Oh, Veb, keep making your house a showpiece. Talk at length about the extensive work you have done to the interior and politely hint about the cost. Chat about the cost of the catering you had for your last shindig, and moan about getting good bartending help.
In other words, positively grind their stuck-up noses in it. It’s so seldom when the little people win.
But SO gratifying.
Urgh, my mum lives in an apartment block with her hubby. The old codger downstairs was nice to start with. They’d help him bring his shopping upstairs and occasionally keep him company.
Not long after that, the council inspected their garage. Someone had complained they were running a business from it (in fact, they were using it to store bicycles for their bicycle shop, which was 100m down the road). They went on their merry way. But it continued. Parking tickets issued for parking on the street (NOT controlled parking), nasty letters from the council etc.
The old codger starting being a bit of a turd, picking fights with mum’s hubby. Mum put it down to old age, senility and just plain old old-codger behaviour. It wasn’t until finally the old codger was sent to an old codgers’ home that things came to light. Mum helped the old codger’s family clean up his apartment.
What did she find? Exercise pads full of dates and times, and details of each complaint he made to the council about all his neighbours. TEN YEARS WORTH. This shitbag had been telling on his neighbours for ten years. And it wasn’t even anything actually important. It was stuff like “washing the car for too long”, and “parked too far from curb”. What a turd.
Max.
I’ve become convinced that these tiny brained wipers of other people’s bottoms have never had any form of authority because they’re incorrigible pretentious assclowns who love feeling like the BMOC because they’ve been elected to third assistant dogshit inspector-Nazi.
It’s such fun to do work on condo units when the owner or landlord isn’t there, because invariably one of these spooge-guzzlers will come by to play a game called Yank The Contractor’s Dick. Last winter I was handling a list of repairs on a vacant unit while my cleaning crew was getting the inside pretty, and Ms. Nosy McTwatt felt it was her sworn duty to tell me that the front door needed to be repainted because it wasn’t the appropriate shade, and that those ragged screens needed to be fixed. Yup, the door probably was off by a shade or two, and two of the screens had small tears, but they weren’t on the list prepared by the man who writes the check.
I tell her I’ll pass on the information, and she tells me that “I don’t understand. These things must be addressed immediately.” You betcha, lady. Gonna pull that can of paint right outta my buttcrack. :rolleyes:
Idiots are annoying enough. Idiots with authority, real or imagined, can really frost the cake.
Oh yay, it’s my chance to share my favorite original quote:
“The problem with condo association boards are that they’re composed of people who have enough free time to be on condo association boards.”
Feel free to steal it for yourself.
DWC I hear ya,
Almost all the units I work on anymore are asociation controlled. I gots stories I can tell ya.
I had a customer who spent a whole day cleaning his driveway, then decided it would look better if it was painted. so he went down to the paintstore and had them color match his cement … to the shade. Association said it was not an approved shade of grey. They made him paint it battleship grey, and hire a licensed contractor to do it (me) I felt bad. I did it for the cost of the paint. (he was a long timer customer)
We installed a paver path from the fence to the driveway, in another development, the path took a “T” shape at one point with paths heading different directions. the association made us remove the portion that exceded 3" width permited for walkways. Yep, the walkway was 10’ wide by 3’ long.
I got more but I need am alka seltzer.
Non Sienfeld watcher here, could you explain it please?
A-fucking-men. I’ve been on my condo board for 6 weeks and I’m already ready to quit. We have a mix of retirees, young professionals, and tabby cats (aka never married middle aged women with cats–for the record, I guess I fit that demographic except that I’m not middle-aged). Anyway, there’s been a huge fight for the last few years about replacing our windows–has to be done, the windows are 60 years old. We have these fucking meetings that last 2 hours and nothing gets done except for people complaining about something that happened 2 years ago when they started looking into replacement windows and other people complaining that we need a new committee and further committee meetings to look at the window issue, blah, blah, blah. The association has been “looking” at windows for two fucking years!!! I get at least one phone call a day from some disgruntled owner who misheard whatever rumor it was that their senile neighbor was telling them. I had a phone call this week from a woman who wants me to tell her downstairs neighbor to knock off the profanity–what am I? The fucking den mother? Also, there’s one guy on the Board who apparently wants to handle every fucking detail of the fucking windows project himself, such as drawing the fucking window specifications and negotiating the fucking contract. Isn’t that what architects and lawyers are for? I’m waiting for him to bring his fucking window installation crew in. It totally sucks.
TVeblen, it sounds like Yuppies are the same all over. There are some neighbourhoods like yours here, one of them being right downtown. There have been concerts in the river park downtown for a very long time; once the Yuppies moved in, the concerts were now a problem, with all the noise and people, you know. Um, don’t want concerts in your back yard, don’t move someplace that has concerts.
As for homeowner’s associations and the like, I feel all y’alls pain. We live in an old neighbourhood where people are free to do what they want with their houses and yards, and we love it. Until they start paying my mortgage, nobody is going to tell me what colour I can paint my house and how wide my garden paths can be.
I, for one, want to know why a Jaguar is an ‘‘undesirable vehicle’’ and what planet you have to be from to think that.
:smack: :wally :rolleyes:
CondoNazi Thinking 101
Time^inf+anal fixation^inf=Problem
These problems don’t have to actually exist, except in the mind of the bitcher. That is all.
I thought I was done with that sort of thing when I sold my condo and moved out, but my house, though not a part of any association, is in a rather conservative neighborhood full of busybody old crones who love to snoop and gossip.
I was cornered the other day by one who wanted to know basically how come I never loiter in my front yard waiting for the next old biddy to come along so I could be probed for juicy tidbits. (She knew actually quite a bit about me already it turns out, and took pride in displaying her in-the-knowness.) I told her that when I get home from work there’s other things I’d rather do and she says, “WHY!?” (as in “My lands, but why WOULDN’T you?”).
Lady I am not your fucking gentleman caller I am your neighbor. (And I use that term loosely as you live rather far down the street from me.) Pinched, wrinkly battleaxe! Get out of my yard before I belt you in the beehive with a rake.
People are nosy, lying bastards by nature. Condo boards and the like merely facilitate these base impulses.
As far as the offending '79 Caddy, since you’re getting rid of it anyway, it may be time to dabble in some psychedelic '60s “Love Machine”-style graphics. Spray paint works great; don’t worry if it doesn’t come out like you imagined. Eyesore? You’re getting rid of it! … Eventually!
When my mom moved into her condo one of the neighbours called the cops because the moving truck was “illegally parked”
Well yes. It was - for the 15 minutes it took to load her two couches and two mattresses and one dining room table into the house.
The cops had to come anyway - they were quite apologetic.
And then there is the rule about the weighing of pets. Only cats up to a certain weight are permitted in the condo that my mother owns. Yep - there is a rule that she must weigh her indoor, never set a claw outside cats. CATS! I can understand maybe having a rule about the size of dogs…they come in many different sizes. But cats? Did they once have a problem with someone keeping a tiger as a pet?
The condo board probably read this news report and figured they needed to make an explicit rule on the subject.
And, by the way, tell your mom that alligators aren’t allowed either…
I moved out of my house, and it sat vacant while it was for sale. In the meantime, my brother-in-law wrecked his car, and needed a place to keep it while he tried to fix it or sell it. I guess the car was a real mess; I never saw it. I agreed that he could keep it in the garage for a while.
He ended up abusing the privilege, and the car was there quite a while. My agent called and wanted the car moved out so she could show the house, so BiL put it in the driveway. When the showing was over, he hung a For Sale sign on it.
This put a twist in the knickers of my politically connected back fence neighbor, who called my agent, saying he was the head of the neighborhood association, and that car had to go NOW. The agent, who has a reputation for getting into a fluster, was naturally upset and called me. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because BiL pulled another boneheaded stunt while overstaying, or because there is no
neighborhood association and PCN was out of bounds.
BiL had the car gone the next day.
I am ever so proud that my neighborhood did a collected nose thumb at the biddies who wanted to form a neighborhood association when I first built my house. We have these “protective covenants” that were to go into effect once a neighborhood association was formed. It is supposed to take agreement from two-thirds of the neighbors for the association to be formed.
Every once in a while somebody or bodies tries to circulate a petition to form a neighborhood association but hardly anybody signs the petition. Thus the nose thumb is once again given.
I love my neighbors!
I would be surprised if such an association could enforce covenants on the one third of owners who did not agree to them. I don’t see how the could form an association without 100% of owners agreeing.
Perhaps this explains the problem about the Jaguar referenced in an earlier post? 
I have no idea how the damn things work myself. So long as my neighbors and I continue our collective nose thumbing at all attempts to form one I ain’t worried. I may not have expressed it just right. I read the stuff when I first moved into my house and it was something along the lines of two-thirds of the neighborhood having to agree to it or would have to agree to anything somebody wanted to do to their home or lot or some such.
Aww… now I might just have to dig the damn thing out and see what it says.
You should have written her up an estimate. 
It’s probably a covenant running with the land that the developer put in the plat of subdivision, or in each of the original deeds. If done correctly, it’s enforceable. (Each owner’s title would be subject to the agreement to form an association, with specific powers, once 2/3rds of the owners set one up.)
Usual disclaimer. IAAL, but not yours, and you’re not my client. I’m probably not even licensed in your state. This is general information and not legal advice. See a lawyer licensed in your state for that.