Those exist in Spain, but they’re a lot more limited and it’s hard to come up with a scenario where someone would manage to lose the house to seizure by the court of civil justice in a suit from their HOA before they managed to lose it to, say, the bank for not paying the mortgage. Someone who has the mortgage paid off and can’t pay the HOA’s fees should be able to get aid; I mean, if you don’t have that kind of money, either you’re the worst financial manager in history or you don’t have enough for food.
Ours is interesting. We pay a couple hundred bucks a year for mowing, pool, etc. The association only meets once a year, gets drunk, bitches about the people who didn’t show up, and then fights over who’s going to be president (no one wants the job).
This year we actually forgot to vote for a president and the current guy got stuck with it again (and he’s not even a homeowner, he rents).
I have an HOA in my condo - you pretty much have to. My dues cover internet, water, insurance on the building, maintenance, our concierge, pool, gym, enertainment centers, some insurance on the interior of your unit, and whatever else. They run about $250/month.
I haven’t finished moving in yet, but I’ve seen of the rules and think that there’s one that is quite useful. The HOA restricitons prevent more than a handful of units from being rented out at any one time. Basically, if you want to rent out your unit, you put your name on the list. First come, first serve. So if the rental cap is reached, and you’re first on the list, you can’t rent your unit until someone stops renting theirs (usually becuase they’ve sold it).
The intent is to keep the condo from becoming an apartment complex. A good thing in my opinion.
We’ll see how I feel about the HOA in general after I actually live there for a little while. I do intend to show up for the meetings and participate - it’s the people not driving the car who tend to get run over…
ETA: not that I intend to run anyone over, I don’t feel the need to attempt some type of petty power grab. I just don’t like playing the victim.
I usually hear about HOAs in regards to my hobby as an amateur (ham) radio operator. Many (most?) ban any sort of outdoor antennas. I don’t just mean big ugly towers but even an almost invisible piece of wire hanging from your house to a tree is often forbidden. I think there is some patriotic federal law which ensures your right to have a flag pole of reasonable size so a lot of hams in HOA restricted areas have a flag pole with another secret function 
When satellite TV became popular I think there was a federal law passed to ensure people were permitted to have a satellite dish.
The other place I’ve read about HOAs is the “Right to Dry” movement who promote the use of outdoor clotheslines. Unfortunately these are also banned by many HOAs. There is something a little crazy about people living in a place with abundant sunshine and being forced to use nonrenewable energy sources to dry their clothes. Some states have passed laws to ensure the right to use a clothesline. I heard a radio interview with a representative of Hills which is an Australian company which makes rotary clotheslines and is trying to expand into the US market. He said that they hadn’t anticipated the restrictions that many Americans live under.
It does seem to be getting difficult to avoid an HOA in many areas. I believe Arizona insists on all new developments having an HOA. I suspect most are formed with “off the shelf” “cookie cutter” rules. So … when someone has a problem with their HOA and is told “well … you freely signed a contract” then of course it’s true but, even so, the bigger picture is not so simple.
In places with individual houses then I have a hard time seeing the need for a lot of restrictions. Admittedly, my threshold of what my neighbors could do before it would bother me is probably much higher than most people. Noise, smell or anything potentially dangerous to others would be about the only thing that would really bother me and local laws probably cover that.
I figured I’d chime in to say: the chief purpose of an HOA is to protect property values from decreasing and to do everything possible to make property values increase over time. Everything, everything, stems from that goal. The pissant little rules (and I agree, the no-clothesline thing is a huge :rolleyes:) are because of the idea that visual clutter, paint colors that deviate from the standard pallette, etc. are *perceived *to lower property values.
If you don’t participate in meetings, you have only yourself to blame. Meetings are for the benefit of the Association (if a condo development). Even meetings for the officers are open to others in the community.
Each year, the board enacts the budget for the following year. The members of the association are encouraged to attend, and they must be given at least 10 day’s notice of the meeting, and the agenda of the meeting. A copy of the proposed budget must also be given. All fiscal matters are thereby disclosed to the members. If a budget item is objectionable, that is the time to object. If some matter needs explanation, that is the time to ask for it.
lost4life:
Then he’s probably ineligible to hold office. In condos, he definitely would be ineligible.
They could enforce this because they or their friends would get the flyers under their doors, and it would be obvious from the flyers who they were from. So they could then retaliate against the opposing candidates.
And they certainly could regulate this. (Heck, they even had regulations about what brands of detergent you could use in the washing machines!) They claimed that as it was private property, they could regulate who could put materials there. And they said it was for the convenience of the residents, who didn’t want such campaign flyers messing up their doorways. Later, they claimed it was a matter of safety – some of the residents were elderly, and bending over to pick up this flyer, they might fall and hurt themself.
I guess my HOA falls somewhere in between. I pay about $120 monthly for a townhouse community. We don’t really have any amenities (no pools, gym. etc). But the fees cover upkeep of the private streets, the landscaping of the public areas, garbage and recycling collection, and snow removal (which is much better than the city removal on the main street). Otherwise, we’re all responsible for our own property (although I’m not sure how it would work if there was a problem with a shared wall). Personally, while I bitch and moan about some of their restrictions (need to remember to polish my door kickplate since it isn’t shiny enough) I find it useful that they go around every year and point out things that need fixing. This year, they told me to paint my rake board. I didn’t even know I had a rake board, and since it’s about 30 feet up, I would never have noticed the paint peeling until it had rotted away. Likewise, they make sure that my house is painted regularly. OTOH, the new laws that they just sent out do ban clotheslines, as well as hot tubs. I’ll have to check with my neighbor. The last I heard, she had put a hot tub in her yard, and was trying to get on the HOA board to get them to retroactively approve it.
HOAs don’t go away. Our development is 55 years old, and still has one. Dues are only a bit over $100 a year, and we get two parks and two pools for it, and a lot of it seems to go to fix damage done by vandals, so I don’t mind. They are a bit anal, though. Their big thing is not putting out your trash too early or bringing it in too late, and making sure the cans are out of sight.
Most of the people on the board are retired, so it is a case of “you kids stay off of everyone’s lawn.” Still, my wife is on a neighborhood mailing list, and the board is almost moderate compared to some of the home owners. I stay away, since if I actually had a chance to respond to some of the stuff they have there it would be flame on.
Example of nitpicking: they objected to the Fed Ex and UPS drivers playing basketball in the park during their lunch hour. It is not so much that they aren’t residents, it was that they would somehow lower the tone of the place. :rolleyes: We are not that classy a neighborhood.
Here is the underlying, and shameful aspect of American values that make all this possible. We like to control our neighbors. We want what we want, and we really don’t care what it costs us, much less what it might cost someone else. We have the economic sense of a two year old, and are willing to give up even the rights our Constitution guarantees us to make sure the neighbor doesn’t paint a pink peace sign on his door.
So, real estate developers, sensing blood in the water write up deeds that guarantee you will have control over your neighbors. And Americans flock for the privilege of paying busybodies from the local neighborhood to pass judgment on the unworthy, and force them to comply with our own sensibilities. We agree to pay for it with the very homes we own as surety, and invalidate in advance our own legal rights to protect ourselves when it turns out that some one is inevitably going to object to our own sensibilities. And, being suspicious by nature, we pay lawyers large sums to write the deeds based on the experiences of other groups of busybodies who have been successful in forcing other property owners to follow the HOA like the gods they wish they were.
And, HOA’s and the lawyers who protect them know that the cost of being a busybody is basically not limited. So, the busybodies themselves get to decide how much we should pay, and usually, there is only a very complex, lengthy, and unlikely method to control just how ridiculous the HOA’s idea of reasonable expense can be. By this method, one can winnow the population according to the desire to spend lots of time controlling others, and keep those people in the positions of HOA officers. No one but busybodies wants the job, and the busybodies just love the attention, power, and money they get to control.
And we have this because we want it. It’s our right as Americans to sell our very souls, although not to buy a picket fence, until the Architecture committee approves.
Tris
I was on the board of our HOA for several years, even being elected president once (for two years). All board members and officers are elected by the unit owners. All board members and officers serve without pay. Personally, I would rather not be on the board or be an officer, but the problem was that if I didn’t want to serve, who would? Few members of the council (i.e., unit owners) want to devote the time and effort. “Let Joe do it.” So, all this criticism is vastly misplaced. I’m referring here to condominium developments. I would think that neighborhood HOAs are similar but have no personal experience there.
I read all these jibes against board members, who have been alleged to be senior citizens (guilty as charged), busybodies, etc. Of course they have to be concerned with what’s going on in the development. That’s one of the duties of a board member. They’d be derelict in their duties if they didn’t. As to the fees (called “regime fees” in a condo), that is determined by the annual budget and the number of units in the community. I live in a small community, only 40 units, so I pay a large regime fees in comparison to what we have (no tennis courts, swimming pools, etc .) Even more unfortunately, one of the unit owners did not pay her regime fees for a long time and we had to foreclose. Unfortunately, there is a mortgage on the unit which is a first and prior lien, with no assumption clause. So we had to suck up the almost $20,000 and pay special assessments on that.
As I noted before, those that complain the most are those who are not willing to serve on the board. I am retired, but am the only one on the board who is retired. Actually, I’m not on it anymore since, fortunately, there are a few here willing to put in the time and effort.
You’ll take my quarry from my cold dead hands before I give it up!
Nice.
With war, poverty, disease, and famine abundant in the world, you’re picking out HOAs as the anti-christ? Just because some people pay shared costs on some items and elect people to set some ground rules for a community (no basketball hoops in the driveway, oh the humanity)?
Yes, some HOAs are probably corrupt, evil and psychotic - but so are some deli owners, some school boards, some churches, some machine shops, some court clerks, some apartment complexes, some banks, some community outreach centers, and some day-care centers…
Most people are pretty normal… by definition.
So many fallacies, so little time.
This is almost HOA-like. Is there an approved short list of things one can bitch about?
Most folks in any category are indeed relatively sane and decent. Problems arise when the exceptions are especially numerous, have substantial capacity for harm and are not subject to adequate controls. Most (80%? Two-thirds? A simple majority?) of HOAs are probably not too bad to live with. If you get stuck with the rampant busybody type there is typically little recourse, so I’d never live anyplace that had a homeowners’ association. If the neighbor sets out his trash “too early” or lets her son park his truck in the driveway for a couple of months (like my next-door neighbor) I’m not going to throw a fit worrying about the decline in property values.
No. But choosing some things will surprise people more than choosing others.
No disagreement here.
I don’t know what the numbers are - I would lean on the high side if I had to guess. But if you had one you didn’t like, I would think that there usually is something that you can do about it - whether via persuassion, the election process, the court system, or moving - probably in that order. Of course, you could ask about the HOA before you bought - it would seem fairly insane not to.
As far as you choosing to not live in one because of the potential issue of having to deal with an annoying HOA - that’s cool, free country and all. But your point of view here doesn’t seem to be the same as that the poster of the comments that I was responding to - comparing an HOA to selling one’s soul and equating it to the source of all of America’s problems.
Neither would I; but I also wouldn’t have a problem with following with those rules. I’m fine with it either way.
It is not HOAs in particular that are the root evil, but they represent the mind-set, the fundamental underlying assumptions that do in fact cause a significant portion of the evil around us.
This American obsession with “propriety” and conformity (actual “rugged individualists” will be ridiculed, ostracized, and pulled over routinely); this notion that everyone else’s business –in private!– is our business to guess at, disapprove of, and legislate; this consensus agreement that money and financial considerations trump all (why is the Downtown Business Association the sole arbiter of public life?); all these qualities of American society are local manifestations of the same nasty principles that allow us to behave as we do elsewhere in the world.
(…and, beautifully put, **Triskadecamus! **)
(bolding miine)
If you are bringing gacts to the party, I’d like to see a cite.
Bah, missed editing window - that would be facts, not gacts. Although feel free to bring them too 
Penn and Teller did an episode on lawns that illustrated some crazy homeowners association activity. Guy bought a house in a ritzy-ish neighborhood in Florida whose association requires a specific species of grass for the lawn. The guy’s lawn kept dying, because this particular species is native to and not suited to the local ecosystem. He spent tons of money having his lawn re-sodded to no avail. He also had to use tons of water on the lawn in an area where there are chronic water shortages. The association kept issuing warnings and fines, even though the guy was doing everything possible to maintain the lawn in the manner required by the association.