Last one we received was informing us the planning commission wanted to re-zone some property adjacent to our development, so it didn’t directly affect us.
Okay, I saw the letter and it looks like something that can be straightened out with a phone call.
A couple of months ago, we got a warning letter from the HOA to pressure-wash our garage door. We did that right away, sent in some photos, and were told that it was good and closed out. We have an email that states that. The letter is an official violation notice that claims we haven’t responded to the initial warning. I’ll give them a call and let them know it’s already been taken care of, and forward their email back to them.
The sending of a certified letter sorta raises a “dispute” to a higher level. You are now formally on written notice of certain things. As a general matter, it might be judicious to respond in somewhat similar manner.
I would DEFINITELY want something that resulted in a written, dated confirmation - like an e-mail, instead of just a phone call. Or, if you did not want to pay for certified delivery, if your HOA has an office or manager to whom you could personally deliver a letter, I’d had deliver it with a copy, and ask whoever received it to sign both copies. Or else I’d send a letter, and either ask them to return a signed copy, or refer to the letter in an e-mail.
I’m likely being overly cautious, but in some situations, the sending of a certified letter can start a clock ticking, or can trigger subsequent steps if not responded to.
They do that to create proof that you’ve been warned. Should this happen again, they have documentation that you’ve been warned…or at least that they sent you something.
My city has done that once or twice. Sent our business a certified letter stating due to some extraordinarily minor violation. Last time, IIRC, it was because a car pushed something, literally, 6 inches onto the grass (city property). They could have called or stopped by or even ignored it, but now that violation is in our file forever.
Anyways, something else to keep in mind. In general, even if you don’t sign for the letter, whether you actively decline it or never see the postal carrier to sign for it, it doesn’t matter to the sender. At least when I’ve had to send out letters like that, I only had to show that I attempted to send you a letter, not that you had actually received it. Other than the extra few days it took when the person never picked it up, I always preferred to get it returned. Then I could take the still unopened letter to the police as proof I attempted to get a hold of the person and the police could open the envelope on their own and see what exactly I was sending to them.
In your case, if you never picked that letter up, it would sit there, unopened, in your file with the HOA until it’s needed later on.
Well, one can’t allow a less-than-pristine garage door in an upscale HOA neighborhood. :dubious:
In general, unless you’ve requested a certified letter or mailed one to the sending party previously, it strikes me as unlikely that receiving one or getting notification that you are about to get such a letter would be good news.*
*except for the ultra-rare notification of a financial windfall, and even then, suspicion would be in order.
I share your disdain of HOAs in general. However, if one is going to entrust an HOA with maintaining the overall look of a neighborhood (and some people want that) there are areas of the US where algae grows on the houses. It looks just awful. I’ve seen objectively expensive neighborhoods in Florida that look like someplace Shaggy and Scooby would refuse to enter until bribed with scooby snacks.
Algae covered houses are the social opposite of ivy covered ones.
I once got one when my home insurance expired and they tried to scare me into renewing by saying they had renewed the policy and I owed them the money for renewing. The letter was worded in such a way to suggest there was no possible way I could decline to renew. It was like, “you have renewed and you better send us the money.”
I decided they were crooks and they would have to sue me to get the money. I never heard from them again.
My son didn’t like something his HOA was doing, so he got active and ended up as president. He changed that policy (he wanted to paint his house a dull red and they didn’t allow it) but that was 15 years ago and he hasn’t been able to find anyone to take it over since. Be careful what you wish for.
Largely off-topic, but you know how people bother orthopedic surgeons at parties to ask them to just look at this mole and tell me if it’s cancer? I stupidly wore my law school sweatshirt on a dive boat and had someone asking me how to fight City Hall because they forgot to mow their lawn or something and got dinged for it. Another person on the boat launched into a rant about how the government needs to get out of our business and let people work these things out amongst themselves. I asked the first person a few questions to figure out what jurisdiction they might be in so I could tell them where to go for advice, and ultimately determined their beef was with the HOA, not the city. D’oh!
Anyway, good luck dealing with the incompetent petty tyrants of the HOA. It’s good you have the email from them confirming you were in compliance; don’t lose that.
This thread reminds me that I was inadvertently responsible for sending very exciting letters full of nothingness to people back in the 1990s.
As Executive Director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Indonesia, often I would get letters (this was the 1990s so we didn’t have email yet) from young Americans longing to come to Indonesia and wondering if the Chamber could help them find a job. The short answer was, “no way in hell!” Even then, there were strict limitations on hiring foreigners and you had to have documented skills, degrees, and experience so that just MAYBE the Indonesian government would approve a work permit, for which the hiring company then had to pay over $1000/month in ongoing fees. So outside of teaching English there was no hope for any of the people who were writing me.
Since I had been in a not-dissimilar situation myself, I had sympathy for people and always wrote them back, assuming that my letters went into the regular mail. But my letters were just friendly, “hey, I understand your interest, Indonesia is great, but for sure the Chamber can’t help you at all. They have only one non-Indonesian employee, me, and all our member companies send their current employees overseas, so you’ll have to get a job in the US with one of our members first, and hope that in a few years they send you here. Or teach English. Sorry, that’s all we can tell you.”
What I didn’t know until later was that Fed Ex was one of the Chamber’s members, and had offered free Fed-Ex delivery for all of the Chamber’s international mail. So my staff were quietly trotting off to Fed Ex and mailing these disappointing letters to people who must have been over the moon with excitement when they saw that the Chamber of Commerce had Fed-Exed them an answer to their job query. (And in those days, Fed Ex was a bigger deal than it is now, too.)
I bet some people were royally pissed off when they opened their exciting letter. To this day I feel bad about it. I put a stop to it as soon as I found out what was happening, but meanwhile there were probably a couple of dozen disappointed people thanks to the system.