It’s not an agreement that the previous owner agreed to per se. It’s a covenant attached to the property itself, like a deed restriction. If you own the property you are bound to the terms of the HOA agreement. The primary purpose of HOA’s is to prevent property owners from taking or not taking certain actions which could possibly diminish the value of their neighbors property. Permitting people to opt out would defeat the very purpose of the HOA.
Ok, I think I understand a little better. I didn’t realize it was something put in place by the developer of the property - I thought for some reason that it was a bunch of neighbors all getting together and deciding to all agree to the same rules. So, generally it only would apply to condos or those matchy-matchy planned communities, yah?
So, short of the HOA itself deciding to dissolve, there seems to be no way to exempt a parcel of property from the HOA, ever? What happens if there’s, say, an earthquake and the house is red-tagged and has to be re-built, does it have to be rebuilt to match the other houses in the HOA? Or 50 years down the line, when the community’s style of house isn’t fashionable anymore, or the neighborhood turns bad or a freeway decides to run through it? How long is the HOA in effect, is there ever an expiration date built into the contract?
What happens if my dear old grandfather owned a house in a community with a HOA and when he died he left his house to me, his only relative? But I’m a rebel who won’t knuckle under to the Man so I refuse to join the HOA. Does that invalidate the will? If so, who’d end up with the house?
There are limits. But silly rules do get enacted and enforced. My cousin lives in a community which enforces a rule on what color Christmas lights you’re allowed to display - they can only be blue or white.
I think you’d just have to disclaim that part of your inheritance, and the house would go wherever it would have gone had you died before your grandfather.
So a HOA, which I never joined, has the power to tell me to give up a major inheritance? That seems unlikely.
I’m not clear on how you are being forced to “give up” anything. The HOA rules are attached to the deed. The existence of an HOA is a huge plus for some people who want to be assured the community will be kept up. If you are at odds with those requirements and if you do not agree with those rules simply sell the property.
Claiming you are being forced to “give up” occupying the property because you don’t want to live by the rules of the association is kind of silly. If you inherited an apartment in a condo complex would you claim you were being robbed of your inheritance if you did not agree with the rules of the apartment condo association?
You said you didn’t want to join the HOA. The only way to not join an HOA is to choose not to own property that gives you (whether you like it or not) membership.
My cousin, who I think knows something about real estate, explained a few things to me once.
You may think you own some real property, but that’s not what really happens.
You never actually own a piece of property. What you own is a bundle of rights for the use and control of a piece of property. And you never actually sell property. You sell a bundle of rights. But you can unbundle those rights and sell part of that bundle while keeping some of the rights for yourself.
I believe what happens when a HOA is created, is that the original owner or developer subdivides a tract, and eventually sells the lots, but keeps certain rights for himself. The HOA will then end up controlling some collection of rights to ALL the properties in the tract, and those rights are never sold to home buyers in the first place.
So when you, the home buyer, buy into a HOA, you are buying a house with certain rights packaged with it, that the HOA chooses to sell to you. So it’s not exactly like a contract with certain restrictions that you agreed to. It’s more like, there are a variety of rights that the HOA never sold you in the first place.
When you, in turn, wish to sell your house, once again, you aren’t selling the property. You are selling your rights to the property. And you can only sell those rights that you own. And the buyer can only buy and acquire those rights that you have to sell him.
That’s what I think I understand about how HOA’s and CCR’s work.
I’ve lived in 3 different communities with HOAs. I attended at least one meeting at each of them. What I found was rampant apathy among most owners and, in one case, petty power-tripping on the board. In that particular place, it seemed the only people who would run for board vacancies were bound and determined that everyone knuckle under to their opinions on every bloody thing. They actually did yard and property inspections!! Heaven help you if your grass was a quarter inch too high… but no biggie if your dogs ran loose and crapped on your neighbor’s lawn. :rolleyes: I was so glad when we got out of there. A few months ago, after being gone 8 years, we happened to be in that town and we drove thru the old neighborhood. I guess the board crumbled - it all looked shabby.
As to the covenants, etc, in each case, we were required to be given a copy of all applicable documents within 3 days of having our offer accepted, and we could void the contract if we didn’t want to live under their rules. Sadly, we learned too late, language is imprecise enough that what seemed reasonable upon reading became unbearable based on someone else’s interpretation. Needless to say, our current home is in a HOA-free zone, and oddly enough, it’s a nice neighborhood, even without a jack-booted board!
Think of the HOA like local zoning laws that only apply to your neighborhood. If you don’t like what the area’s zoned for, you need to buy elsewhere, but you can’t ignore them.
OTOH, if you want to live in a Stepford neighborhood where the houses are immaculate, all match a certain theme, garage doors aren’t left open, no boats or RVs are parked anywhere, then there are places just for you!
I’ve posted before that I belong to the world’s worst (or maybe best) HOA. We only meet once a year. Most people who buy are not made aware that there is an HOA, causing all kinds of chaos. Our president is actually a renter (and renting houses is not allowed in our by-laws). I am now the VP, because the president appointed me while we were having a beer. We never elected our officials at the last meeting because everyone got drunk, an argument broke out, and the sheriff was called. We have a lawyer in the neighborhood who helps guide matters, which involves him hiding his head in his hands saying “none of this is legal, they’ll laugh if we ever go to court.”
I think I’m going to wind up president this year, and I live out of state most of the time.
(my bolding)
Right, things like selling to blacks, Jews, or other undesirables. Yes, such restrictions have been banned (in 1968!), but always remember that’s why HOAs were originally created.
My parents moved into their house 30 years ago. It was a brand new neighborhood, in fact ours was one of the first few houses built, and it came with a pretty restrictive HOA.
Well a few years ago it turns out that their HOA was drawn up wrong in some way that made it invalid. Hello above-ground pool in the front yard surrounded by glow-in-the-dark garden gnomes and pink flamingos! Just kidding. They would never do that, but they could if they wanted to…
Penn and Teller did an episode of Bullshit! highlighting a lot of the petty crap that homeowners associations do. They’re certainly legal now, but, really, to me, their existence reveals some of the most petty shit about us as human beings. The law really should not give us a mechanism to have this degree of control over our neighbors. Unless someone is breaking a law, then they should be left alone and, you know what, fuck other people’s property values.
I live in a metropolitan area of over 1 million people and for the last 30 years all new development has been required to have an HOA. I honestly don’t know the logic behind that but around here the majority of homes are a member of an HOA because of this, not just those in matchy-matchy communities.
For some of them like the one my father was president of for years the sole purpose of the HOA is to collect $5 for each home and use it to pay someone to mow the medians. They’d spend anything left over on a block party.
They’re essentially just another level of local government. There’s nothing mysterious, unusual, or lawless about them. All of the OP’s questions, for instance, could be asked of one’s city government, county, or state.
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For some of them like the one my father was president of for years the sole purpose of the HOA is to collect $5 for each home and use it to pay someone to mow the medians. They’d spend anything left over on a block party.
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Now that’s an HOA I could live with.
The last place we lived at had a fairly absurd HOA that dictated every front yard must have two live trees, the grass must be green, healthy, weed-free and no higher than x inches, no statuary of any sort, no bird baths and no satellite dishes may be visible from the street, etc., as well as listing the five permitted colors your house could be and the two permitted styles of fencing.
For all this, we got what? The HOA paid for advertising a yearly neighborhood garage sale. Last I looked, that was free on Craigslist. They also looked after the grass around the elaborate brick “gateposts” at the entrances to the area. Everything else - trash service, repairs, etc. was up to the individual homeowners.
My current neighbor does all sorts of shit that’s illegal and makes the neighborhood a less pleasant place to live. When she moved in she started to park on what was one a perfectly nice lawn. Now that she’s killed the grass the soil erodes into the street when it rains and we get a hell of a lot of dust when it’s windy. She let her kids put up a basketball goal on the edge of the street and it wasn’t uncommon to have a dozen kids out there blocking traffic, littering like crazy and hitting my vehicle with their missed shots. (Fortunately they broke their goal somehow and it isn’t there any more.) They throw out large items which the children proceed to tear up resulting in even more litter on the streets and other neighbor’s yards. They have torn up the outside of their house including silver spray paint on the door and some of the brick creating quite an eyesore.
These are people who have an attitude of “fuck everyone else this is our house.” I’ve talked to the mother about litter in my yard and the basketball goal (when it was still there) but I couldn’t get anywhere with her. Parking on the lawn, leaving trash unsecured so it scatters and having a basketball goal on the edge of the street are all violations of my city’s ordinances. I complained to the city on several occasions and nothing was ever done. I can’t help but think that an HOA would have been able to put a stop to this kind of nonsense much quicker.
I’m on the board of my condo’s HOA and I will state that I volunteered to be on it because if I don’t participate, I can’t complain about actions or inactions the board takes. That said, we are a really fair and fiscally responsible HOA. There are 41 3 unit buildings and 3 years ago new roofs were put on all buildings. Paid out of reserves, no special assessment. We currently have over $250K in reserves. We have normal rules (nothing against pink flamingos) and the rules that are there are to insure a pleasant living experience for residents. The HOA pays for lawn/landscaping maintenance, snow removal, outdoor repairs, common area maintenance and repairs. It also covers insurance on the buildings (not your personal possessions). The property management company works with homeowners who have lost their jobs or are in financial difficulty. Approximately 10% of the condos are in foreclosure which is low compared to other communities. I do know that one of my neighbors lost his home because he refused to pay the monthly assessment. He paid his mortgage, but felt he didn’t have to pay the assessment. So he was foreclosed on.
HOAs do not exist to be a pain in the ass to residents. If yours is, I suggest joining the board. Maybe you can’t change things, but probably you can.
Friends of ours in Florida live in a pretty extreme HOA. They go so far as to specify that only white curtains or blinds may be visible in any window that can be seen from the street. Heaven help you if you want ecru!!! :rolleyes:
Another mutual friend drafted his own HOA rules that specified, among other things, that ceiling fans in all rooms that faced the street must turn counter-clockwise as viewed from the driveway. 
He cracked me up! Altho I wouldn’t be surprised to learn such a rule exists in Disney’s Celebration.