But it’s chicken-and-egg, and it creates a vicious cycle.
To quote … me … from my post that I linked above:
Homogeneity of houses (significantly limited diversity in appearance) exacerbates the need for painful ‘sameness.’ It’s a vicious cycle that makes a ‘long lawn’ or an unapproved paint color or an open garage door or curtains (vs. blinds) or a b’ball hoop over your garage FAR more conspicuous than in neighborhoods with more architectural diversity. That definitely benefits the original builder (everything is picture perfect while they’re trying to lure buyers), but how many homeowners actually seek out neighborhoods with such uniformity and sterility ?
Standardization definitely creates cost savings to the builder, but is there any evidence that those cost savings are passed along to buyers ?
I don’t mean what real estate agents call “colonial homes.” I mean colonial-era houses such as these salt box houses, many of which predate the revolution. I am just talking about the windows.
“Colonial style” doesn’t involve large panes of glass - colonial style involves smaller pieces of glass linked together to cover a larger area, which was common until the industrial revolution made it possible to produce larger pieces of glass. Now what you find are large pieces of glass with a grid laid either over the glass or between two pieces of glass and which allow one large piece of class to look like a number of smaller pieces joined together.
My best friend’s parents lived in an annoying HOA when we were in high school. One rule was that all vehicles had to be in the garage with the door closed over night. This became difficult as they had two high school aged kids with cars who also had friends with cars and they routinely got fines for letting their kids have friends spend the night. When it wasn’t uncommon to have 3 or 4 cars parked outside and they always had at least 2 cars outside since each kid had a car and they only had a two car garage.
One time they had us plant a tree in the front yard. We weren’t careful enough and planted the tree 2" too close to the sidewalk (46" away instead of the minimum 48) and the tree had to be re dug up the next weekend and moved 2" and then replanted which killed the tree so we ended up planting a tree 3 weekends in a row.
It would be a Real Shame if someone were to anonymously (or perhaps in homeowner’s name) order a dump truck to pick up a load in front of their house. Double shame if you happened to get photographs of it parked there burning and leaking oil.
Rows of houses that are all the same
And no one seems to care
*come to think of it, the Pleasant Valley Sunday community badly needed an HOA to protect property values, what with charcoal burning everywhere and the local rock group down the street making noise.
You’re probably right. The number of polka dot houses is extremely rare. But there are numerous neighborhoods with houses that become ill maintained, people begin parking in their yards, etc. The problem is that not everyone agrees where the line should be at dictating certain aspects of your house.
I have lived in houses with and without HOA’s. But if you do purchase a home in an HOA neighborhood, then you sure as hell better read the covenants before you close on the home purchase. I’ve seen neighbors take the HOA to court over rules, etc. that they agreed to when they purchased their house, and then claim afterword that the rules are too egregious. Normally you lose those lawsuits.
Are there ways for HOA boards to formally declare that certain covenants will no longer be enforced? I know that a specific HOA board can decide how to handle things or give exceptions, but could they instead have a fixed policy that something wouldn’t be enforced even in the future? With the difficulty in changing the actual covenants, it seems like it would be convenient if an HOA could have some other way to relax the covenants.
For example, covenants saying all cars must be in the garage were reasonable back when the household only had one car, but now it’s common for a household to have 3-4 cars. Could an HOA board create a formal policy that the cars in the garage restriction would no longer be enforced by the current HOA board or any future HOA board? The problem with an informal non-enforce policy is that there’s always the possibility that some busybody will get on the board in the future and start enforcing the policy.
I would expect that deciding to not enforce a rule would result in the “we want to limit the # of cars” faction to try and pack the board with their like minded board members who would start enforcing the rule once again.
The proper way is to have amendments proposed that the entire neighborhood votes on.
Despite the fact that [wait for it] The Industry would have us believe it (that HOAs create enhanced property values), I’ve never seen any compelling evidence that HOAs actually do create increased property values.
It’s a difficult thing to control for, but … in the few efforts I’ve seen cited online … I really don’t see it.
So there’s (often) a lot of pain for what appears to be (generally) little to no gain.
It is definitely what’s promised. We are in violent agreement. But like whiter teeth and guys chasing you again because there are no longer flakes of dead scalp on your sweater’s shoulders …
Interesting study – an example of what I referenced above:
We have a young couple who walk by many evenings, on the lookout for anyone selling, because they want to live in “such a cute neighborhood”.
The houses are teensy, but well-kept and tidy because… well, the people are well-kept and tidy. But if you look closely, there are dozens of things that would drive HOA types crazy. A lot of pickups in amongst the Prius/Leaf/Tesla crowd (I’ve got a sporty car parked in front that you can’t tell is a “project car”, because it runs and I keep my tools out of sight). Oh, and a quarter of the homes have a chicken coop in the back.
And the grass… well… last family that moved in, the dad laughed, “One reason I love this place is that I can let my lawn go!”
Now, his front yard looks great…until you notice that half of it is weeds. But hey, it’s regularly-mown, well-manicured ground cover. We have a patio surrounded by Creeping Charlie. I love it. But I don’t think anyone in our 'hood uses fertilizer or a lawn service, so we don’t have fakey “lush carpets of green”.
I think neighborhoods are desirable when they have consistency, and funky consistency is just fine. The problem comes about when a funky house ends up in a cookie-cutter neighborhood or vice-versa. Lots of folks in the funky neighborhoods complain when a funky house is torn down and replaced with a modern house. The funky neighbors may even petition the city for restrictions on things like max house size to ensure they don’t lose the unique appearance of their neighborhood. It comes down to the fact that people like to live in a neighborhood which retains the same look and feel over time. The funky people who like having every house a bright, random color would probably not be happy if all their neighbors painted over the bright colors and went with almond and beige instead.
