now
| because it is a higher barrier to do something about it.
| shados wrote:
| Well, first, people are born into a country. Most people
| aren't born owning a house (and if they are, I don't
| particularly feel bad for them). Second, most HOAs are
| actual democracies, not representative democracies like
| the country.
|
| It's probably a bad idea to become part of an association
| you don't want to deal with. To continue with the awful
| government analogies, in an HOA, you're not just a
| citizen. You're a governor of your state (or part of the
| senate or whatever you want to use: you are the
| representative leader of your "state"). So yeah, you're
| gonna have to be involved. Unless you don't care anyway.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| >buy elsewhere
|
| In my experience discussing the topic, the people who claim
| there are absolutely no properties anywhere not in an HOA are
| not very truthful. Similarly, they're also makes outlandish
| claims about how there is only one job they can do and it's
| only located in this one city so they have absolutely no choice
| in the matter. It is simply impossible for them to live
| anywhere else except in this one town that only has HOA
| properties. The reality is that they want to live in an HOA but
| they don't want any of the obligations that come with it. They
| want their neighbors all bound by the rules but they should be
| granted exceptions because they're special.
|
| Personally I would never live in an HOA with tons of rules and
| design standards but that's what some people like and are free
| to join. It's their choice. There are plenty of HOAs that just
| want you to keep your yard mowed twice a month and not keep
| junk cars and old appliances outside. It's a continuum but far
| too many want the surroundings of a strong intrusive HOA and
| the obligations on them of a weak or non-existent HOA.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It's fine as long as they're reasonable. I don't want random
| people in my neighborhood to pain their house pink with yellow
| flowers either.
| ohazi wrote:
| Why not?
|
| People use "neighbors paint their house pink" as some sort of
| canonical example here, but I've lived in neighborhoods with
| pink houses and ugly houses and unkempt lawns and so-over-the-
| top-it-borders-on-creepy Christmas decorations and it has never
| bothered me enough to care.
|
| Why does it _actually_ bother you?
| chickenpotpie wrote:
| Controlling paint color is a bit extreme IMO, but people like
| to decorate their home and it makes sense to me that the view
| from their home is part of that. I don't necessarily support
| it, but I understand the desire to have a nice home in all
| aspects.
| CyanLite2 wrote:
| Because no one wants to buy a house next door to a pink house
| with the creepy year-round Christmas decorations. That
| directly affects the valuation on someone's biggest
| investment they may ever make in life.
| maxerickson wrote:
| Treating housing as an investment is a horrible mistake.
|
| It's an expensive durable good, policy should be focused on
| making it _cheaper_ over time.
|
| (while maintaining or increasing suitability/utility, not
| by letting it decay)
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Treating it like an investment IS the prudent thing to
| do. Is vs. what you want it to be theoretically are 2
| different things.
| maxerickson wrote:
| What's prudent about it?
|
| My argument is that treating housing as an investment
| drives costs up over time and that _at a policy level_ we
| should not seek to do that, we should seek to lower the
| cost of housing (while maintaining quality and so on).
| sosborn wrote:
| > Treating housing as an investment is a horrible
| mistake.
|
| In terms of policy I totally agree, but as an individual,
| nothing has done more for my personal wealth than my real
| estate transactions. Of course, a lot of that is my
| location, but in general, real estate (much like stock)
| goes up.
| _wldu wrote:
| HOAs are really just another form of government.
|
| You -> HOA -> City/Town -> State -> Federal
|
| You pay fees and taxes to all of them.
| josephcsible wrote:
| Sort of. They function just like another layer of government,
| but the problem is that they're not actually part of the
| government, so they don't have checks and balances and they're
| not held to the same standards.
| [deleted]
| void_mint wrote:
| Seeing lots of posts in this thread about "Americans" and
| "freedom", but these posters I think are forgetting that the only
| thing Americans love more than "freedom" (quotes intentional) are
| controlling other people, which HOAs allow.
| Clubber wrote:
| Many like "freedom for me but not for thee." Not everybody
| though. It's more common that I feel comfortable with.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| A couple of stories about one notorious Florida HOA
|
| Man jailed over brown sod:
| https://jonathanturley.org/2008/10/12/putting-the-prude-back...
|
| EMTs finish heart attack victim's sod job so he'll go to the ER:
| http://www.ccfj.net/HOAFLFirefFinLawnw.html
| notdang wrote:
| Not just jailed, but "in jail indefinitely".
| tunesmith wrote:
| Had a fun little exercise with our HOA recently. Seven member
| board, and each year half the seats are open for election.
|
| Over the years, two rules have come into tension. First, in order
| for a new candidate to be elected, they have to get a majority
| (not just a plurality) of the votes - 50% + 1. I think the
| original thought was that if a large number of candidates ran and
| no one got over 30% of the votes or something, they shouldn't be
| eligible for the board. If not enough new candidates get 50%
| support, then the incumbent can keep their seat, in order of
| votes.
|
| The second rule is that you can only vote for a number of
| candidates matching the number of openings. So if there are only
| three openings, and seven people are running, you can only vote
| for three of them. If you vote for more, your ballot gets thrown
| out.
|
| The board has had problems lately so we had a lot of candidates
| in a recent election. I remember liking five of them, but I could
| only vote for three. There were roughly 1000 votes, and the most
| popular "reform" candidates got around 490, 460, 450, 420 votes,
| so none of them made it in (they clearly had split the vote). The
| incumbents that retained their seats got vote totals like 350,
| 275 - one incumbent got the second lowest of all running
| candidates, but got to keep his seat.
|
| Obviously anti-democratic - as interest increases in replacing
| board members, it becomes less possible to do so. There are
| remedies such as Instant Runoff voting, but the way we vote and
| count is that you get your ballot in the mail, put a checkmark
| next to the names you want, and then counting teams count up the
| checkmarks (discarding the ballots with "too many" checkmarks).
| Manually counting IRV was deemed too onerous for our process.
|
| Another, and my favored solution for this sort of scenario, is
| Approval Voting, where you simply put a checkmark next to _all_
| the candidates you approve of, and then all the checkmarks are
| counted by the same counting teams, _without_ discarding the
| ballots with "too many" checkmarks, since it's no longer
| possible for there to be "too many" checkmarks on a ballot.
|
| We gave presentations to the board, explained it as thoroughly as
| possible, made the case that what the elections were doing (due
| to the 50% rule) was measuring the level of support for each
| candidate, and that only Approval Voting was capable of measuring
| that accurately, subject to our other restrictions.
|
| It failed on a 4-3 vote. Of the votes against, one was "it's been
| working fine the way it is", another was "It sounds funny", one
| gave no explanation, and one indicated the lawyers were of the
| opinion it wasn't allowable. In the next election, the three
| "yes" votes chose not to run for re-election and were replaced.
| del_operator wrote:
| Oh dang, I really like my HOA. I don't hear much from them and
| it's only $250 twice a year. However, it's been helpful in rare
| cases where our neighbor had obnoxious election signs up til
| after February 2020. They are also helpful for managing the roads
| and nudging the community to install fiber.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| My last HOA was pretty good. I was on the board. We weren't
| overly invasive. My preferred approach was lining up help for
| homeowners who were in tough situations.
|
| My present HOA is a well-known nightmare. I lament the lack of
| options that led to me being here.
| dheera wrote:
| > it's only $250 twice a year
|
| I'd rather $0 than your $250
|
| > However, it's been helpful in rare cases where our neighbor
| had obnoxious election signs up til after February 2020
|
| Why do you care? It's their property, as long as they aren't
| putting election signs on your property or blasting noise that
| affects you, they have a right of free speech.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| Yeah. The parent post really drives home the point made in
| the article: HOAs are simply a mechanism to make other people
| conform to one's wishes.
| HPsquared wrote:
| In other words, they're a local form of government.
| vincent-toups wrote:
| This guy's understanding of what constitutes "horror" is really
| high strung.
|
| Like yeah, this stuff might be irritating. Maybe you wanted
| pinker shutters. But who really cares? Imagine getting bent out
| of shape about the color of your shutters or having to put up
| curtains.
| ddingus wrote:
| Yeah, imagine!
|
| I sure would. Where I live, you do you, I do me, they do them.
|
| It is great!
|
| Sometimes we have a chat. Berry vines out of control, or maybe
| someone needs something. Whatever. That gets done and people
| are pretty happy.
|
| Want to pick the shutter and trim colors? Several people here
| would be happy to entertain that so long as the ones wanting to
| pick are paying.
|
| Me? Nope. And the bonus is nobody will hear from me about the
| colors, unless it is complementary. Who doesn't like that sort
| of thing?
|
| Crazy cat lady down the street has a whole garden growing in
| the easement in front of her house. Passersby will pick and eat
| some of it. Pretty sure that makes her happy.
|
| I could go on, but the place is very human, at times vibrant
| and has soul.
|
| Yeah, bent right out of shape. There is just not enough time
| and energy to deal with all the meta associated with the more
| strongly regulated neighborhoods.
|
| I basically have every other possible thing to do before
| worrying about what the other people are doing and so forth.
| Mutual respect and consideration are lean, easy, human, and
| definitely the way I want to play it.
|
| All that said, yeah! Some people seem to need all that meta
| mess. Great! We have places for them to get it, thankfully.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > Imagine getting bent out of shape about the color of your
| shutters or having to put up curtains.
|
| No need to imagine, as that seems to be exactly what their HOA
| does.
| nightfly wrote:
| Imagine caring that your neighbors have pinker shutters or
| don't have curtains? Imagine caring enough to fine them until
| they either comply or have to move out?
| rantwasp wrote:
| you'd be surprised. these people exist and are a PITA
| ack210 wrote:
| Yup. My parents live in an HOA that used to have a woman
| (who had no official capacity with the HOA other than
| living in it) drive around in her golf cart every day with
| a clipboard to note down any violations she spotted. One of
| her favorite rules to enforce was one that indicated how
| long you could have your garage door open for (something
| like 20 mins). Like another commenter's experience above,
| she too had a ruler she would use to measure various shrubs
| etc. in hopes of finding a violation.
| glitchcrab wrote:
| You're entirely missing the point. Yes, having to re-paint your
| shutters is an annoyance in the scheme of things, but why
| should you _have_ to? It's your house; why should you _have_ to
| do what a committee demands?
|
| And yes, you can say that he has to because he's signed the
| papers, but you'd still be missing the point.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > but you'd still be missing the point.
|
| No, I don't think they are. The key thing is that you sign
| the papers and so does everyone else.
| shakezula wrote:
| I've lived in a few HOAs in my lifetime.
|
| Ive had my car towed multiple times when I was parked in my
| designated spot with my parking tag in my window. They didn't
| care, they just towed it and claimed they coudln't see the tag.
| Every time it cost me > $300.
|
| I've had the HOA manager show up when I had friends over
| because it was technically over the allotted "2 guest maximum"
| for the area. I was just having a game night, it wasn't even an
| outdoor party.
|
| I've had them literally show up with a measuring tape to check
| the distance from the curb one of my guests was parked and then
| come knock on the door to inform me that they were illegally
| parked and would be towed in the next hour if they didn't move.
|
| yeah, all of that? That's a horror story. Basically every HOA
| I've ever interacted with or lived under has been nothing but a
| thinly veiled legally-backed racket to kick back money to
| towing and lawn care companies.
| balfirevic wrote:
| > over the allotted "2 guest maximum"
|
| How is it even possible that something like that exists...
| shakezula wrote:
| I honestly don't know. It was seriously extreme.
| Technically you were even supposed to call and alert the
| HOA manager if you were having any guests over, period, but
| that wasn't enforced. Like I've said elsewhere in this
| thread, selective enforcement was the name of the game.
| upofadown wrote:
| Those things were getting so obnoxious that the US federal
| government had to make a law that overrode the HOAs to allowe TV
| antennas and satellite dishes:
|
| * https://www.fcc.gov/media/over-air-reception-devices-rule
| fortran77 wrote:
| In many areas, the local government _requires_ an HOA for all new
| developments. It's an awful situation.
|
| I'll never live in an HOA neighborhood if I can help it!
| londons_explore wrote:
| I wonder if HOA neighbourhoods are cheaper for the city?
|
| I could imagine costs of policing being lower and various kinds
| of complaints being dealt with by the HOA before it gets up to
| the city.
| grosales wrote:
| I pay around 15 bucks a month for my HOA. They take care of
| common land and also the 3 kids playgrounds in the neighborhood.
| They also have to approve any changes to the exterior of a house
| which can be annoying.
|
| One interesting thing they do is that for things like new decks
| or replaced ones, you need to submit an application for approval
| which should include a building permit by the county. It gives
| prospective home buyers assurance that certain things were done
| correctly. Before a house is sold, the seller needs to provide an
| HOA disclosure which triggers an inspection for which a seller
| needs to ensure all changes were made with the approval of the
| HOA. Our seller (an investment property management company) had
| to fix several things in our house to being them up to code to
| get those approvals, which helped me as a home buyer.
|
| Besides that, the HOA has been very responsive, we did replace
| our windows without their approval but it was relatively easy to
| fix given that they were similar windows.
| [deleted]
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| I like our HOA. They do a good job maintaining all of the common
| property, including the pool, the shuttle system, and the copious
| grassy areas and parks that are part of our neighborhood.
|
| There are rules here that are related to maintenance, but since
| there are so many common areas (and roofs and walls, there are a
| lot of town houses) one person's deferred maintenance can easily
| become costly for others.
|
| I don't find the HOA oppressive our violating my rights at all. I
| was completely free to not buy a home in this development, and
| the HOA documents were shared with us early and often in the
| buying process. I feel more like our HOA is about buying into the
| community, and getting the benefits of pooled resources. If
| that's not your thing, keep looking.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| >> I don't find the HOA oppressive our violating my rights at
| all.
|
| But this is addressed in the article: HOAs may not feel
| oppressive... until they do. And if that happens, then you'll
| essentially be powerless because in most jurisdictions, the law
| heavily favors HOAs.
| dheera wrote:
| The problem is HOAs are spreading across the country like a
| fungus, and it's becoming increasingly hard to find an area
| that isn't an HOA area.
|
| Mandatory HOAs should be outlawed, plain and simple. Optional
| participation in return for access to common areas (e.g. a
| gym/pool membership) is fine, but hell no they're not telling
| me how to decorate something I own. Tell them to look up what
| "own" means in the Oxford English Dictionary if they have a
| problem with it.
| hpoe wrote:
| I would've loved to have not bought a home in an HOA area,
| unfortunately there seems to be now development built these
| days that isn't under the control of an HOA that is in turned
| controlled by the developer that is actually an umbrella HOA
| that controls everything and isn't part of my neighborhood at
| all.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| Exactly - I have 0 issues with mine either. I'd love to build a
| big garage in the yard, but I realize I can't for the better of
| the neighborhood aesthetics, and I'm fine with it.
| kyrra wrote:
| I've lived in both. HOAs have their place, and really I think it
| depends on the person. Going into a home purchase, you have to
| sign the HOA agreement, so you know the rules they set forth.
| They keep the neighborhood looking a certain way, which is
| something some people want.
|
| I've met plenty of people that don't like HOAs and purposely
| avoid them, which is fine also. But be prepared for a much wider
| variation of look and style of a neighborhood. It makes it much
| easier for a house to get run-down as well.
|
| One thing not mentioned in this post is that HOAs can be
| dissolved. A friend had voted to dissolve his HOA (which was
| successful), due to too many problems. Common-land that the HOA
| owned becomes a problem, but it can all be worked out.
| lokar wrote:
| You know rules on the day you sign. They can change.
| ardit33 wrote:
| Rules do change all the time. My Coop (in NYC) decided to
| impose a 2% transaction fee, which works out about 10k on a
| 500k apt. They also can raise then fees anytime.
|
| That's why HOAs can be a problem if they have too much power.
| The fact is that most HOA board members/directors tend to be
| older folks that have more time on their hands than you do. And
| they set the agenda. Good luck with that.
| jacob2484 wrote:
| People vote for the co-op board members. Why not vote the
| people out?
| ardit33 wrote:
| I just want a place to live, not become a political
| campaigner.
|
| I just want to come home and chill dude. Not have to lobby
| all my neighbors, just not to get fleeced out of my money.
|
| The fact is that most HOA board members/directors tend to
| be older folks that have more time on their hands than you
| do. And they set the agenda. Good luck with that.
| judge2020 wrote:
| It becomes a small government. A lot of small governments are
| dysfunctional, but quite a lot more work for their community
| members.
| duncan-donuts wrote:
| How common are HOAs? I've lived in an urban area my entire adult
| life and I don't think there are any HOAs. My parents lived in
| one tho in the suburbs and I don't recall them liking it. Is
| there any reason to actually buy a home in one?
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| In places where new communities are being developed HOA and
| CCRs (the actual rules) are extremely common. In fact in my
| area they're required for all new home building communities.
| nine_k wrote:
| Who requires them, and on what grounds?
| wearywanderer wrote:
| HOAs are a kink, for people who like to be controlled or for
| people who like to control others. Being in a HOA is like being
| in a BDSM relationship. Some people like this sort of thing.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| I guess if you're into living in a picture perfect neighborhood
| and don't want to have to look at anything especially weird or
| different, and have a "council" you can complain to if there's
| a problem, you'd buy into that. A lot of condo complexes have
| them as well. HOA fees also go to gardening and other people
| involved in exterior maintenance.
| blowski wrote:
| How much of a US-specific problem is this? Do similar entities
| exist in most countries, and do they work any better?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| I lived in a village in the UK where windows and doors had to
| be painted a certain way, you couldn't have visible satellite
| dishes, you couldn't change the structure, and there were other
| rules about random things like no tents on front lawns (for
| some reason? nobody does anyway though.) I think it's pretty
| uncommon here.
|
| I liked it - mostly sensible rules designed to preserve
| heritage for everyone.
| blowski wrote:
| Yes, in the UK, most blocks and estates where they're
| dominated by leaseholds (as opposed to freeholds) have a
| property management company that will outsource that to an
| agent.
|
| Conceptually, that sounds similar to these HOAs in the US, so
| I don't get why the difference in attitude towards them.
| vinni2 wrote:
| It's pretty common in Scandinavia I don't know about other
| European countries. But there are many advantages and
| disadvantages to HOA. They can negotiate collective deals on
| internet and tv etc but a lot of mandatory expenses are pushed
| on you.
| Zababa wrote:
| In France it's usually limited to a single building or a few
| building built at the same time, and usually called a
| "copropriete". People can have their vote if they own their
| appartment. They decide things like "don't hang dry your
| clothes on the balcony", "don't change the way window blinds
| look", "here are the trees that we're going to plant in the
| park", "this is how garbage is handled", "should we have an
| employee taking care of cleaning and garbage, or should we use
| an exterior service?". They usually work mostly fine.
|
| Edit: a sibling comment mentionned something about a village
| where you can't freely change the color of your blinds. We also
| have that, usually on the municipal level, to preserve
| heritage/the way a place look. For example, some communes from
| the "Pays des Pierres Dorees" have strict rules about this
| https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierres_dor%C3%A9es
| davchana wrote:
| In cities of India, condo building are called society, & the
| HOA equivalent is also called Society. Old or near to retire or
| retired uncles serve on those Society boards. they make rules
| like not allowing any occupant renter or homeowner from
| different religion or with different food preference or singles
| or Bachelors or different sexual preferences.
| LatteLazy wrote:
| As a brit I find these interesting. We don't have them. Planning
| law is a bit tighter. And there are laws about party walls. But
| HoAs just aren't a thing here...
| jimmyswimmy wrote:
| Yeah, nobody likes an HOA. We all want to be allowed to do
| whatever we want. That's why I live in a neighborhood without
| one.
|
| Leave the kids toys and trash cans out for a day? A week?
| Forever? No problem! But I can't complain about similar things my
| neighbors might do. Or, I can complain, directly to them. If I
| care enough.
|
| Neighbors replaced their roof a year ago. Left the old shingles
| on the lawn, for a year. Did I like it? No. Did I care enough to
| complain to them about it? Also no. That's the kind of
| neighborhood I want to live in though. You want a neighborhood
| where the houses are in perfect cookie cutter shape? You need an
| HOA neighborhood, and you get the pluses with the minuses.
|
| What I think most of us really want is to be able to do whatever
| we want, while also being able to tell others what to do. That
| doesn't work. You have to choose to either rely on your neighbors
| being decent, or suffer through life under an HOA.
| klohto wrote:
| Whole (most of) Europe works without an HOA, why USA can't?
| SilasX wrote:
| Right, they have formal laws that cover the things an HOA in
| the US would normally prohibit or restrict.
|
| Go mow your lawn on Sunday in Germany and let me know how
| long until someone tells Ruhetag at you.
| loeg wrote:
| Most of the US isn't under HOA, either.
| nine_k wrote:
| I wonder if it holds e.g. for Germany. Maybe it's not HOA but
| the town magistrate, etc?
| brazzy wrote:
| Bingo. In Germany, regulations enacted by municipal
| governments definitely cover a lot of points mentioned in
| the article. The main differences are that they are not
| quite as intrusive in what they cover (their goal is not
| explicitly to maintain property values), and you have legal
| recourse.
| netrus wrote:
| If you want real HOA vibes in Germany, visit a
| Schrebergarten (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allotment_(ga
| rdening)#Germany)!
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| There's no such thing in Germany apart from eg leasehold of
| holiday homes, rented garden houses ( _Kleingartenvereine_
| ) etc. but there are municipal usage restrictions according
| to _Baunutzungverordnung_ to the effect you can 't
| repurpose residential areas as a commercial space, and
| local zoning rules according to a _Bebauungplan_ or
| equivalent for eg how many storeys are allowed, building
| lines, distances, materials to choose, a duty for at least
| an effort to gardening, etc., but it depends greatly where
| you live, ranging from very strict to everything goes.
|
| Edit: IANAL
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| There's a thing called a Parish council and that strikes me
| as similar:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parish_councils_in_England
|
| There was a recent event gained notoriety in the UK for the
| pettiness these bodies sometimes have
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jB3P_0GAi0I
| makomk wrote:
| Not really the same thing, I don't think. Most of the time,
| parish councils just do boring but necessary things like
| emptying the dog poo bins, maintaining the village hall,
| keeping the playing fields trimmed and clean, that kind of
| upkeep of minor but very visible shared resources.
| duped wrote:
| An HOA is more like a hyper local government like some local
| councils in Europe.
| GuB-42 wrote:
| We have HOA in France, it is called "copropriete".
|
| The one I have is the "condominium HOA" kind, that is the
| reasonable kind according to the article because of the
| nature of buildings. But the bad "mandatory HOA" kind also
| exists, with the same kind of rules as the article mentions.
| It is just that US-style suburban areas are less common.
|
| It looks like coproprietes in France are less focused on
| property value and the process sounds more democratic since
| every decision typically require a direct vote and most of
| the process is defined by law. However, it doesn't stop them
| from being a major pain in the ass sometimes.
| ilamont wrote:
| HOAs seem to be more common in certain parts of the country,
| especially in the south and west. I've never encountered one
| in my state (Massachusetts) outside of retirement
| communities.
| kmlx wrote:
| i don't know which part of Europe you're referring to, but
| i've noticed various restrictions, from what kind of front
| door you're allowed to install, house color, roof color/type
| etc etc they're not called HOAs thou, but the effect is
| similar.
| supertrope wrote:
| Americans chafe at city government aggressively enforcing
| code. So cities have kicked that unpleasant task down a level
| to HOAs. As an added bonus, the cost of this regulation is
| now a HOA fee not a tax which is much harder to pass.
| [deleted]
| sandermvanvliet wrote:
| In the Netherlands we have somewhat similar arrangement in
| appartement buildings. Even the name is (translated) the same
| and operates like the described condo HOA from the article.
| It's annoying as fuck. We want to put up sun screens as our
| windows are facing south so in summer the house is an oven.
|
| Nope can't do, _everyone_ needs to agree that yes we can
| install them and what type and colour and whatnot. We have to
| call a meeting for that, guess how many people show up?
|
| Our next house is definitely not going to have such a thing
| if I can help it
| dalbasal wrote:
| I've hear that villages in the netherlands have municipal
| (if that's the right term) policies in this vein,
| particularly picky about the colour of doors.
| Gibbon1 wrote:
| HOA's were created to get around the supreme court ruling
| that racial covenants were unenforceable.
| ultimoo wrote:
| "HOA Neighborhoods" as the author defines them are largely a
| _suburban_ construct IMO. In a large city like SF for
| example, single family homes aren 't typically a part of an
| HOA -- you're free to extend your home as you see fit (with
| the right permits from the city), and you're also responsible
| for all costs including roofs and front porch areas. This is
| also true in rural America where you fully own your property
| and there are virtually no restrictions in what you can do.
|
| I'm not very familiar with Europe but the couple of times
| I've been there it seemed somewhat similar to denser American
| cities and charming rural villages. I didn't see a parallel
| to "cookie cutter" American suburbia. I'm no expert on Europe
| but that's probably why HOAs aren't that common.
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| I don't think suburbs are a complete explanation for this
| though. HOAs are super rare in Canada (outside of apartment
| buildings and maybe townhouses), and we have just as much
| suburban sprawl as the U.S.
|
| Based on people mentioning maintaining commons (i.e.
| building parks, etc.) maybe it's a function of having
| comparatively less government provided common services in
| American suburbs? That would fit the stereotype in my head,
| but I admit I don't have a lot of solid data one way or
| another.
| art0rz wrote:
| On the contrary, especially old towns in Europe have HOAs,
| as they want to preserve the old town look as to keep
| attracting tourists (and preserve history, although I think
| the income from tourism is generally their highest
| priority).
| ryanbrunner wrote:
| Are those private entities enforcing that though? Usually
| preserving the historical look of an area is more of a
| government-enforced thing than a private leasing
| arrangement.
| howinteresting wrote:
| I've never lived in a neighborhood where the houses must be in
| "perfect cookie cutter shape", nor would I ever want to. I want
| my neighborhood to be diverse and interesting. HOA
| neighborhoods sound soul-crushing to me.
| chrisan wrote:
| I'm sure there are extremely strict HOAs out there with
| insane people on boards that horror stories originate from.
|
| We've always lived in HOA homes (in our 4th now) and they
| have all been very laid back.
|
| This kind of HOA I belong to is basically the "anti-
| hillbilly" HOA. You aren't allowed to own 50 cats and dogs
| free roaming and crapping everywhere, don't leave your rusted
| out broken down beater in the front lawn, don't let your lawn
| go to 4 foot weeds (but by all means grow some 6ft tomato
| plants), your backyard is not your personal firing range, you
| aren't allowed to have a personal dump of trash that you
| clear every 6 months, etc.
|
| Our HOA does are for snow/ice services, long term repairs on
| our private road, and the front entrance maintenance.
|
| Every house is very distinct, some I don't prefer the
| styling/color, but I enjoy the diversity way better than a
| cookie cutter subdivision.
|
| Soul crushing to me are people who don't take care of their
| property and enjoy living in neglect (which plenty of people
| out there manage just fine without an HOA, I just dont want
| to roll the dice)
| hpoe wrote:
| Here's the problem I fundementally have with HOA's even
| ones that are "laid back" is that at any point in time they
| can decide to not be "laid back" you get one bad idiot in
| charge of the HOA and then suddenly they start passing all
| sorts of rules. That is the problem they might be benign
| but when they fall into the wrong hands they become
| terrible quickly and in the process can destroy lives and
| livelihoods.
| Hammershaft wrote:
| > Soul crushing to me are people who don't take care of
| their property and enjoy living in neglect.
|
| Why is it soul crushing to you that others enjoy their
| lives without worrying about their property?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| 'Perfect cookie cutter shape' can be charming and
| historically significant. I'm glade there is an association
| maintaining the character of a village I used to live in, and
| that people aren't free to remodel them on a whim,
| permanently damaging cultural property.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Sunlight
| domador wrote:
| That could be an exception. However, when I hear "HOA", the
| kind of neighborhood that comes to mind is "insipid, yet
| pretentious suburb".
| howinteresting wrote:
| When I hear "historically significant" I think of
| segregationist NIMBYs. The future is more important than
| the past.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Actually part of the job the association does in the
| village I lived in was to own some of the houses and rent
| them out as registered social landlord (meaning you can
| rent to people using social security.) They also helped
| to maintain museums, cultural spaces, and green spaces,
| for everyone.
|
| Destroying cultural property to install a satellite dish
| is not making 'the future more important than the past'.
| howinteresting wrote:
| Historic preservation often involves rejecting things
| like solar panels on rooftops. That is 100% privileging
| the past over the future.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| If the 'segregationist' slur won't stick I guess try
| pinning climate change on them?
| [deleted]
| shados wrote:
| > We all want to be allowed to do whatever we want
|
| Ehh, not everyone's that selfish.
|
| I for one am perfectly happy with compromising so that my
| neighbors are happier with what I do, but only if they return
| the favor. At a small scale we can have a handshake agreement,
| but for something more long term or with a lot more people,
| it's great to be able to put it on paper.
| [deleted]
| dvtrn wrote:
| Why does this post read like an over the top and rather extreme
| representation of non-HOA neighborhoods to the point of being
| just short of a false-dichotomy altogether? It sounds like an
| awful situation you have but it's not as if this is how every
| neighborhood is that isn't united and governed by HOAs.
| gameswithgo wrote:
| my last non hoa neighborhood was worse than that so it read
| as tame
| pixl97 wrote:
| It turns out a lot of Americans are selfish and their
| property is a disaster. Getting into rentals can be even
| worse since they tend to care less.
| blabitty wrote:
| I personally chose to live in an incorporated city but not an
| HOA. There are city ordinances with actual real government
| representation and force of law behind them for serious health
| and safety concerns but we can paint our houses whatever color
| we want and build sheds under a certain size any way we like
| etc. The important thing with choosing a place to live is to
| honestly assess what you want and how much you want your
| neighbors to be able to do. There are plusses and minuses under
| any living arrangement. Personally I would never live under a
| HOA but in exchange I have to put up with the stuff that is
| under the level of city enforcement, things like boom cars and
| a few unkept lawns. In exchange I can work on my truck in my
| driveway without some busybody stopping me.
| astura wrote:
| >You have to choose to either rely on your neighbors being
| decent, or suffer through life under an HOA.
|
| Local Governments traditionally played this role. Problem is
| that some people hate governments simply because they are
| governments so they make private governments. I guess that
| makes sense to them?
|
| In my (non HOA) neighborhood leaving shingles on your lawn
| comes with a $100/day fine.
|
| The people who were cleaning out the house next door to me
| (they inherited it) were leaving piles of garbage outside. I
| saw the blight officer leave a notice in their mailbox and the
| garbage was gone the next day. (I assume it was a warning
| rather than a fine, but idk.)
| jchw wrote:
| >What I think most of us really want is to be able to do
| whatever we want, while also being able to tell others what to
| do.
|
| I think some people really do want this. But I don't. I really
| just want to be able to do whatever I want, and then want other
| people to do whatever they want, as long as it isn't doing
| material harm to someone. The problem can come down to defining
| 'harm' since some people try to define it in their own image of
| what they wish wasn't allowed, but I hope there are still
| people out there who espouse these values, because it's the
| world I would prefer to live in :\
|
| The problem is that people think like this _everywhere_ ,
| because it's exceptionally easy to just lie to yourself and
| convince yourself that in _your_ case, it 's justified to tell
| others what to do. And you get _a lot_ of mental gymnastics out
| of that.
|
| I do understand that sometimes it might not be out of a strict
| desire to prevent people from doing stuff that they do not
| personally agree with. For example, maybe someone's primary
| concern is property value, or hell, just having a nice looking
| neighborhood. But honestly, if I see a neighborhood with a very
| tasteless looking front yard with shit scattered about, then at
| least that's a sign that the neighborhood is chill.
|
| edit: And it shall be noted I am trying to make a case against
| HOAs. I think my note about "harm" was a bit ambiguous. In
| general I want the legal system to define what is harmful
| enough to be actionable. Imperfect? Yes. A sort of "nobody's
| favorite, but everybody's favorite" -type situation, in my
| view.
| beambot wrote:
| Where do you (personally) draw the line at material harm...?
| We already have a system (the courts) for redressing material
| harms.
|
| Many HOA bylaws (house color, RV parking, minimal landscaping
| requirements, etc etc etc) aren't material harms. They are
| "harms by association" -- e.g. my house value goes down
| because you have bad taste in paint colors. Hence "Home Owner
| Associations".
| jchw wrote:
| I think some are misinterpreting my post as being in favor
| of HOAs, but actually I am saying that if someone is not
| doing something outright illegal I'm generally in favor of
| them being able to do it.
| shados wrote:
| > We already have a system (the courts) for redressing
| material harms.
|
| Laws are a baseline. People can build on top of that. Just
| like there are laws that define what should happen when a
| couple divorce, many people will sign a prenup to add extra
| rules they mutually agree to that not EVERYONE would agree
| to, for each other's benefits. You or I certainly don't get
| to decide what's reasonable or what's silly in someone
| else's prenup. HOA bylaws are just a bigger version of
| that.
| rubicon33 wrote:
| Yea, it really all comes down to what you define "harm" as.
|
| If I haven't updated my house in 60 years, paint falling off,
| lawn completely dead, park my rusted out 1983 honda civic
| with flat tires on my front lawn, and have a pile of garbage
| 10 feet high in the driveway...
|
| Does that cause harm to you, or do you just define that as
| "chill"?
|
| It's going to entirely depend on who you're asking, at what
| stage of life they are in, etc.
|
| I'm glad HOA neighborhoods exist for people who are at a
| position in their life (generally financially well off) to
| enjoy one. On the other hand, I'm glad not all neighborhoods
| are that way and you can find some where being a bit behind
| on maintenance isn't a crime.
| blowski wrote:
| Exactly. If your pile of tires starts lowering my
| property's value, are you doing me harm?
| jchw wrote:
| In my opinion the answer to _that_ question is actually
| clear: No. Simply because an investment or asset of yours
| loses value for reasons outside of your control is not
| reason to then decide that you've been harmed, more than
| if actions or conditions entirely outside of your control
| lifts the value of your investments or assets.
|
| IMO, a reasonable viewpoint is that an HOA is a communal
| way to fix the "out of your control" part at the cost of
| some personal freedoms. But some people err on the side
| of the personal freedoms. I know it's easy to say on an
| online forum and bad experiences can change one's mind,
| but I am comfortable in saying that I would most likely
| keep this viewpoint in the face of challenges, and
| instead prefer to push for the law to be amended if it is
| necessary...
|
| So yes, I think the answer here is no even regardless of
| whether you would prefer an HOA, but I still upvoted your
| comment though as I think it raises the important
| question.
| dsr_ wrote:
| I'm good with all of that except the pile of garbage. The
| remedy for that here is to call the town refuse and
| recycling department and ask them to assess whether it's a
| health hazard.
|
| One of the benefits of living in a middling-urban city in a
| state where government more or less works is that it's
| really difficult to build up a 10 foot pile of garbage --
| because once a week the town sends a refuse truck and a
| recycling truck to pick up things at the end of your
| driveway.
|
| I had a neighbor up the street with a commercial dumpster
| in their driveway for about six months; I assume they were
| doing interior construction and demolition. I'm sure nobody
| complained about it. Construction debris doesn't attract
| rats and raccoons the way food debris does.
| lisper wrote:
| > The problem can come down to defining 'harm'
|
| Indeed. If I, say, allow drug addicts to camp out on my front
| lawn and defecate on it, I'm probably going to make the
| neighborhood as a whole less desirable to live in and hence
| reduce property values. The net effect of that is the same as
| literally taking money from you. Is that harm? Because it's
| really hard to draw a sharp line between that and the wrong
| color of shutters.
|
| Aside: I lived in HOA neighborhoods and non-HOA
| neighborhoods. On the whole I prefer the later, but I have
| horror stories from both.
| jchw wrote:
| Well, this example is a bit extreme. There's some nuisance
| behavior that is made illicit on the basis that it is harm
| to the public as a whole. Having people defecate on your
| front lawn in view of everyone probably runs afoul of
| something in most jurisdictions.
|
| What happens behind closed doors is mostly still fine,
| though, even though it can lower property value. A lot of
| things can lower property value that aren't fair to you,
| and the mere fact that they happen doesn't mean you
| personally were wronged nor does it mean anything illicit
| has happened. Could be a nearby factory shuttering causing
| the local economy to struggle, or something.
| midasuni wrote:
| A lot of things can raise the property value too. New
| metro station opens, pushing your value up 300k? Do
| people say "hey that's not right, here you take the money
| mr metro man"?
| josephcsible wrote:
| This is the sand heap fallacy. Even if you can't tell where
| the line is, it's obvious that turning your front yard into
| a mini-San Francisco is on one side of it, and that
| painting your shutters the wrong color is on the other side
| of it. We shouldn't have to pick the wrong answer for one
| of these bright-line cases just because there's some gray
| cases.
| lisper wrote:
| > it's obvious that ... painting your shutters the wrong
| color is on the other side of it
|
| It might be obvious to you (it's obvious to me too), but
| it was manifestly not obvious to the board members who
| voted to enforce the shutter-color policy, nor to the
| people who voted for them.
| darkerside wrote:
| And what happens when you disagree?
| jchw wrote:
| With what? I am painting a viewpoint against HOAs.
|
| edit: I think I understand why people are reading it this
| way, so I added a bit onto my original post.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| That's why you live in an HOA area, but become the ruler.
|
| Rules for thee, but not for me!
| xwdv wrote:
| It's easier to live somewhere with a decent HOA than to rely on
| each of your neighbors being decent.
|
| Otherwise, the only other way to ensure neighbors don't bother
| you without an HOA is to live somewhere with lots of land
| around homes so that neighbors are very spaced out, and
| hopefully they will be far enough from you to not be bothered
| by their filth, and putting up high hedges and trees should be
| enough to block them from your sight.
| [deleted]
| city41 wrote:
| What I find interesting about where I currently live is rules
| you'd expect at the HOA level are actually at the township level:
| how tall your grass can be before it must be cut, how many cars
| you can park outside and where, maintaining exterior structures
| like fences, etc. All are laws in the town I live in. I've never
| seen that before.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| I think the difference would be that with an HOA there is a
| resource of people eager to enforce these rules vs the township
| that probably can't be bothered to?
| city41 wrote:
| I haven't lived here too long yet. But I have noticed several
| notices placed on lawns regarding the length of the grass. At
| first I assumed they were HOA notices, but upon closer
| inspection they were from the city.
|
| edit: here is one of the notices if curious:
| https://i.imgur.com/xJABpPf.jpg
| supertrope wrote:
| HOAs allow townships to kick enforcement of these minor things
| down a level. They also get to dodge asking voters to approve a
| tax as it's now in the form of an HOA fee.
| shakezula wrote:
| This is exactly what they do - They're just another
| corporation with state backing that you have to pay to live.
| State capitalism.
| ryanmcbride wrote:
| I grew up with an HOA and we'd always get letters about the
| halloween decorations (I've always done it big, ever since I was
| a kid) that alone made me anti HOA my whole life. Obviously not
| to mention how the goal of many HOAs just below the surface is to
| keep their neighborhood as white as possible.
| lopatin wrote:
| I'm planning to buy an apartment in Chicago (Lincoln Park). All
| these apartment buildings have HOA fees from $500 to $1k per
| month, so it seems to be pretty unavoidable here. Does this mean
| I should just avoid buying in the city all together? Renting for
| a lifetime doesn't seem great either.
| pmorici wrote:
| No, that is a condo association that is necessary in a building
| with shared structure that needs to be maintained. Not quite
| the same as a HOA that doesn't have any purpose besides forcing
| people to conform with dumb rules on their own property.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| 1k a month!? Why would anyone pay that? There must be some
| great facilities I guess (pool? gym?)
| jagger27 wrote:
| Where on Earth do you have to pay $1000/mo for a gym
| membership? I find condo fees staggeringly hard to justify.
| pseudo0 wrote:
| One issue is that developers will often set an attractive
| low rate to sell the initial units, and it doesn't get
| appropriately adjusted as the building ages. Then down the
| road, when expensive stuff (roof, elevators, etc) need to
| get fixed or replaced, there isn't enough capital banked
| and the fees spike dramatically.
| sosborn wrote:
| Those fees are for a lot more than gym membership. Take a
| large building - have you ever looked at the maintenance
| costs for something like that? If you haven't the good news
| is that annual budgets and statements for the past x number
| of years are publicly available for these associations (at
| least where I live that is true). Before you buy a place, a
| good realtor will walk you through the association's
| finances and give you an idea of how well the property is
| managed.
| rickspencer3 wrote:
| It's important for the condo to build up a substantial amount
| of cash in case there is a necessary high capital outlay
| needed. Sit on a condo board for a while and look at all of
| the expenses, and then also imagine saving up enough because,
| at a minimum, you will need a new roof in 20 years, etc...
|
| Also, deferred maintenance will destroy a condo, and the
| ability for any owners to sell. If the board has to recover
| from previous years of deferred maintenance while also
| building a fund for the future, people will simply have to
| face the reality and pay until the problem is fixed.
| showerst wrote:
| 1k/mo sounds high, but if you're paying for elevator upkeep
| and inspections, landscaping, shared space HVAC, and door and
| maintenance people it's easy to rocket past that.
|
| Some fees also include water and trash.
|
| It just depends how nice the services are, and/or how old the
| building is.
| zerocrates wrote:
| I don't think you're going to find many (any?) apartments for
| sale (so, condos or co-ops) anywhere that don't have an
| equivalent to an HOA/condo association/etc. The common
| ownership of the building, common areas, and so on pretty much
| demand that kind of structure.
| GavinMcG wrote:
| Yeah, if I owned a condo you'd bet I'd want an HOA. It's one
| thing when everyone owns their own roof and yard, but quite
| another when it's a single building that multiple owners are
| sharing.
| mguerville wrote:
| In Lincoln Park as well, pretty much the only way to avoid HOAs
| are townhomes (which is the route we went, because of my prior
| condo experience)
|
| The HOAs are so high they also make the economics of rental
| income very hard, so unless they provide amenities that have
| resale or rental pricing value you are just paying a monthly
| compliance fee. How they became so common boggles my mind.
| ipaddr wrote:
| You do the best you can. If that's the market in Chicago you
| are better off buying.
| tdeck wrote:
| The article specifically says it's not talking about condo HOAs
| like the ones you're describing:
|
| > What I'm going to focus on from here on are mandatory HOAs in
| non-condominium neighborhoods.
| showerst wrote:
| I don't know about Chicago specifically, but HOAs in buildings
| are generally pretty different from hoas in neighborhoods.
|
| They tend to handle all the common space issues like roofs and
| elevators, so they serve a real purpose other than being the
| property value police, which is also why they cost more.
|
| Because you're shoulder to shoulder with more people, rules
| enforcement is more important as well, although as always YMMV.
|
| As a data point contrary to all the horror stories, I've been
| in a HOA in a small building for years and always appreciated
| what they got done.
| sebmellen wrote:
| $500 to $1k per month for an HOA, per apartment??
| [deleted]
| loeg wrote:
| The article addresses this early on and mentions that it is
| specifically critiquing detached dwelling ("neighborhood")
| HOAs.
|
| > condominiums are a different animal entirely in which you
| share ownership of the home with the HOA, who provides very
| specific and substantial services. As well, with condos most
| people recognize that property use is both restricted and
| totally necessary due to the communal nature of the
| arrangement.
|
| > What I'm going to focus on from here on are mandatory HOAs in
| non-condominium neighborhoods
| jdlshore wrote:
| Those fees pay for common property (walls, elevators, roof--
| everything outside the paint) and amenities. They can be
| spendy, but they're unavoidable. You pay them whether you rent
| or own, the only question is how.
|
| If you buy a house, you don't pay those fees, but you still pay
| to replace the roof, paint the house, deal with water
| intrusion, etc. Such are the joys of being a homeowner.
| nine_k wrote:
| Does Chicago have co-op building? They have different rules.
| kull wrote:
| Unfortunately, in some areas you just cannot find one without
| HOA.
| caymanjim wrote:
| It always amuses me when people talk about "buying" a property
| under HOA control. You're not buying anything. You're agreeing to
| an indefinite lease with a majority share of profit upon transfer
| of the lease. If someone else can decide what color your house
| is, you don't own it.
| umanwizard wrote:
| By this argument nobody owns anything because there is always
| some level of state authority that can make rules about what
| you're allowed to do with it. What's the fundamental difference
| between an HOA and a small local government?
| the_local_host wrote:
| Not the person you originally asked, but an HOA is an
| additional layer for a start. Moreover it tends to have more
| restrictions, of a kind that would seem ridiculous at the
| level of local government (e.g. what color your curtains can
| be, in the case of the condo I'm currently renting.)
| brailsafe wrote:
| That would piss me off even as a renter.
| sneak wrote:
| > _By this argument nobody owns anything because there is
| always some level of state authority that can make rules
| about what you're allowed to do with it._
|
| You're right, and that's bad, too.
|
| If what you're doing isn't affecting anyone else, you should
| be free to do it.
| frankbreetz wrote:
| There rules with owning almost anything. HOAs are on the far
| end of the spectrum, but you get the appreciation if property
| values go up, which is one of the main reasons for owning
| property
| judge2020 wrote:
| You also can't discharge a gun pointed at another human, or
| even in most public places, so do you really 'own' that gun?
| Rumudiez wrote:
| Did you just compare homicide to painting your own house's
| door blue? smh
| nzmsv wrote:
| People also talk about buying stocks but you also can't control
| the direction of a company as a minority shareholder. People
| also buy non-physical things like music or software, and things
| that exist only for a moment in time, like experiences.
|
| It would seem that most people's definition of "buying" works
| for HOA-controlled properties. What's your definition?
| brailsafe wrote:
| Software, music, stocks are things that you can do with what
| you please, but not if it's on a subscription basis. My
| definition of ownership really comes down to the inability
| for others to take away my control over it. In a sense, a
| mortgaged property is an acceptable risk in that the bank has
| limited financial control over your house as debt, but
| anything beyond that and nobody should really be able to tell
| me to not paint my house blue.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| ownership isnt black or white.
|
| its on a spectrum.
|
| property rights are given to us by the government with certain
| limitations. dont pay your taxes and your property goes away.
| HOAs is one additional restriction.
| bachmeier wrote:
| HOA is a broad term. The cost/requirements vary. I wouldn't want
| to try to sell my house if the guy next door parked an RV on the
| lawn. Things like a community swimming pool and fighting the
| wrong type of development are a definite plus.
| tomohawk wrote:
| We rented for a year in a town sized HOA that had pools,
| playgrounds, pools, and other ammenities. A seemingly very nice
| area in one of the top median income counties in the country.
|
| They ran a contest to see who had the most amazing yard. The
| first, second, and third place finishers all ended up with
| massive fines, and had to tear out tens of thousands of dollars
| worth of landscaping.
|
| It turns out that their wonderful yards had not complied with
| every policy and procedure of the HOA.
|
| We purposely have bought in non HOA areas now and almost every
| year hear horror stories from co-workers and friends that confirm
| our choice.
|
| Incidentally, when we moved out of the rental and bought our non
| HOA house, our car insurance dropped substantially. The crime in
| the HOA town was much higher.
| londons_explore wrote:
| Sounds like the HOA people were angry they didn't win...
| jschmitz28 wrote:
| I think there is a high variance in how involved different HOAs
| are, so it's hard to make a blanket statement that you should
| totally avoid considering buying a property that's in an HOA.
|
| My current house is in an HOA that's around ~$20 / month (which
| pays to keep some of the common spaces of the development
| maintained), has never gone up in ~4 years, and we've never been
| notified about anything needing to look better even when our lawn
| was in pretty rough shape the summer we moved in. We did some
| research and were pretty confident going into it that we weren't
| going to be dealing with an overbearing HOA, and I also like that
| the development and community areas (including a tennis court and
| basketball court) stay well maintained. In our case, it feels
| like we're getting a good deal for the cost.
| scheme271 wrote:
| That sounds like a pretty good deal. But are you really
| protected from a new board being elected to the HOA and the
| board instituting restrictive rules and increasing fees for the
| "common good"?
| shados wrote:
| HOAs generally don't work like a republic. The board has some
| level of minimal discretionary power (eg: in our HOA the
| trustees can decide if and when to increase dues within
| certain boundaries), but the actual rules are another story,
| and require a super majority ownership to change (I'm sure
| "default" bylaws vary by region, but everywhere I've lived
| it's been about 2/3rd stake to change rules). The board voted
| in cannot change the rules, they always have to be voted on
| by everyone.
|
| For example, in our HOA, everyone on the board wants to make
| the common area non-smoking, but they haven't been able to
| get people to vote on it at this time, therefor there's f*
| all the board can do about it, even if everyone agreed to it.
| It has to be voted on, on paper, signed and submitted to the
| land court.
| 01100011 wrote:
| My old HOA was $20/month in SoCal and got me access to the
| community pool with well maintained lawn around it. The HOA was
| basically powerless otherwise. We tried to use it to stop an
| old, reclusive guy from feeding crows and releasing his
| pigeons(literally blanketing the surrounding backyards with
| bird shit), but they couldn't do anything.
|
| HOAs vary quite a bit. The older I get, the more I want to live
| in a strict HOA community though. I want the stability and
| improved neighbor relations(the HOA is the bad guy, not me,
| when the neighbor stops maintaining their property).
|
| I understand why people don't like HOAs. Yes they were born out
| of racism. I don't think that invalidates the concept.
| pas wrote:
| Could you explain why the HOA was powerless to stop the bird
| shitter problem? Was it powerless in a legal way? Was it
| powerless in a members did not care enough way?
| salawat wrote:
| I think that'd be an interesting feat, moreso in the "don't
| screw with people crows like" sort of way. They are crazy
| smart birds. They'd familiarize themselves with people
| that'd give the old man a hard time, and would either avoid
| those people, or execute Avian justice. They'd also
| communicate the same to the rest of the murder.
|
| Pidgeons, I can't really abide. Crows are cool though.
| mynegation wrote:
| Probably there was no article in HOA rules that was
| applicable.
| 01100011 wrote:
| Yes, this. HOAs only have the power they are given.
| [deleted]
| lelanthran wrote:
| > Probably there was no article in HOA rules that was
| applicable.
|
| So? Nothing to stop them adding it in.
| igetspam wrote:
| You ever tried to get a quorum of disinterested people?
| Most of the HOAs I've had to suffer through were created
| for the benefit of the developer and the people who
| wanted to dump them couldn't get enough people together
| to even have a vote for or against. Newer HOAs are not on
| your side.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The older I get, the more I want to live in a strict HOA
| community though.
|
| You'd love mine. Fabricated violations. Select residents
| targeted by obsessed board members. No political signage from
| one party.
|
| Sidebar: Our HOA restrictions insure every waterway that
| feeds from this neighborhood is hopelessly polluted. Lots of
| HOAs work to achieve that tho.
| smitty1e wrote:
| I pay $100/mo for these proto-fascists to explain to me why the
| pool and other amenities are unavailable.
|
| They do a decent job with the common grounds and the trash
| contract, so there's that.
| igetspam wrote:
| Sounds like every subdivision in the Austin metro.
| dheera wrote:
| Personally I don't get HOAs at all.
|
| You either own something, or you don't. If you actually do own
| something, you shouldn't owe anything to anyone. No dues, no
| rules, no crap. It's your goddamn property, it's your rules.
| You decide what fence you put, what flowers you put, and what
| color car you have, and where you park your car on your
| property. Those idiots who think they have power over your
| property can get lost.
|
| My 2 cents.
| D13Fd wrote:
| HOAs typically only have teeth when they are based on
| covenants that run with the land, which in most cases means
| that they started as a single property (e.g. a farm) and were
| split out into a planned neighborhood.
|
| In other words, the owner of that farm had the right to split
| it up into little chunks that have restrictions and sell
| them. When you buy into the neighborhood, you are buying the
| property burdened by the covenants the previous owner
| attached. So your full rights would interfere with the
| previous owner's effort to do what THEY wanted with the
| property.
| JMTQp8lwXL wrote:
| Why should the previous owner's interests matter once the
| property is sold?
| smegger001 wrote:
| yet they sold it, why should someone who no longer has
| ownership be allowed control of something they sold? their
| wants to and desires should cease to be of concern once
| they agree to accept the money of the buyer. can you
| imagine Say ford telling someone "hey that car i sold you
| your not allowed to paint it green." no that would be
| ridiculous. why are homes any different?
| shados wrote:
| They don't, but the property is burdened. A car is
| probably a bad analogy here. Think of it more like buying
| a company. If you start your own company, then sign a
| contract with your suppliers, then sell it to me. I now
| am bound by the contract because it came with the
| company.
| steelframe wrote:
| > You either own something, or you don't.
|
| If only the world were that simple. Mineral rights is one of
| many examples of how complicated and nuanced things can get.
| mantas wrote:
| Frequently your lot borders another lot and both your and the
| other lots are quite small. So what you do in yours affect
| your neighbour in an objective way. E.g. you planting a tree
| right next to a fence may soon block sun to neighbour for a
| big part of the day.
|
| On top of that, sometimes there's shared infrastructure.
| Access roads, water, waste, community space etc. You do own a
| small part of it.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > So what you do in yours affect your neighbour in an
| objective way. E.g. you planting a tree right next to a
| fence may soon block sun to neighbour for a big part of the
| day.
|
| The problem with HOAs is that often, your next-door
| neighbor (the only one actually affected) doesn't care, but
| Karen 15 doors down does, so you have to remove the tree
| for no good reason.
| dheera wrote:
| > E.g. you planting a tree right next to a fence may soon
| block sun to neighbour for a big part of the day.
|
| The solution to this is to define land ownership as a 3D
| space and not a 2D space. It should be a 3D trapezoidal
| sort of shape, and as long as you keep everything within
| that it should be allowed.
|
| > Access roads, water, waste
|
| These are utilities. You pay for access to them
|
| > , community space etc
|
| This should be optional and you pay IF you want access
|
| But hell no they should not be governing aesthetics of
| something you own. If you can get the right architectural
| permits and whatnot you should even be allowed to rebuild
| your house in a different style. That's what ownership
| means.
| goalieca wrote:
| City bylaws can be nearly as strict as HOA with lots of
| stylistic rules such as no laundry lines even in non-heritage
| neighbourhoods.
| dheera wrote:
| Yeah that's bullshit. If someone wants to save energy they
| should be allowed to do so.
|
| Preserving historic neighborhoods are fine. There's a
| historic value to them, and it's not some arbitrary group
| of old people with nothing better to do walking around
| getting pissed off at peoples' decorations.
| shados wrote:
| Did you ever get married, or owned stocks in a company? Have
| you ever entered into a signed agreement with someone? Signed
| a contract on anything?
|
| What about signed a lease on an apartment? That's pretty
| common. The landlord owns it, but you have rights on it and
| they can't do whatever they want with their own property
| anymore.
|
| Why does it surprise you that someone can own something but
| sign some of their ownership rights away? People literally do
| this all the time for a million reasons.
| D13Fd wrote:
| Funny thing with HOAs is that they are usually based on
| covenants that run with the land, so you don't actually
| sign anything. You just bought property subject to
| covenants.
| shados wrote:
| I don't know about where you live, but when I bought my
| place, there sure as hell was a note on the deed that I
| signed that said I was bound by the rules of the bylaws.
|
| Is there a state where you can buy a house without
| signing anything? How do you transfer deeds over there?
| dheera wrote:
| > What about signed a lease on an apartment? That's pretty
| common. The landlord owns it, but you have rights on it and
| they can't do whatever they want with their own property
| anymore.
|
| Of course they can, they just need to wait till the lease
| is over.
|
| With HOAs on the other hand they're forever restricted by
| some old farts who have nothing better to do than nose
| their way into other peoples' private lives.
| shados wrote:
| > Of course they can, they just need to wait till the
| lease is over.
|
| My property is on a land lease. The term of the lease
| will literally outlive the owner. Again, consenting
| adults are allowed to sign papers to come into an
| agreement that binds both sides. This is nothing weird or
| nothing new.
|
| The only thing that is a bit unique about HOAs is that
| there's rarely an easy way out in the agreement, which
| kind of makes sense since you can't just move the land
| away. Once large scale teleportation is a thing we'll be
| able to solve that issue.
| Black101 wrote:
| > I think there is a high variance in how involved different
| HOAs are, so it's hard to make a blanket statement that you
| should totally avoid considering buying a property that's in an
| HOA.
|
| The problem is that they can get involved at any time whether
| you like it or not and if you don't want to lose your home, you
| will have to comply.
| yabones wrote:
| Is that any different from paying +$240/year in your property
| taxes? My small town in canada has those amenities as well,
| sans HOA. All municipal, and managed by the town's parks
| department.
| desert_boi wrote:
| Property taxes can go to _those people_ who can't afford to
| live in your burbclave.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| Local govs are generally _less likely_ to heap the sort of
| overt abuse on homeowners that HOAs do.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The difference is that you only need the local neighborhood
| to agree that it wants a well maintained park, not the city,
| which may have other priorities.
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Is the city going to build a swimming pool and a set of
| tennis courts that can be walked to in every neighborhood or
| are they going to build one or two large ones in a central
| location that almost everyone will need to drive to? Also not
| everyone wants a pool and tennis courts so they can choose a
| neighborhood without them. Some neighborhoods where I used to
| live had soccer pitches instead of tennis court because
| that's what was popular with the people who lived there. It
| was much easier for the neighborhood to be responsive to what
| the people in the neighborhood wanted than it would have been
| to convince someone at city hall to build less tennis courts
| at the municipal park complex and build more soccer fields,
| which once again, would only be in walking distance of a
| small number of city residents. Letting residents decide for
| themselves what amenities they want in their neighborhoods
| instead of begging for permission from bureaucrats meant they
| were able to get what best suited that neighborhood and in a
| timely manner.
| Black101 wrote:
| HOAs are like mini cities but usually with much stricter
| rules, or at least actively enforced rules unlike most cities
| that wait for complaints.
| banana_giraffe wrote:
| Yep, my current HOA charges an optional $40 a year.
|
| It's basically enough to do some upkeep on the neighborhood
| entrance area, along with some cash for incidental expenses for
| neighborhood events.
|
| I've lived on both extremes of HOAs, from this current one to
| one where I got fined for opening the hood of my car in my
| driveway to replace a headlight (working on your car in view of
| others was specifically called out as not allowed).
|
| I can see why people would want the more extreme HOAs, but it's
| generally not for me.
| rantwasp wrote:
| depends on the HOA. 20$/month is enough to paint the community
| sign and maybe look at egregious violations of the rules, but
| not much more.
|
| this article talks more about 500$/month HOAs with free spirits
| that optimize everything
| londons_explore wrote:
| Some of these things can be guaranteed by writing them into the
| rules of the HOA.
|
| Eg. "The HOA shall not have income (including fines and
| charges) totalling greater than 0.01% of the value of the
| houses under its control."
|
| "The HOA president shall sit a maximum term of 1 year, after
| which they shall be barred from all roles within the HOA for 3
| years"
| Arainach wrote:
| Term limits don't work - in large governments or small. Some
| HOAs may have abusive governments (which should be voted out
| by the owners), but plenty of others operate fine and you
| don't hear about them because no one complains.
|
| Our neighborhood has dues around $35 (they've actually
| dropped in the last 5 years due to sufficient reserves and
| lower than anticipated maintenance costs). Our HOA President
| has lived in the neighborhood since it was built and been the
| President for many years, and they do a fine job - they've
| been around enough to know who to talk to in city government
| if there's a problem, who in the neighborhood can be counted
| on for a quick favor (need to dig a posthole to install a new
| sign, etc.), contacts in nearby neighborhoods for
| coordination, etc. They do plenty of work, things run well,
| and there haven't been any issues.
|
| The HOA in general avoids the overbearing nature described
| here. It mediates disputes between neighbors, approves
| property changes (emphasis on "approves" - I've been on the
| board, and while they'll often give feedback such as "please
| add another plant here", they almost never end up rejecting a
| request), and doesn't make too many demands. It recently
| requested the homes get repainted, but the last time it was
| required was 15 years ago, so that doesn't seem out of line
| to me. Frankly, I have no complaints.
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| I'd love to see some national crackdown on HOA/CCR rules. In
| particular you should never be stopped from growing food on your
| own property. If covid taught us anything it's that the food
| chain is fragile.
|
| The people who run these organizations would literally rather die
| than see a few corn stocks drying in the backyard of a neighbor.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I hate HOAs, but if all parties involved agreed to this
| "contract", the Government shouldn't tear it up and throw it
| away.
|
| Similarly, while I am for solar panels and flying the American
| flag, I don't like politicians who pass laws forcing HOAs to
| allow both:
|
| https://www.flsenate.gov/Laws/Statutes/2011/720.304#:~:text=...
|
| and
|
| https://www.solarunitedneighbors.org/florida/learn-the-
| issue....
|
| I feel if I was smart/savvy enough to buy a home where I'm
| allowed to fly a flag or have a solar panel, the people who
| agreed not to should have to suffer with the devalued property
| they chose to create.
| josephcsible wrote:
| > if all parties involved agreed to this "contract"
|
| Imagine that your grandfather bought a house in an HOA, then
| he died and you inherited it. You're now bound by a
| "contract" that you never signed or agreed to. Actual
| contracts can't bind next of kin, only those who actually
| signed them.
| londons_explore wrote:
| I guess you bound yourself to that contract by accepting
| your inheritance from your grandfather. Various other
| contracts can be passed on this way too.
|
| You always had the option to say no after all, and not take
| the house.
| josephcsible wrote:
| What sorts of other contracts can bind heirs?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Any kind of transferrable contract that has 'positive
| value'.
|
| For example "Bob agrees to lend $5k to Fred, and to
| ensure Fred is given flowers every day for 10 years. Fred
| agrees to repay Bob $10k in 10 years time".
|
| If bob dies, bobs heir can take on bobs side of that
| contract of delivering flowers, and getting the 10k end-
| of-contract payment from Fred.
| londons_explore wrote:
| > I hate HOAs, but if all parties involved agreed to this
| "contract
|
| Most legally binding agreements require all parties to know
| and understand what they are singing up to.
|
| If the HOA can make new rules anytime about anything, can you
| really claim that the house owner knew what they were signing
| up to when they bought the house?
| ed25519FUUU wrote:
| Not only that, but CCR rules are intentionally written in
| an extremely vague way. Even placing a small pebble on your
| property requires approval according to the rules.
| ("Anything placed anywhere on the property or its
| surroundings")
|
| Selective enforcement is a great evil. You're fine until
| you make someone on the committee mad, and they have an
| unusually high degree of power or you.
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