In both the HOAs I have lived in, the requirement is 2/3 of all property owners, not 2/3 of members PRESENT.
In one case we were lucky to have 50% turnout in elections.
In the other case more than half the lots were still in the hands of the developer five years after we bought (seven years after the first houses were sold). The plans called for three swimming pools, twelve tennis courts and two playgrounds. By the fifth year we were paying over $1000 a year (almost 20 years ago) which did not include trash removal or anything else besides snow removal. This was in an area where snow plowing was a once in three years thing. None of the amenities had been built. Fortunately the market was smoking hot and we were able to sell to someone else without much trouble in the early oughts.
Looking at Google satellite images, there are still no tennis courts or swimming pools visible. Most of the area seems to be built up now. I bet the HOA has collected millions in fees since 2001. And there hasn’t been a thing anyone can do to make them spend it on improvements beyond what they want (landscaping the common areas, enforcing covenants regarding yard maintenance, architectural standards, etc) so everything looks nice for prospective buyers.
From all the stories I’ve read, the process to update the covenants is simple except for getting people to actually participate in the vote. Most homeowners are very apathetic about HOA participation. Notice after notice can go out about the importance of voting to change the covenants, but the HOA won’t get anywhere near 2/3’s of the homeowners to actually cast a vote. And with the non-participating homeowners counting as “no” votes, HOAs can rarely get the 2/3rds approval needed to make the change. If they only had to get 2/3rds of the votes actually cast to be in favor, they could easily change the covenants at any time. But they have to get at least 2/3’s of the total homeowners to participate in the vote and that rarely happens.
It depends on how the by-laws are written. To change our by-laws requires a vote of 2/3 of votes cast, not of all homeowners. A quorum for us is 6 people. If 6 people show up and 4 vote Yes then the by-laws get changed. (We have 56 homes, 10% is a quorum.)
We sort-of have that feature in my condo association.
Our covenants were written at a time when prohibiting children as residents was legal. And our covenants say children are prohibited as residents, although not as guests. That was made illegal by Congress back in 1990ish, so of course it hasn’t been enforced since.
There have been no issues with this situation until about 4 years ago. Some eagle-eyed legal type at a mortgage lender refused to approve a purchase loan for somebody because of that item in our covenants. In the previous 3 decades nobody had noticed or objected to it.
Our attorney prepared a policy letter stating the board was aware that the provision was both illegal and inoperative as a matter of Federal law and we had no intention to ever try to enforce it so long as it remained illegal. The letter got voted up by the BoD, signed by the Prez (me), recorded with the County along with the rest of our legal docs, and the mortgage lender was suddenly happy.
Our attorney said this happens regularly: Congress or the state legislature makes a law superceding covenants, but the Association machinery to rescind them is too onerous. So letters such as these are written, approved, and recorded for every COA / HOA affected.
That doesn’t mean some future board here couldn’t go insane, try to enforce the prohibition against kids, and be sued into oblivion by some angry wannabe buyer or enterprising plaintiff’s attorney. But that would take an extra-large dollop of insanity.
This reminds me of a HOA I almost bought into. Each lot was 40 acres but you only had a 3 acre building envelope and then by HOA rule were prevented from have any animals besides “normal household animals” and all animals had to be attended 100% while outside. You were not allowed to are any temporary or permanent structures outside of the building envelope and no recreational vehicles were allowed.
I couldn’t figure out what the point of owning 40 acres was if you couldn’t even let your dogs run on it and all 3 building envelopes were next to each other so you couldn’t even get away from your neighbors. I talked to a couple of buddies and we decided we would each buy a lot and then vote to change the rules. As I was going over the documents I discovered there was a fourth lot in the HOA without a building envelope that would be permanently owned by the developer and any rule changes required 100% of the lots. We figured that the developer wanted to get rid of his liability from owning land but not mess up his view of the hillside the land was on.
I find this all fascinating. I’ve lived in NYS my entire life and I’ve never come across an HOA.
My family home was in what was originally a rural area (there was a potato farm across the street), but which is now more built up. I don’t know of any HOAs. There are no amenities, but if you want to swim, you just drive to the town beach (or the park district beach if you’re located there). Snow is handled by the town (they actually used to put up snow fences in the winter, but stopped around 1970). Garbage was from independent haulers (for awhile, you could only use town approved garbage bags in order to keep the landfill from filling up).
Now I live on the edge of a housing development. Roads are maintained by the town, and you contract with someone to take away the garbage (within the city limits, the city takes care of it). There is no pool, though homeowners can use the pool at the high school (few do).
The housing development next to use has been around for half a century. There are very few houses that haven’t been added on to, and with no general consistency. Certain designs are common, but that’s a function of what works with the original building and people can do whatever they want.
There are no rules for lawns. No one bothers you to keep it any particular length (though people tend to mow when it gets too big).
There was even a derelict house across the street from us that was owned by someone who was evidently a hoarder. It was that way for years until the town finally condemned it, trashed the garbage and rebuilt it. But I remember when someone moved in and left notes on everyone doors complaining about the look of the place – all the homeowners just shrugged (I mean, what did they expect us to do? Run them out of town?)
Yesterday’s Wall St. Journal featured responses to an article earlier this month titled “Joining an HOA? There Will Be Hell to Pay”.
Excerpt from the original (probably paywalled) article:
“HOAs were created, as are most hellish things, with the best of intentions. When people own contiguous properties and share common spaces, they have the ability to negatively affect each others’ property value and quality of life. It is a good idea, in theory, to have agreed-upon rules of conduct and a method to pay for shared expenses. The HOA board makes sure everyone plays along. But like any humans given power over others, HOA boards inevitably get drunk on the stuff, so HOA rules and fees proliferate like perfectly fertilized weeds…”
“HOA boards put the devil in the homeownership details. My advice to those who are considering purchasing an HOA-governed home is this: Don’t. You’re better off on your own. If anybody is going to make foolish, expensive, shortsighted, misguided, value-destroying decisions about your home, it should be you.”
Responses to the article were about 60% favorable. Of those who defended HOAs, the most colorful letter was from someone who said that without them, you risked living in a neighborhood where people painted their houses purple, invited extended generations of the family to live with them and parked unsightly pickup trucks on the lawn. This individual somewhat apocalyptically warned that people are slobs and if you don’t have rules, entropy will take over.
Interesting development in my HOA neighborhood. This is about the lack of a rule. I just got this yesterday:
Over the past year, the owner of [address] has been parking his white pickup truck across from our house.
It’s an eyesore that myself and our neighbors on this side of [the street] have to look at every day. Is there a reason he can’t park the truck in front of his own house like everyone else? Is he allowed to park there?
The pickup truck owner lives around the corner from the person who sent me the email, so the pickup is parked out of sight of its owner’s house. He could park it in his own driveway, or in front of his own house, but presumably he doesn’t want to have to look at it. It’s a public street so we have no rules about what kind of vehicle you can own, or where you can park it. Some people don’t like to live with HOA rules. But some people don’t want to look at someone else’s beat-up pickup across from their house.
Just speaking for me, but I’d rather live in that neighborhood than some picture-postcard-perfect neighborhood where all the houses are the same color, or one of the two or three approved colors, and all that lawns are perfect, and everyone has a brand-new Lexus suitably parked behind an always-closed garage door.
That’s one short-sighted HOA. I lived in Plano in the 90s, and well remember the fires that skipped merrily from roof to roof, incinerating homes in a row. The building codes were soon changed to require slate/asphalt/clay shingles and prohibit wood shingles.
And I like the polka-dot house pictured upthread. What’s wrong with it?
you think hoa’s are bad? somewhat upscale (for the area) mobile home parks can worse My uncle just signed a 47-page rules contract that according to neighbors are primarily designed to scare off certain types of people and are mostly never enforced anymore. unless you make a true mess …They were when it first opened by the original owners but its on its 6th or 7th and that “passion” just isn’t there
Homes are expensive, and for most Americans they represent one of the largest single expenditures the average person will make during their life. This means most homeowners have a keen interest in maintaining the value of their property as well as ensuring the neighbor remains “nice.” I think in that context the idea of an HOA is less bizarre.
Despite the concept being ripe for abuse, HOAs are at least nowhere near as objectionable as their ancestor - restrictive covenants, which aimed to keep neighborhoods “nice” by excluding those of dubious ethnic heritage (usually blacks, but also targeting Asians, Jews, and (weirdly) people of “Turkish” origin).
Marginally. I can see perhaps wanting to ban junk cars or to deal with hoarders. But regulations on the length of the lawn or house colors or not parking trucks don’t make any sense.
At the same time, living without one did not seem to have any effect on my property values, even when the house across the street from me was derelict. There was no boost in my property value when it was finally fixed up.
I’m very skeptical of any “saving property values” argument ever since I noted it was used to keep Blacks out of a neighborhood.
As someone in real estate I can definitely tell you the neighborhood affects property values, if you’ve spent much time at all doing real estate transactions you would see this fairly clearly. I don’t necessarily think a single unkempt house is going to move the needle much, and also every little sub market is different. Right now most halfway large cities and their suburbs almost nationwide are “overheated” and you’re seeing tremendous seller’s markets. Buyers are desperate, especially since single family buyers who are only able to put down 5-20% are oft-competing with all cash buyers who can bypass the lending underwriting process entirely which speeds up transactions, making them more attractive to the seller. So in this current market a couple looking for a starter home or a family looking to expand to a bigger one, are not likely going to be very picky if they find one in their price range and the neighbor keeps a crappy yard.
But I have personally seen neighborhoods “change over time”, and sometimes less well kempt homes is part of it. There’s a phenomenon I see in several cities in which I do business where older suburbs that used to have fairly good reputations, as the original wave of owners dies off or moves off to Florida a lot of the homes are being bought by landlords and let, and often are not as well maintained as they once were. Rented homes often have higher traffic and more adults living in them, more cars on the streets. People higher on the socioeconomic scale tend to notice this and buy elsewhere, and in a few years for example a once desirable cul-de-sac is now ringed in homes that are all a little decrepit, the cars out front are all older model and often with minor cosmetic issues. This now creates a “portrait” that will keep a lot of buyers away.
HOAs are not a panacea to that process by any means, but the general state of a neighborhood does change over time and this will absolute affect who is interested in making a purchase there.
Also I would note you do not know your property value unless you sell your home. Appraisals and property tax assessments are not the real value of your property, something many people forget.
Many cities have codes on their books regulating length of grass, junk cars, forbids parking on the lawn, etc., etc. so you don’t necessarily need an HOA for those things. The justification for restricting grass length is that tall grass tends to attract insects, snakes, and rodents. I don’t know if that’s actually true but that’s the most common justification I hear.
I have my doubts about HOAs protecting property values as well. But I think there is a perception that they do, or, at the very least, they keep the neighborhood looking nice. When I lived in Little Rock, the folks across the street were horrible neighbors who just trashed everything in violation of several city codes but the city didn’t do anything about it. I have no desire to live under the auspice of an HOA but after that experience I had a better understanding of why they exist.
I understand why they exist, because I do understand that city codes might not actually be enforced. What I don’t understand is some of the rules - I get that decrepit houses with front yards full of broken furniture might lower property values , but I don’t really believe that having flowers in your front yard instead of grass or that parking a truck with your business name on it is going to lower your neighbor’s property value.
