Sure, if you live in a condo they’ll do the maintenance for you, which is a plus. But if you live in a standalone house, you’re usually responsible for cutting your own grass and doing all the other maintenance - all while still paying the fee of course.
Yeah, but condo fees can easily be over $100 a month, whereas HOA fees may only be that much per year. It all depends on the level of services provided by the association. It’s up to the residents (or potential residents) to determine if the services provided are adequate for the fees.
I guess I don’t fully get your doomsday scenario. About 7 years into the development of my neighborhood, we got packets in the mail stating the the HOA was getting transferred to the residents. The documents included nominees to elect for the board. This was our chance to vote who we wanted to represent us. Those residents interested in being voted in sent out their qualifications (sort of like a resume) to convince us to elect them. That’s a check of power at that point. Once we our representatives were elected. We could chose to amend or remove certain restrictions. That’s another check of power.
Maybe there’s more subtleties that’s not easy for you to explain but I just don’t see how ridiculous rules can get in place unless all my neighbors were asleep at the wheel.
I don’t understand what you’re saying in this paragraph.
We get a financial report and balance sheet of the HOA finances every year. We see the total dues paid and the reserve balance in the account. None of the money goes to the developer that built the properties 7 years ago. Every single dollar that we’ve paid into the HOA after the developer turned it over to us is accounted for.
Try doubling that number and then adding a little bit for a 1 bedroom in my building 
I’ve definitely come out pretty strong on the pro-HOA side of this thread because I think people should be free to contract for whatever they want (and then be bound by what they agree to(and then aonly transfer the proeprty as is), but I must say that I find the idea of local governments requiring HOAs to be repugnant (for basically the same reason).
ETA: as for non-condo HOA fees, for my brother’s place, it covers stuff like the community park and some social events in addition to maintenance.
Oh, I can see why people would object to having an HOA with a standalone house. I want the condo lifestyle. (Actually, a townhouse.) HOA comes with the territory.
That’s one of the things I love about my neighborhood. I live in a gated community where on every Thursday from April to October, several trucks arrive with several mowers and guys with weed eaters and they mow everyone’s yard on the same day. It’s nice to have the weekend with the yard clipped and the whole neighborhood looks nice. Not having to look at the guys overgrown yard across the street who let’s his grass grow 7 inches before he cuts it. Also during the winter if we get more than 2 inches of snow, during the night, plows come and plow all of our driveways and front walks.
Sure our HOA fees are bit higher, but it’s still cheaper than if we contracted yard and snow removal maintenance separately to do it.
There have been many on this board that love their HOA, but the point is that when you are in a bad one (like I am), all of the rights and protections go completely out the window. Sure you can sue over it but who has the time, money and energy for that? An example was the water bill. We have to pay about $100/mo extra for water because the developer put it into the HOA rules because he needed to pay for another investment. Why can’t we get rid of it?
- The board are still the ones appointed by the developer.
- They twist the rules to suit whatever they want. Bylaws are unavailable (which is illegal)
- Can’t get voted out because ballots for other candidates get lost or destroyed (this was proven and the board tried to have the whistle blower arrested. it went to court which nearly bankrupted him but not the board - after all, the HOA pays the legal bills)
So the answer of “just get 2/3 of the members to change it” doesn’t work because even if we use the correct procedures, parliamentary law, paperwork etc. it still gets ignored. Even after the HOA (really the Board) being 0 for 5 in lawsuits this last year.
It’s more accurate to say some of us favor the calculated financial tradeoffs of HOA vs no HOA. No need for emotional love to factor into it at all.
You don’t have to “love” or “hate” paying taxes to see that the outcomes of everyone paying zero taxes is worse.
Btw, do you live in a condo or house?
Good point. Can I convince you I meant agape instead of philios love?
House. I rent but the lease charges the assessments to us (I know, but there’s a long story behind that). I see that the HOA has killed the neighborhood. $six-figure to fight (and lose) lawsuits, and an arbitrary and vindictive dicatorship so even if you win you lose (one person who sued got his 8 year old son banned from the community pool for no other reason than he sued them). One house out of 20 has sold in the last year and the prices are plummeting as sellers just want out (expalin to me again how HOAs keep home prices high) and as people see how you just can’t win against an HOA board by playing by the rules they just want to dump and move to a non-HOA area.
Yes and no. The reason there are constitutional rights is so that the majority cannot tell you what to do if it is not the government’s place to be telling you. 51% or 67% cannot simply pass a rule “no blacks or Jews allowed”. Similarly, it is not the government;s right to tell you what colour your door should be. I would understand if the participation were voluntary, or in the case of condo buildings or gated communities; once you are visibly inside a “no public allowed” area I might understand it more
Not true. In town historic districts or with landmark houses there are many restrictions on what you can do with your property, down to what color you can paint the front door. You may think the government shouldn’t exercise that right, but the courts seem to agree that they have that right.
The “no Blacks or Jews” rule is part of Federal Law. Unless there are specific state constitutional protections I don’t think there’s anything that would prevent the government from telling you what color doors are allowed.
One particular regulation I witnessed is in Amherst, NH, near where I used to live. Near the town center you can only put up a single white candle in each window as Christmas decorations. This was enforced and I’ve never saw a successful challenge to the regulation. A quick check of the town website looks like it is still enforced.
Here’s one thing about HOAs which I admit I do not understand.
There is a “notorious” developer in this area, who has developed many subdivisions of cookie-cutter crap homes which often have hideously screwed-up problems with the from day 1. Every single subdivision this developer develops has an HOA. However, the developer holds 51% of the votes for the HOA until they declare the development “done”, which means that they develop every parcel of land in the subdivision. With me so far?
Well, in several of these subdivisions (I won’t say “all” or even “most”, as I’ve not done a survey), the developer has kept 1, single lot undeveloped. So the people who signed onto the HOA - excuse, were forced to as a covenant with buying the house - are not really in charge of the HOA. In one specific case, the true “development” ended in 1992, and a lot has been sitting vacant since then…with the developer showing no signs of ever “finishing” the development.
I would think most would call this a bait-and-switch and the people who believed the developer’s good intentions stupid, but that aside…what benefit does the developer think they’re getting by keeping a single lot open and 51% of the votes? Reputedly, the developer has never exercised their votes, not once over 18 years, so what do they gain? Are they even worse of a control Nazi than the HOA board members? And the development is done, the developer is not going to sell any more homes (except possibly one). I find it suspiciously strange.
I have no idea what they may be thinking, but I have a pretty strong feeling that they will run into “implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.”
This legal requirement is read into nearly all contracts and agreements in nearly all US jurisdictions and is meant to prevent one party from acting in such a way as to prevent the other party from receiving “the benefit of the bargain.” So, if the deal is I get A and you get B, you cannot act in such a manner as to prevent me from obtaining A.
Obviously, I don’t know the exact facts - but based on how it appears, it seems likely that a court would interpret the developer as acting in bad faith in that they are attempting to prevent the owners from obtaining the control that the original contract implied that they would receive.
If they don’t exercise their votes, than the issue may never ripen, but I don’t see things going particularly well for them.
http://www.stjohns.edu/media/3/6c8035b30fcb42b7bfffcd058e69b14f.pdf
http://legalwikipro.com/wiki/index.php?title=Duty_of_Good_Faith_in_General_Contracts_(OK)