Run away. An HOA that’s even involving itself in things like whether there’s a storm door is going to be a meddling hassle for your entire tenure there. I guarantee it.
LOL! It just shows the difference personality can make! That would be the part I might find encouraging. A benignly neglectful HOA would suit me fine. I’m looking for them to negotiate good deals on trash pickup and lawn care, and take turns looking out for vulnerable families; not harasss me about a door you have to look closely to find fault with.
If your local market is anything like ours though, I would think the HOAs best decision would be to waive any problems which might get in the way of a good sale. In fact, it shocks me that they wouldn’t be doing this wherever possible. Unless something was structurally dangerous, It seems to me that their real reason for being is to protect everybody’s property value, right?
It sounds like this HOA enforces the rules arbitrarily, though, which is the worst of all worlds.
I realize there are some benefits to that and I agree that there should be some things that are overlooked. But that doesn’t seem to be the case here, and having just moved out of a condo development I can say I’d rather have the rules enforced than not. People see rules being broken and decide it’s OK for them to do whatever they want. Then it’s all downhill from there.
Using the doors as an example, in my development if you wanted a storm door all the units in a given building (5-7 units) had to agree on the same door. Really not that hard and the buildings that did it usually got a discount on the door and installation for buying them all together. But then you get some dumb fuck that moves in, doesn’t bother to read the rules, and slaps up some piece of shit door that looks like it got ripped off the house in the Wizard of Oz. Complaints get made but nothing happens and pretty soon other people just say fuck it and put up whatever door they want, too. Now, are storm doors really that big of a deal: no. But if you’re the guy trying to sell the place next to Screen Door Asshole, then yeah, it does matter, because I can tell you as a buyer, I walked away from plenty of probably nice places that looked like they had crappy neighbors.
Have to agree with your second point. If the development is in trouble, they should concentrate on getting units off the market.
If they did illegal renovations already, what other shoddy shit was done to the house that you’re not aware of? Just something to think about.
For what it’s worth, my crazed, Old Person manned HOA would probably go tear that shit down themselves. Seriously, once I mopped my floor and stuck the bucket upside down on my patio to dry at about 7 pm. I woke up at 7 AM the next day and saw the wind had blown the bucket into my flowerbed. Picked up the bucket, put it away. A week later I got a letter demanding I REMOVE WHITE BUCKET FROM FLOWER BED IMMEDIATELY. I about bust a gut laughing.
So, basically, not worth it. Walk away and find something better.
Where are you getting this from?
ETA: bolded the part I’m wondering about.
Well, if the rule says the addition is a violation and the HOA never aggressively moved to deal with it, that says to me they don’t enforce their rules. I’m not kidding when I say that my HOA has filed liens against people’s homes for less (says in the HOA agreement that if you don’t pay the fine, they can file a lien through the court, then they can auction off a person’s house eventually to pay the debt). Don’t get me wrong, it takes a while to get to that point, but through several owners ought to be enough.
Gotta say I was wondering the same thing. The fence is on display to the whole neighborhood, if he brushed off HOA rules there then maybe there’s other stuff he didn’t fuss with when working in the backyard, the basement, etc. And you’re buying the place, whatever handiwork he did is yours once he’s gone.
Huge 2nd here. Don’t pay to be bullied. Find another place to live.