Created a new thread based on a hijack in a thread about a non-running RV stored on private property.
A good HOA, interested in maintaining sensible standards that make a real difference in quality of life and property values? Sure.
A bad HOA, staffed by petty bureaucrats interested in self-aggrandizing and arbitrary rules? No thank you.
They’re a tool that can be used for good or bad.
Nay. When we were looking for a house 6 years ago, we specifically excluded HOAs from our search. They’re not worth the hassle, unless you absolutely need to live somewhere where yard maintenance is taken care of by someone else.
Strong no for me.
Nope. I’ve never considered purchasing a home in a HOA, and I never would.
People are responding before I set it up but here is the gist of it:
Pro: HOAs that are run properly have a primary mission of preserving property values by maintaining a desirable look of the community.
Con: People should be able to do whatever they want on their own property.
My city maintains the rules that determine on what you can do with your property. When you can water your lawn, street parking and out buildings. They enforce their regulations quite well, so need for a HOA in my town.
Still some neighborhoods are out of city limits and or in a township that is l doesn’t regulate a lot of things. Upper class homes in those neighborhoods are necessary in order to not having people just leaving junk on their property for years.
I’m another strong “no thanks”. We have zoning laws. That’s plenty, maybe more than enough. I don’t want my neighbors to tell me what color to paint my door, and I’d rather live in a place where other people can do what they want, too.
Same here. Not worth the hassle, ever, IMO.
I’ve seen too many crazy HOA horror stories take place just here in Las Vegas; I want nothing to do with them.
It’s been a couple of decades since I bought my house, but when I was looking I specifically excluded any house that had an HOA. To me, HOAs seem like a good idea on paper but they never seem to work out well in actual practice.
I also refuse to live in cookie-cutter neighborhoods. No offense to anyone who lives in one, it’s just not for me.
I’m not interested in my neighbors telling me what to do with my house. It’s bad enough that the city government tells me when to cut my grass. My last house hunt began with the condition of no H.O.A., no co-op.
These answers are surprising to me. When we bought our house we specifically wanted a place WITH an HOA but eventually found a place that was great in other aspects but didn’t have one. We constantly wish that there was an HOA, though, for a few reasons:
- Some people park a half dozen cars in their driveway and on their lawn while also choking up the street with a half dozen more along the street. From just one house! And some of these cars are not operational, rusty, have completely flat wheels, etc.
- Some houses have lawns that are an overgrown jungle in winter and a crumbling desert of dead vegetation in summer.
- others leave their dogs out at all hours of the day and night. There’s one specific dog who goes absolutely bonkers, like crazed barking with spittle flying while choking himself trying to squeeze through the fence, every time we walk by; heatwave or heavy rain, he’s outside. It’s so bad we have considered calling the humane society to rescue him – it really is to the point of neglect – but we are worried he will just be put down, and is that any better?
- as others have mentioned, people occasionally leave junk on their front porch for months.
Only a few houses in the neighborhood do these things, but it only takes a couple to make the whole area look like crap. Meanwhile, where my parents live for example, they have an HOA. Is it a pain in the ass sometimes, like when they flip out because someone forgot to bring the trash cans in the same evening as trash day? Yeah. Is it worth it? Absolutely.
I live in a community with an HOA. In fact, I am the president. There are certain clear, unambiguous rules but they are not arbitrary. I have pushed back hard on attempt to create rules that are arbitrary. The initial set of rules were established by the builder from inception. These include things like you must keep the same colors when painting the exterior, and you have to cut your grass reasonably often. The overall objective is that the community was developed with a certain concept for the look and character, and it is in the best of interests of the community as a whole to maintain that character.
We had one member of our review board propose a rule that would prohibit trampolines in back yards. My position was that you should be able to do whatever you want in your back yard if it’s not evident from the street. I won that particular argument. I got a call from a homeowner was about to settle on selling his house when he got a notice from the review board that he had to remove a dead tree in his back yard. The tree was not dead but it had some dead branches, which he removed; then he got a second notice. I went back to the review board and asked them to show me the rule that said people had to remove trees in their back yard if they are not to the liking of the review board. I won that particular argument, because the rules are not that specific about landscape maintenance, only that you must “maintain its property and all appurtenances thereto in good repair and in a state of neat appearance. …flower gardens, shrubs and trees…shall be neatly maintained…”
We do require review board approval of any permanent structural changes. I can’t recall where an application was denied, but nobody has ever proposed anything that is out of whack with community norms.
There are many stories of HOA boards that have gotten out of control. In one case in Virginia, an HOA went bankrupt through legal challenges from a homeowner who was cited for having a political sign in their front yard that exceeded size limitations. But I am in a community where all the homeowners (56) support it. There is legal requirement that you are given all the HOA documents before you settle on the purchase, so everyone comes in with their eyes open.
I have seen a case or two of people who live without an HOA who go to great lengths to keep their house looking nice and the person next door lets the weeds grow, has a broken lawn mower rusting away in the front yard, lets the porch rot and sag, and parks cars on the yard. That person correctly says they can do whatever they want on their property, and the person next door says, “I put my house up for sale but when people see house next door they just keep driving.”
I can’t imagine the nightmare of living in such a place, but it depends on what you want from a home and neighborhood. Obviously, some people like to live in a neighborhood where certain standards are maintained. Be sure to read and understand the HOA…covenant?..before purchasing. The HOA has legal enforcement power, so you can’t just decide to ignore it later.
Quote from other thread:
That’s not what I said. I objected to HOA’s telling people what to do with their private property, but that’s as far as I went regarding objecting to or endorsing anyone telling people that they can and can’t do with their property.
I do think someone needs to stay on top of it or, yeah, the city is going to look like a landfill. I just don’t think it should be my neighbor from down the block getting worked up over things like my grass being 4 inches instead of 2 inches or my garage door being open for more than 15 minutes or deciding that they get to inspect my backyard…which now means they’re not just interested in curb appeal, they’re going out of their way to find infractions.
Granted, this goes out the window if your house is located on a big plot of privately owned property (think, gated community) or a condo or apartment. That is to say, if you live on property owned by someone else.
Having said all that, if you’re made aware of the HOA (and it’s rules/fees/structure etc) before you start signing things and you’re okay with it all, more power to you. But in general, I have no interest in them. We have enough Gladys Cravitzs running around, we don’t need to give them the power to levy fines against things they don’t like.
Any time you buy a house with an HOA, you sign an agreement not to sell it to anyone who doesn’t agree to join the HOA. That’s how they preserve themselves (to be fair, this arrangement was started as a way to keep neighborhoods white: you couldn’t buy a house in a neighborhood unless you signed a contract agreeing only to sell it to white families in the future, who were willing to sign the contract).
But many times HOAs make sense when a development wants to keep higher standards than the local government: I may be starting a development out in the county. It’s not a gated community, just a neighborhood, but the county’s standards for how houses look may be pretty loose (like, cars on blocks in the front yard are okay). People moving into neighborhoods don’t want cars on blocks or rusted tractors or whatever on their street, so they are reluctant to buy a house in my subdivision. I introduce an HOA that matches the “city” rules. Now people feel more confident about buying houses, and the demand (and price) of houses in the area goes up. I don’t see why having the county HOA have the same rules as the city has for all residential areas is a bad thing.
I mean, I agree some HOA’s are crazy specific and it robs a neighborhood of its character. But there’s a big difference between objecting to the concept of HOAs as a whole and objecting to certain implementations.
I consider such “standards”–the very idea that a neighborhood must maintain an appearance–as originating in racist and classist foundations of American society. An appearance of wealth, an appearance of uniform taste, an appearance of adherence to the standards of bourgeois white culture. I don’t want my neighbors’ opinions on what color I should paint my house, what I keep on my porch, etc. Butt the fuck out.
If a dog is being mistreated, that should be the domain of law, not a private enforcement agency.
We will probably move into a townhome when we “resize” - we don’t want the exterior maintenance, we are getting too old to shovel snow and have never been yard people. That will involve a HOA. In that case, its pushing the responsibility of exterior maintenance to the HOA (for a fee, of course). In addition to the fee, you also agree to things like no lawn signs, no more than one car in the driveway overnight, trash containers are only out the evening before and day of trash pickup. But you do want to read the rules and talk to the residents before buying, because the politics of trash cans can get nasty.
So if I don’t want to live next to a neon colored house with a dead lawn, it’s because I’m racist?
There is a difference between origin and you. He’s basically right about the origin being classist and racist.
I’m not ready for an HOA community but I don’t think they’re inherently evil either. There is a good chance our retirement home will have an HOA. Just the nature of how housing is for older people that it is very common.