Since we’re anecdoting the fuck out of this thread: where I live (a gated HOA of “condos”- but each condo is a freestanding home. My house is 2500 square feet and the smallest model), in the last year, about 10 houses were put up for sale and sold in no more than 2 months. Every single time, I am amazed- I figure like you that no one else would want to move into an HOA, so I assume the houses will sit empty-- but they don’t. Three in the last two years were foreclosures (including mine, which I don’t count in the above last year statistic, clearly), which all sold rather quickly, but the rest were owner sales.
Of course, my HOA has a website with a full PDF of the guidelines on there. Sure, I’ve gotten some silly notices (like the time a mop bucket blew into my planter and was there for. . . oh, 12 hours before I noticed, but I received a citation anyway), but all in all, all I’ve had to do is ASK and they help me work within the rules. I guess if I sat in my house stewing about their letters about my shed, nothing would get done.
I don’t think HOAs will be in danger of taking over, unless absolutely no one wants to buy a non-HOA home. Simple supply and demand will keep HOAs in check. If there are fewer non-HOA homes available than potential homebuyers wanting non-HOA homes, then the non-HOA-homebuyer will have to pay a premium to get a non-HOA home. At some point, that premium will be greater than the (assumed) premium for being an HOA home.
Pretty much, yeah. At least, that’s my understanding of why all the suburbs here are beige. Funnily enough, the bylaws for the City of Calgary will more or less take care of the bigger problems you might have with neighbours, so the HOAs are really only necessary to keep everyone’s house the same colour, which is valuable to some people. I personally live in a neighbourhood where there is a house up the street that looks like a golfball.
The point is when HOAs move beyond keeping property values up (no purple houses, lawns must be mowed, no rusted cars on lawns) and into a Gestapo (fixing elections, overcharging asessments to line pockets of board members/the developer, refusing to release state-required documents). Who would want to live in an HOA with that rep and then they are *depressing *home values because no one wants to buy there.
Sir, you’re painting with a mighty wide brush there. I’m not a member of my HOA’s board or anything (shit, I don’t even go to the meetings but once in a blue moon), but I do talk to my neighbors. No fixed elections here, our board members aren’t paid (so how they’d be lining their pockets, I’m not sure) and either is the “development” (the houses are 30 years old, so. . .), and mine is tremendously transparent.
But you’re right: if there’s some sketchy ass HOA where you live that is run by criminals, I can certainly understand why people would choose not to live in those homes or neighborhoods. My HOA? Not so bad at all- in fact, I love how they just redid the pool and tennis courts, as well as the flowers they put in the shared areas. Is it a smidge eerie that a bunch of geriatric people amble around my house Saturday morning at 645 to notate each little thing on my house- sure, but they’ve been pretty reasonable. In fact, in all of the citations I’ve received (:D), I’ve never had to pay a dime. Oh and: as far as them inflating fees- the fees are outlined in the HOA handbook which, again, is posted online and mailed to each owner once a year.
So, there is a direct counter point to your experience. Sure, some HOA’s are sketchy, some are not. But to say all are good or bad would be foolish.
I should also note that I have several friends who live in various new developments with the developer HOAs. They pay something like $10 a month each and for that, all of the gardening on shared areas is taken care of, flowers are planted, and the community pools are kept up/ as well as any parks. I think the “boards” do a walk through of the neighborhoods once every few months (as opposed to mine, which does it every 7 days) and I only have one friend who has ever received a citation. I can tell you: bitch deserved it. Her fence was falling over and rotted out-- her palm trees were overgrown and the fronds were blocking the sign for the development to the point where it made the whole area look bad (she lived on the corner where you turn in). They just told her she had 6 months to fix it, so she did. Done.
Also, my understanding with those developments is that there is a life for the HOA. At the end of the life, it can be renewed, but the decision has to be made by a majority of owners. If they opt out of an HOA, the land gets split up amongst the homes.
Living in an HOA with nazis is no fun, I’m sure, but living in any neighborhood with nazis is no fun. I live in a condo with > 100 units and so far my HOA has been great.
To balance this thread we need some HOA officers to give their horrors stories. (“Some knucklehead moves in, signs the agreement, then immediately erects a butt-ugly shed and gets all offended when we ask him to remove it.”)
This case amazes me. The litigation between the resident and the HOA is clearly a civil case, not criminal. And last I heard we don’t have debtor’s prisons in the US. Yet this guy was sent to jail by the judge in the case for “contempt of court” for failing to physically replacing the sod. Are you kidding me? How is this even permitted in our country?
davidm, I think where you might be confused is the whole “signing away rights” thing. If I recall correctly, when you purchase the property you sign something that says that you were made aware of the HOA and given the bylaws. You aren’t signing something that says that you agree to the rules, because you don’t have a choice. It’s a take it or leave it kind of thing. I think it would be similar to buying a home in a protected wildlife area or something. Part of the agreement to buy is knowing that the property comes with certain restrictions.
If a court orders you to do something, and you don’t do it, you go to jail. This is the basis upon which our entire judicial system rests. If courts did not have the power to punish people who didn’t listen to them, they would be little more than officially sanctioned behavior-suggesters.
Our HOA board managed to negotiate a killer deal with the local cable company for $23 for basic cable package. The catch was that everybody in the community had to subscribe. Since that wouldn’t happen on an individual basis, a vote was taken to amend the dues by the requisite amount, and it was passed by the majority. One person refused to pay, a neighbor of mine with a penchant for suing people. A prick, in other words. The HOA kept sending him letters demanding that he pay arrears, and he kept refusing.
Then he sued the HOA, saying that they hadn’t followed the bylaws because they hadn’t provided sufficient notice of the hike in dues. He was technically correct, and the judge grudgingly found in his favor, but gave him an ass-chewing in court for being a fuckwad. The HOA had to pay all court costs. Two months later I see the local cable company truck in his driveway. His wife decided she wanted to watch HBO, and browbeat him into getting cable. The property manager stopped by to chat one day afterwards and told me all the story, and then advised me: “You know he has a heart condition; so if you see him having a problem, make sure you call 119 right away.”
If he was technically correct and the judge found in his favor, I don’t see what the problem is. HOAs get people on these sorts of technicalities all the time.
BTW, in legal terms, HOAs are a type of “restrictive covenant.” The covenant runs with the land not with the owner, and is enforcable against all sucessors-in-interest (buyers, inheritors, etc).
Put another way, the restriction is a feature of the land, almost like, say, sandy soil. You might shout “I want loam” all you want but you’re not going to get it – it is not how the land is formed. Similarly, land encumbered by a restrictive covenant specifically cannot be used in any way that does not conform to the covenent.
Unless the restrictions are against public policy, which is not as broad an exception as you might imagine.
In days of yore, restrictive covenants were used to prevent people from selling their house to minorities, no matter how the home owner personally felt about it. Not infrequently, people bought the home unaware of the restriction, and only discovered it when neighbors sued to prevent completion of the sale! That’s pretty much what happened in the landmark Supreme Court case of Shelley v. Kraemer which made race-based covenants unenforcable.
For the record, I believe I’ve heard that it is an actual IRL trend, mostly because HOAs take over certain duties like trash collection - contracting it out to a private waste mgmt service - and thus lowers costs for the city for that area.
