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HOA fees are usually well worth what you get in return. I live in a resort where my HOA fees are $330/monthly. This however includes, water, trash, cable TV, lake maintenance, a gardener and free golf.
Our HOA board members are elected by our community. They are homeowners with the best interest of the resort in mind. They work hard to please everyone and to keep the resort looking beautiful. ...and they don't take a salary.
It's usually the "messy" or "loud party folks" that object to HOA's ...because they have rules to follow.
Thanks for the help. My instincts tell me the HOAs could be a nightmare.
Prairiegirl, a very small percentage of the HOA's are a nightmare. Most are well run, and they are the wave of the future. The reason is that the cities have learned that they can tax people in the HOA's with private streets and street lights, parks, etc and not have to pay to maintain them. The HOA's are responsible for the maintenance. So in a sense we are double taxed in an HOA, but in a well run community with great facilities it is well worth it.
However, HOA's are not for everyone, and I recognize that.
If one does not like rules; if you do not like being told that you cannot paint your house a bright red, or you cannot park your boat or RV on the street or in your driveway, or that you cannot let your yard look like a pig pen, then you should not buy into any HOA community.
You have to decide the type of neighborhood you live in and go from there.
When you buy a home, you must receive the CC&R's, the Rules and Regulations (which explain and clarify the CC&R's) the Bylaws, the financial documents, and a letter that you must sign stating that you have received, understand and agree to the CC&R's because they are a part of your deed.
The title company takes on the responsibility of getting these requested and the HOA has 10 days after receiving the request to mail the documents to you. The title company has 10 days to notify the HOA, so you may not get them until the day before signing documents.
After signing the purchase contract, you can go to the HOA and get the documents much quicker. They will not give them to your realtor. They have to either mail them to you or hand them to you personally.
Your realtor can find out where to get the docs and help you to get them faster. S/he may be able to help you decipher the documents.
I am the President of our Lakeside HOA, and I'm on the board of directors of our master association, Val Vista Lakes HOA in Gilbert, so I am very familiar with these documents because I work with them all the time. I always help my clients get their HOA documents early and help them to understand them.
We are currently looking to buy out in the Queen Creek/Gilbert area and have been told that we can't even park our brand new RV in our own RV parking space behind our own fence. This is ridiculous! A little too governing to me. I can understand about keeping a house up but we will go somewhere else when the rules are this strict!
We are currently looking to buy out in the Queen Creek/Gilbert area and have been told that we can't even park our brand new RV in our own RV parking space behind our own fence. This is ridiculous! A little too governing to me. I can understand about keeping a house up but we will go somewhere else when the rules are this strict!
AZ is much more RV-friendly than FL. There are many subdivisions in AZ that allow RV parking behind a gate or with no HOAs. In FL, they are extremely difficult to find.
A realtor that we have been dealing with in AZ gave us a list of subdivisions with no HOAs.
If you send me a "Direct Message", I'll give you the name of the realtor. If you already have a realtor, he/she can do a "search" in their subscribed programs to find those properties for you.
Parking our travel trailer is a criteria in our search for a home; one of the reasons we will probably move to AZ rather than FL.
Where in Florida are you talking about? I live in Florida now and in this entire town there is maybe 2 communities with HOAs and they are elderly. I don't know what's up with Phoenix. Here in Florida everyone keeps up their property and you can buy a house on more than a matchbox sized lot and there are no HOAs. And while I don't own a motorhome, I see them all around in this town.
I've been looking to move to Phoenix for a long time but the HOA krap and matchbox sized lots are keeping me back. I was hoping to move to Phoenix for a better mix of culture as my wife and son are Chinese. Florida has much less of a diverse culture.
iuki, I'm going to PM you about your agent. Maybe he/she can find what I'm looking for.
The title company takes on the responsibility of getting these requested and the HOA has 10 days after receiving the request to mail the documents to you. The title company has 10 days to notify the HOA, so you may not get them until the day before signing documents.
After signing the purchase contract, you can go to the HOA and get the documents much quicker. They will not give them to your realtor. They have to either mail them to you or hand them to you personally.
While we're on the topic, the things you received are often hard to understand. Usually the "ten commandments" - well HOAs generally have a lot more commandments than Moses got - are easy enough to understand, but the bylaws are legaleze and often have pages upon pages of amendments. It can be difficult to even figure out which ones apply to you as there are often several HOAs in a master planned community and the subdivisions they apply are not named the same in marketing as in the legal documents. Then there is the matter of rules and interpretations. The rules may say no plants that are not approved, but you never get the list of approved plants. Or you may see a rule that says lighting cannot be visible from a neighboring house, but that is impossible, so there is an interpretation that says you can't put in landscaping lights. And more often than not, the interpretations of the rules are not uniformly enforced, so a homeowner can drive around and find numerous examples of plants or lighting or whatever that he had been denied on other lots, frequently those who are members of the board or their friends. Those are some of the objections to HOAs and they are common.
Bill
So if you only get them AFTER you purchase (which is also my recollection) how do you follow the advice to read them and make sure you understand and agree to them BEFORE you buy? Can you cancel the purchase contract if you don't like some provisions?
Last edited by Ponderosa; 01-19-2009 at 05:49 AM..
So if you only get them AFTER you purchase (which is also my recollection) how do you follow the advice to read them and make sure you understand and agree to them BEFORE you buy? Can you cancel the purchase contract if you don't like some provisions?
One can call the HOA and get a copy of the CCR's in advance. Many HOA's now have them on their web site to be download as a non-official document.
A couple posts here make HOAs sound like heaven. It's not that simple really. As posted earlier, you seldom get the documents in time to review them before you have your heart set on your move. If you do read them, they can be very difficult to understand and misleading. The "ten commandments" section (actually HOAs have many, many more than Moses got) is generally quite vague - "thou shalt not plant any plant that is not approved". Many of them simply refer to getting approval for everything you might want to do without telling you what is permissible and will be approved. The board "interprets" the vague rules you get. Sometimes they publish a booklet of details about the interpretations, but more often than not, they simply wing it. You don't find out that citrus is banned in your development until well after you moved in and want to plant one.
If a homeowner gets turned down for some proposal - like that orange tree, they usually only have to drive a few lots down the street to see someone who has done virtually the same thing they were denied. This happens because the rules are vague and the people who interpret them change or worse, let themselves and their friends get away with things that they deny to petitioners they don't know.
Another problem has to do with the rules themselves. There are both commandments and by-laws in the packet. The bylaws set forth such things as how much they can raise the fees, how long the developer gets to run the board and get reduced (or no) fees, how they go about passing out special assessments for a pet board project, and so on. The bylaws are written in legaleze and can be difficult to understand. The bylaws talk about subdivisions using the legal plat name and not the marketing name. So your "Mossy Springs" may be referred to as Parcel 43-2 in the documents. Often different rules apply to different subdivisions. To make matters (much) worsem the bylaws are frequently amended by the developer who runs the association for several years and can do whatever he wishes by simply recording amendments. So you miss the tiny amendment on page 46 that says they can raise your fees by up to 50% a year or assess you thousands without a vote.
For people who come from elsewhere you have never seen anything like an Arizona HOA packet. They literally run into dozens if not hundreds of pages. This stuff goes well beyond the little one or two page HOAs rules I got when I purchased property in other places. They are chock full of rules which are poorly explained and legal detail that would make your attorney see double. Not much you can do, though, as HOAs are the rule here.
Last edited by Ponderosa; 01-19-2009 at 06:18 AM..
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