In NC, there is (or was last time I bought a house) a disclosure sheet where you have to assert whether you know of any problems with the house, and what (if any) binding covenants and homeowner’s dues are on the property. It’s possible to answer ‘no representation’ on some of the items, but you can always decline to proceed if someone ‘no representations’ something you care about, and from what my agent said no one does that for HOAs because no one will proceed without a yes/no on that one.
I’m not sure about Virginia, but in NC the contract is earlier in the process than that. You sign the contract when you think you would like to purchase the house, and put down a small deposit to hold the house and a larger sum of earnest money. You then do any needed research on the house (like home inspection, title search, and the like), and can back out for any reason before a certain date, losing the deposit. After that date, if you back out you lose the earnest money, and it’s generally considered bad form to do so voluntarily. If someone falsely said that there is no HOA, that would invalidate the contract and you’d be able to back out while getting all of your money, and they’d be stuck with the house being listed for a long time (which looks bad).
That’s my parents as well. Your front yard - which is maintained by the HOA (the back is too), has some standards in terms of how much crap you can put out on your front lawn - a few planters are great - blow up Santas at Christmas are a no-no. But your back…no one really cares if you have overgrown tomatoes (as long as the landscaper can mow where they are supposed to mow).
My Dad loves living in an HOA because every time he used to come over to my house, he’d look out the window at the house behind us, and say “I wonder if your neighbor will ever get rid of that rusted jeep.” That was what he used to say, after fifteen years, the jeep finally disappeared - he needed room for a broken down boat and camper - so my father got to change his complaint - for the past decade its been the boat and camper. It is worth every hassle of an HOA for my mother not to have to listen to my father complain about the neighbors crap every day. People like my neighbor, who want to keep a broken jeep/boat/camper won’t move into an HOA. For my father, its either no neighbors, or neighbors who aren’t going to raise his blood pressure when he looks out the window. And since everyone in their HOA moved into the HOA because they don’t want to be looking at someone else’s broken down camper or car on blocks in the driveway, everyone is happy.
Actually, there are typically contingencies in the contract for the home inspection, termite inspection, and getting financing, and anything else that both sides will accept. If a contingency is not met then you can back out without losing a dime.
Its been a while since my parents shopped (this is Minnesota), but I helped when they did so and every townhome they looked at had the covenants available on the table to look at - several had multiple copies for you to take if you were serious about the home. And last time I sold a house, you had to disclose at showing if there were any covenants. Getting surprised by an HOA in Minnesota is a little like waking up and discovering you got married…(inheriting a house with an HOA, then you might get surprised by it.)
Of the four things you listed in that first post, only the loud sound system seems to me to have anything to do with consideration, and none of them seem to me to have anything to do with laziness. Possibly rather the reverse: it’s easier to buy eggs than it is to keep chickens. (The eggs will probably be better, though.)
It seems to me to be inconsiderate to insist that your neighbors have to decorate to your tastes.
If you want to live in a group of houses in which everything looks more or less the same, then as I said earlier, as long as there are places to live in the general area that are fit to live in but don’t have those requirements then I’ve got no problem with that. But I do have a problem with claiming that people who like to keep chickens, sit comfortably on their porches, or play pool must be lazy and inconsiderate.
I consider HOAs a lot like swimming pools. Some people like homes with them and seek them out. Other people don’t like them and avoid them. And they cost money.
When we were house hunting, both HOAs and swimming pools were on our no-go list. They both reduce the value of a home to us.
Not in my experience 5 and 20 years ago. The smaller amount (I can’t remember what it was called) was typically something like $250 and was basically paying the other person to take the house off the market, the earnest money would be thousands and you would get that part back on contingencies.
Honestly, before this thread I had no idea there were HOAs that dictate that you can’t have a table (or just a pool table? or any game equipment?) in your carport, or that anyone would find something to complain about. The idea that someone thinks it’s so bad that it’s such an obvious bad thing that they don’t even explain why someone would be bothered by it is surprising. And a good example of why some of us avoid HOAs, lol.
Not that I’m in any way defending an HOA, however, in case carport means something different where you are, the only meaning of carport that I know is something like this. They can range from a nice one built into the side of the house down to four cheap posts and some plywood or correlated sheet metal across the top. In any case, they’re not enclosed (like a garage). I could understand neighbors getting annoyed listening to people playing pool on a regular basis. Especially if it tended to be later at night and/or involved drinking and people getting loud. If someone had a pool table in their garage, I don’t think the neighbors would care, especially if the door was closed and it couldn’t be heard down the block.
I’d say it’s better the opposite way. On the assumption that an HOA is going to be a deal breaker for a lot of people, buyers may be more likely to go through with the purchase, despite the HOA, after they’re already invested (emotionally, not financially) in the house.
I guess it depends on what part of the covenants you object to and how willing you are to work around them. With our current house there is a limit of 2 dogs and we had to meet with the HOA board to get an exception because we had 3. If that came up in the closing, we would have had to back out or push off the signing. Other similar issues could be having to park all cars in the garage, no RVs, or things like that where people would be in violation on the first day. If it’s minor stuff like no windchimes or no basketball in the street, then springing that on the buyers at the end would probably not kill the deal.
I can understand people getting annoyed by loud parties late at night, whether the problem is people drinking beer and/or playing pool or drinking expensive wine and/or splashing/shrieking in the pool. That can be dealt with by noise ordinances, though I grant that not every place does.
But what is the sense of having outdoor grounds if nobody’s ever supposed to do anything in them? Are they supposed to be only to admire from inside through the windows?
I would be absolutely furious if somebody let things proceed as far as their accepting a formal offer before they sprung an HOA on me. And I would refuse to have anything at all ever to do with a realtor who allowed that to happen, and would tell everybody I knew about it.
The fact that you understand neighbors getting pissy because people are regularly hanging out on their own property and talking with an occasional ‘click’ of a pool ball is one of the best arguments against me getting involved with an HOA that I’ve heard. It’s mind boggling to me that ‘neighbors might hang out in their own yard’ is a thing someone would complain about, I thought I must be missing something but no.
That’s what town noise complaints are for. I suspect that if you’re the kind of person who gets upset that neighbors are playing pool in their own carport and has to endure an occasional ‘click’ of a pool ball, the town will stop paying attention to your noise complaints pretty quickly though.
I just double checked with my daughter, who is a licensed Realtor in Virginia, and that is the whole point of putting the contingencies in the contract. If the deal breaks because a contingency cannot be met, the buyer does not lose any money. It may vary by state. The listing stays up until settlement so it may technically be off the market but it is still listed.
I would think real estate agents would ask up front, and you’d rule in/out. Will you accept a condo? 2 bedrooms ok? You need a 3 car garage? Ah, you insist on a fireplace ok.
Your max payment is $X, so allowing for HOA let’s target a mortgage of…oh, you won’t go for the HOA?
I don’t trust HOAs in the long run. But to each his own.
I would certainly hope that would be one of the things they’d go over up front; and also that they wouldn’t just assume the HOA, but specifically check whether you wanted one, and if so whether there were particular restrictions that you did or didn’t want.
If I’m ever (which is unlikely) in the position of buying a house again, it’s now just in case on my list of things to check.
A related thing which ought to be on housebuyers’ lists: if you’re considering a place on a private road, find out whether there’s a roadowners’ association. If so, find out what its rules are – they vary widely; and if not, find out how road maintenance and repairs and snowplowing if relevant are decided on and paid for. And don’t assume that a narrow dirt road is either private or public – find out. (Mine’s public. Sure saves me a lot of snowplowing or paying for snowplowing.)
I think it’s pretty universal that you get your deposit back if the contingencies aren’t met. The most prevalent contingency is the ability to obtain financing.
So, let’s say you put your deposit in escrow then you get turned down for the loan. This is typically a very large deposit. Do you think anyone would ever put down a 25K+ deposit if they were at that kind of risk of losing it?
Deposits are frequently returned, that is why they go into escrow accounts.
Especially since the bank might deny financing to people with excellent credit if there is something wrong with the house or the appraisal.
Now, there is probably a rule or law somewhere that says that the breach had to be material or significant. In other words, you can’t walk away from the contract because the engineering inspection finds a broken lock on the garage or an appliance that needs repair.
These rules were put in place, at least in some jurisdictions, to curb an abuse that happened during real estate booms. Speculators would buy multiple properties sight unseen just to get them off the market, then they would rely on small defects in the inspection reports to back out of the properties they decided not to buy.
And, with regards to the HOA requirements - you have to list any HOA fees on your loan application. So if you are getting financing you’ll be informed very early on in the process. You’re not going to be blindsided the week before you close.
Oh, another thing about ‘last minute HOAs’ - sometimes there may be something about an HOA in the paperwork but not an actual functioning HOA, or there’s a provision that people just don’t realize is there. My old house had a provision in the deed that the developers had ten years to create something equivalent to an HOA once the neighborhood was finished (or started?), and the people who were buying it balked at that. But the developers never actually created one, and it was already ten years outside of the window when I bought the house and twenty by the time I was selling it. But when they went to look at the actual deed, they worried there was actually an HOA that I hadn’t disclosed because of that. I’m not sure how my realtor ‘proved a negative’, but it seemed pretty simple since (AFAIK) he just emailed them about it.
