But it’s being argued in this thread that people are bound by the rules and have given up certain rights because they signed an agreement giving up those rights. An heir did not sign any agreement, so that argument wouldn’t seem to hold true for heirs.
So in the case of heirs we seem to have a class of people where this argument does not hold true. Does that invalidate the argument and, if so, then what is the legal basis for these de facto governments?
Does it really have to be a law preventing it?
What about greed? Homeowners are greedy for money just like everyone else.
If we can prove that HOAs downgrade the value of the homes to developers and homeowners, HOA restrictions would disappear. Money (and the preservation of it) is a great motivator.
For example, there’s no “law” that prevents people from having olive & mustard colored appliances in their kitchen. However, you can’t sell a mainstream house like that because it will look like retro vomit from the 1960s. Money and resale value motivate people not to make choices like that – no legal intervention required.
As it stands, the vast majority of homeowners believe that HOAs help preserve their real estate investment. Are they all wrong? How do we go about proving them wrong?
If your dad sold the mineral rights to his land to a mining company, when you inherit the land you don’t get the mineral rights - because someone else owns them. It doesn’t matter that you weren’t a party to that contract.
You inherit the property as is, with all of its covenants, restrictions, hobos, weeds, and whatever else.
If the folks involved aren’t dicks (the HOA folks and your friend) or acting like dicks, then some HOAs do this. I just told mine I didn’t know better and that I was sorry, they came, did the inspection, said it was good to go.
Although, if this has been something that’s gone on for a while and your friend has ignored it. . . that sort of doesn’t show good faith on his side.
And how does any of this prevent the problem I was describing?
You’re thinking of nothing but property values. What about quality of life? What about being able to plant a few tomato plants in a yard I paid for? What if I think that the inability to do that diminishes a property’s value?
How large a percentage of people would have to prefer HOAs before it becomes difficult for anyone else to find a decent house that isn’t subject to an HOA? Would it even have to be a majority? I suspect not.
If, say, 25% of people simply won’t buy without an HOA, and another 50% don’t care or don’t understand, then developers will provide for HOAs in the title.
We then end up with 25% of the biggest tight asses dictating the rules to everyone who doesn’t want to live in the middle of nowhere.
As I said, I don’t know of any legal way to stop it. Maybe it can’t be stopped. But I find it troubling. Your economic arguments don’t change that.
(Replying to, but not directed at Ruminator.)
It would be interesting to see actual data on this.
Do homeowners in HOAs believe the HOA helps preserve their home value?
Do homeowners in general believe that?
Do HOAs preserve home value?
Actually, that’d be an excellent question for Cecil.
Maybe I’m not being clear, since people keep responding with the same argument.
I’ll try again. People in this thread have argued that HOAs are valid because people have willingly signed away their rights. I’ve shown (I think) that that argument isn’t valid because there is a class of people who are bound by the agreements even though they’ve signed nothing. Given that, what is it that makes these de facto governments legal?
In any case, is it really constitutional to attach a denunciation of basic rights to a title? Can an heir really be forced to be subject to a government that wasn’t constitutionally elected? Title requirements aren’t sacrosanct and have been voided by courts in the past.
[quote=“davidm, post:67, topic:552044”]
Let’s try again.
Your father has 400 acres. He sells 200. You inherit 200.
You don’t get the other 200 because they aren’t his to give you.
Property doesn’t include just acreage. There are also intangible rights. You can sell, trade, and contract those too.
When I sell the rights in property, I sell all characterisitcs of those rights - including the north border, the south border, the right to prevent some people from entering, the mineral rights, the right to lease it, etc, etc, etc.
What I don’t sell is what I don’t have.
You do not have the right to prevent planes from flying over your house. Therefore, you cannot sell that right. You do not have the right to leave an HOA to which you belong, therefore you cannot sell that right.
How can Grandma leave you unrestricted rights to the title when she never had them in the first place? She didn’t sign away those rights. She never had them.
Just a simple response to this is that unless something is defined as illegal by statute, then it is legal. So if you think it is criminal, you must provide a cite to a statute criminalizing said activity.
The rights were given away when the first owner signed them. Any subsequent owner never has those rights, they are not part of owning the house. Any subsequent owner is bound by the rules because the property is bound by those rules. It’s not a “right” that you as a person every had.
On preview: What Darth Panda said.
You are not forced to accept an inheritance if you don’t wish to. You may disclaim it. If you do wish to, the contractual and financial obligations that attach to the inherited property come with it. For instance, if you find the property taxes on an unwanted and difficult-to-sell house not worth the trouble, you may refuse it, and have it pass to the next beneficiary in line. You could probably refuse because you found the HOA covenant repugnant, too, though if there is positive equity in the property, it wouldn’t make much sense. You would more likely take it over and deal with the HOA nazis only long enough to sell it, and let the new owner deal with them.
Of course! That’s what the purpose of HOA restrictions are for. The HOA documents aren’t there to tell people how to organize neighborhood barbeques or garage sales. If we discuss HOA, we discuss property values. It’s the same conversation.
Maybe having less anxiety about neighbors’ non-conformant behavior diminishing property values is another form of “quality of life.”
I don’t see how the math works there. If the majority of your potential customers don’t want the HOA, it is business suicide to put one in place. As a business, you want to sell your plots of land quickly and profitably and letting 25% of potential customers make your investment unattractive to another 50% is illogical.
I can sorta see that you’re trying to bend your math by qualifying buyers as “don’t care.” However, I think that’s unrealistic. I’ve never met anyone that didn’t have an opinion on HOA. They either want it or they don’t – and sometimes they’re very vocal about it!
However, to add ammunition to your side of the argument, there may be pressure from the city planners or town council that “encourages” the developer to put an HOA in place even if the he doesn’t want to. If the builder doesn’t want to play along, he doesn’t get the permits and variances needed to develop that land. I wouldn’t know enough about city-level politics to know if this is an actual problem vs something I just invented.
What Markxxx meant is that federal law prohibits anyone from interfering with the reception of broadcast signals. A contract forbidding the placement of a TV antenna on your roof is unenforceable for that reason. But there’s no such statutory protection in place for blue and pink striped doors.
Here’s some data that says yes. Unfortunately, it’s from a biased source (management company that HOAs outsource their administration to.)
http://www.cityproperty.com/can-an-hoa-add-value-to-your-property
Here’s some data that says no.
http://www.ccfj.net/TXsendoc.htm#BobAd
That data is summarized so it leaves out details such as type of neighborhoods, location, etc.
I’m not wedded to HOA CC&R. If it can be definitively proven that they hurt house values, I’d be happy to get rid of them and let my minor pile of tree branches lay where they are.
But there are other issues at stake here. You can’t just win an argument but insisting that it only be about one thing. HOAs are there to protect property values (well, some people may use them because they don’t want to look at certain things, or live near certain types of people, but we can leave that out of it for now…) but they also affect other things and to say that we can’t include those things in the argument is a bit - I don’t want to say intellectually dishonest- let’s just say not entirely kosher.
If, say, 25% of people simply won’t buy without an HOA, and another 50% don’t care or don’t understand, then developers will provide for HOAs since that way everyone (well, 75%) is happy, or at least ignorant, and the houses will sell.
I disagree. If a small number feel strongly, and most of the rest don’t care much one way or the other, then the developer benefits economically by catering to the group that cares, since the others will go along anyway, and I maintain that most people either don’t care or are too far along in the process to want to back out when they find out. I don’t buy the idea that everyone feels strongly one way or the other and actually investigates the possibility upfront.
Like you, I don’t know enough to say if this could add to the problem or not, but I suppose it’s possible.
I think this whole thing is one example of a larger phenomenon. Relatively small but strong-minded groups of people end up pushing us in directions that a larger number of people would object to if they were paying attention.
I don’t know what’s to be done about it, but I do see this as a problem.
HOAs are elected for the most part though. While there have been a few complaints about the developer’s management company mishandling things, most people seem opposed to them due to the petty concerns of their fellow owners who are on the board. Those people didn’t get there by fiat: people voted them in. It is conceivable that the HOA restricts your ability to interact with other owners to make your views known, but I’ve yet to hear that complaint. If you don’t like how things are being run, find out how your neighbors feel about it and see if you can’t collectively effect some change.
Well, if 25% of all people want red notebooks; 50% don’t care; and the other 25% want blue notebooks, but the manufacturers make a better margin on the 25% that are red, then yes, you would expect all notebooks to be red (let’s just say that red is cheaper).
But if the people who wanted blue notebooks were willing to more for them to the point that the manufacturers were able to make an equal or better margin on the blue than the red, then the manufacturers would make some blue ones, too.
But if very few wanted blue and weren’t willing to pay much for it, then they wouldn’t get any blue notebooks, they’d be stuck with red.
Sometimes what you want isn’t for sale, and in that case - yes, it’s a bummer for you. But that usually only happens when you’re in a significant minority (keeping in mind that in a country of 300 million people, a significant minority can still be quite a few people). But just because you can’t get what you want doesn’t mean that something is unconstitutional.
ETA: if you really thought that a neigborhood would be better off without it and you thought people would value it if given the option, then you could just buy all of the houses, dissolve the neigborhood, and resell the houses. And if it really were the case, arbitrageurs would do just that, because that’s what they do…
In the year that I’ve lived in my present house, a grand total of 1 out of 20 houses have sold in the HOA area that were on sale from the time I moved in. The reason is that a lot of people do not want to deal with the HOA and its growing infamy (for example, they tried to have a guy arrested when he brought in proof that the board was shredding ballots in the last election. When they tried to cite me for growing weeds that were really wildflowers, I asked to see the bylaws and I was told they don’t exist).
I could get a great deal on a wonderful house and I won’t do it because of the HOA.
I don’t claim there’s only one single minded issue about quality of life. I’m saying that “fixing” it is done best by focusing on why HOA restrictions exist in the first place: property values. That’s the ONE thing I’m emphasizing. If property values fall because of HOA abuse, then HOAs will go away. Problem solved.
If property values fell, why would I and all my other neighbors want to keep the HOA restrictions in place? Do we have a sadistic need to subsidize the HOA board members masturbating over their inspections?
You are the 2nd person to bring up this tangent. When I lived in an apartment with no HOA, it was as Klu Klux Klan as you could get. The HOA neighborhood I live in now is more diverse with several black residents. Which particular HOA restrictions are you thinking of that prevent certain types of people?
Your whole 25% vs 50% hinges on the existence of people not caring or being ignorant. We will have to leave it at this disagreement because I think most people have an opinion. I only have anecdotes and no data to back this up so we can’t progress on this point.