I travel past several developments on my way to work and I often wonder about something. Seems like most of these places have some kind of signage at the entrance with the name of the development and/or the developer on it. They almost always have some kind of beautiful landscaping around it and the entrance way. Some of these are 10 or more years old.
My question is, who is paying for this? I can see the developer doing it to attract homebuyers but once the houses are all sold what’s the incentive to keep doing it?
Same question in regards to the upkeep on retention basins , walking trails and other community aspects of the development?
Note: I am not talking about gated communities where a monthly fee is paid for upkeep, these are developments where they put in a road and build single family houses along it.
Many neighborhoods have HOAs even without gates. Landscaping and infrastructure not maintained by government or utilities would be maintained by the HOA and paid for by HOA dues.
My parents live in such a neighborhood. It is on a hillside in an unincorporated piece of county land. The HOA isn’t the type you hear horror stories about, they’re more like a small municipal government. The HOA dues maintain the streets, storm drains, landscaping, parks, pay for trash collection, and help fund the local county firehouse. There are some HOA covenants about neutral paint colors and minimum property upkeep standards, but they don’t send a retired mall cop out on patrol to measure weeds and ticket guests for overnight street parking. It’s not a brand new neighborhood, it was built in the early 90’s. I believe the dues are about $65/month.
Of course these developments of which you speak could have similar arrangements or completely different arrangements. The lack of gates doesn’t necessarily mean there is no HOA though.
Often, though, these are the same types of HOAs that you hear horror stories about. They are formed with good intentions. The idea is that they enforce regulations to keep the neighborhood looking nice and also collect money to do the upkeep of shared resources. The home owner usually has a financial responsibility to keep their home up to the HOA’s standards. If they don’t, they can be fined by the HOA.
It’s all well and good in theory, and sometimes it works out good in practice as well. Quite often, though, the people who would be good at running the HOA don’t want to be bothered with such a thing, and the folks that end up actually running it are the ones that like to exert control over others because it makes them feel better about themselves. These end up being the nitpicky tyrants that everyone complains about.
The neighborhood behind me has a HOA. It’s not gated in any way. It’s reasonably well run, so it’s not one of the horror story types, though the folks that run it do have a bit of a reputation as petty tyrants. They just limit their petty tyrantry enough that most folks don’t care. They will come around and measure grass height and things like that though.
Originally the HOA decided they would do their own road maintenance. They ended up being unable to handle the heavy snows we had a few years ago, and ended up paying the township for snow removal services instead. This change had to be voted on and approved by all of the HOA members (I don’t know what majority rule they have for the exact approval) as it had a financial impact on the homeowners. They used to have big diagonal bumps on the road designed to channel water into sewers. As part of their agreement with the township the HOA had to pay to have these removed so that the township could get snow plows easily down the roads. Again, the HOA members had to pay for all of this.
So the point is that the maintenance can also include things that you don’t see, in addition to things like upkeep of the sign at the community entrance and the walkways and community center, if there is one. Some neighborhoods have a community center with a pool. The one behind me doesn’t.
In some cases, the development has a homeowners association in charge of maintaining the entrance sign as well as walking trails and retention basins/open space. Less commonly, those last two have been dedicated to the local government. (Local governments often have little interest in owning and maintaining small, hard-to-maintain park parcels—and even less in retention basins.)
New subdivisions often have something like a civic organization that tries to build some community spirit without the mechanisms (and mandatory charges) of a HOA. In other subdivisions, a local garden club or just a couple of neighbors may take it upon themselves to landscape small areas such as an entry sign.
As residents of a development you have a vital interest in making the entrance to said development, look good. That means signage and landscaping. If it looks good it means higher home values.
My development is 50 years old and the HOA just this year decided to replace our old entrance signs. We all had to pay and extra $50 I think. We also all voted on the design.
The people who’s homes are adjacent to those signs do not have to pay the dues because they are supposed to do the basic maintenance on the landscaping surrounding them. Ex. watering and basic weeding. About once a year the HOA organizes a day when the neighbors get together and do some larger work on the entrances like trimming and mulching.
My HOA has been fighting a legal battle with the state Department of Transportation over the removal of the sign at the entrance to the neighborhood. The DOT removed it during the widening of the major thoroughfare our neighborhood connects to, and didn’t replace it. Last month the HOA settled; people who owned houses in 2001 will get a couple of hundred dollars from the DOT.
Those of us who bought later but still had to pay years of legal fees get nothing.
The sign area is maintained as a general group effort. Some people volunteer to do basic care. The ground is just bark mulched that sometimes someone plants a few flowers in. Several years ago someone put some solar lights on which helps visitors avoid hitting it. (It’s in the middle of the entrance road.)
The old sign was lovely. Sort of railroad-tie timber with the name carved into it. But it was getting splits in it. “They” went around asking for donations for a new sign. Apparently got enough. A new ugly sign was made and installed. Ugh.
Generally in a large enough, middle-class+ neighborhood, there’s a subset of “doers” that make sure things get done. We’re not like that but we don’t mind kicking in a few bucks for fix-ups once in a while.
One sign (!) that a neighborhood is going downhill: the doers move away or stop caring. Hence many neighborhoods are judged at-a-glance by their sign.
Here in Canada AFAIK HOA’s are not a significant issue. The developments I’ve looked into, the developer gets a huge tract of land, they put in sewers, services, roads, green space, etc. up to city standards, in return for which the city permits them to build houses. Sometimes they have the pretty entranceway signs, etc. One that I asked about, developer is responsible for general maintenance, cutting grass in the parks and walkway green space for 5 years, then it’s all transferred to the city. After that, the city does what it wants, as far as signs and other maintenance are concerned - but also collects a whack of taxes from the new homeowners.
I live in a nice neighborhood devoid of an HOA - but we pay a voluntary $35 membership fee that goes towards upkeep of the entrance, as well as for a yearly picnic (which was this weekend - pretty damned impressive crowd and spread for a measly $35). I believe there may be extra monies that go towards hiring a snow removal company when the snow levels don’t meet the city’s minimum threshold to send out their own trucks as well.
I’ll just add this bit from the perspective of the developer. When the development is constructed each of the parcels is controlled by a Master Deed which spells out the rights and responsibilities of the individual owners and will declare what if any fees are associated with ownership. In the beginning the developer owns all of the lots and is solely responsible for upkeep. As lots or homes are sold each new owner begins to contribute toward upkeep in the form of HOA fees. At some point when a certain percentage of lots/homes have been sold by the developer control of the HOA is transferred to the residents who will have formed a governing body made up of owners.
The developer may be responsible for paying fees to the HOA for the unsold lots or it may be stipulated in the Master Deed that these lots are exempt from the fee but must be maintained accordingly.
Typically, ownership of the utilities (including water, sewer, gas, electrical, etc) and roads are transferred to the local government, who will maintain these through collected property taxes.
I mentioned in the condo/apartment/flat thread about HOAs in Maryland… Here they are in many respects like a town or “township” government. After some point in the 80’s or so, the State required all developments of more than a handful of homes to have an HOA. They handle trash and snow removal, and can also provide for community spaces like pools, playgrounds, and enternace signs. Police stuff is done by the County Sherriff. Schools are county and state funded, paid for by property and other taxes.
So many big communities are actually not towns even though they’re “census designated places”; they’re in unincorporated areas of counties and are mostly run by HOAs. They may or may not have their own post offices, and so their mailing addresses may or may not be where they actually are, for instance: Germantown has its own PO so bills and stuff to someone living there is addressed to Germantown. Urbana has no Post Office, so all mail is addressed to Frederick MD.