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...A Realtor trying to persuade them to not leave HOA-property off the table. Realtors will try to steer a buyer into an HOA neighborhood to make a sale...
Those statements, to me, are not the same at all. You are taking quite a poetic license there....
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The OP Buyer clearly stated their needs as a non-HOA home. In fact, it was so important it was the only need listed. The fundamental, non-negotiable condition was non-HOA.
You are correct, their only request was for the names of neighborhoods w/o an HOA; however, you have assumed that they want to hear a litany of evils about the existance of HOAs, although they never asked.
I call that seeking to understand. You would call it "steering people to 3 bedrooms because they're more lucrative to Realtors".
Sigh. I think we're missing the HOA point here.
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Are you gonna tell us your HOA story or not?
The complete history is too lengthy. There is ongoing litigation and some things must wait until that is resolved. There are a series of hearings and depositions that will be taking place over the next few weeks. So hopefully more of the "experience" can be disclosed after that time.
Those statements, to me, are not the same at all. You are taking quite a poetic license there....
You are correct, their only request was for the names of neighborhoods w/o an HOA; however, you have assumed that they want to hear a litany of evils about the existance of HOAs, although they never asked.
They asked for non-HOA neighborhoods. The early points I made were simply that you could not rely upon MLS for identifying non-HOA property. One can only search by inference and many "non-HOA" homes turn out to be in HOAs.
The litany of evils came about when someone encouraged the OP to expand their scope to include HOA properties. Only tired myths about the pros of HOAs were presented. Few are educated about the cons until they experience the ugly side of rule by HOA.
The litany of evils was more to educate everyone except the OP and ITChick. I think the OP already knows because he made it clear by stating he likes the freedom of choice - something you give up with a lot of other rights as soon as you leave the American zone and enter the HOA zone.
IC, why on earth did you buy in a neighborhood with a HOA if you hate them so much? Did you have a buyer's agent to help you with your search? Did you tell them you didn't want to live in a HOA neighborhood? Did you know at the time that you didn't?
As for the MLS search, I double-checked to be sure (we have a new MLS system that is only a few months old so I thought I'd better confirm what I remembered), and, unfortunately, HOA is not one of the "required" fields (a field that MUST be filled out before the listing will "take" in the MLS). And the non-required fields are only as good as the person entering the data - some agents are new, some agents don't have the information and don't know to ask, etc. But if a HOA (or not) is important to you, that is something that you should tell your buyer's agent just as much as the number of bedrooms, school districts, or anything else that matters to you, with as much information about WHY as possible, and then it is your agent's job to do the homework when finding you a home that conforms to those requirements (or advise you of alternatives that will accomplish the same goals, if an exact match doesn't exist, and it doesn't more often than it does in what's on the market at any given time). Does it require a little bit of extra work on the part of the buyer's agent? Yep, sure does, it's part of the job. The MLS is only a starting point, anyway - any home that someone is interested in buying, the buyer's due diligence should be done during the option period, and that includes receiving and reading any restrictions that might pertain to your use of the property (better if you can get them before making an offer, but that's not always possible), HOA or otherwise.
Which is to say, my first reaction to the OP's question (before all this blew up) would have been to ask them WHY they wanted to eliminate HOA's, not to go into the pros or cons of the concept, because only at that point can I know what they already know and have some idea of their priorities (which may be irrelevant to either of the sides of the argument, I just don't know from their first question). And that holds whichever side of the HOA fence I'm sitting on.
So, belatedly, OP - why don't you want to live in a HOA neighborhood? I'm sure you have good reasons - what's your goal in seeking a home not in one?
What did they get? A Realtor trying to persuade them to not leave HOA-property off the table. Realtors will try to steer a buyer into an HOA neighborhood to make a sale.
I don't have a horse in this race, but really why would a RE agent encourage people to sell a house with a HOA? I don't get it.
I don't have a horse in this race, but really why would a RE agent encourage people to sell a house with a HOA? I don't get it.
We wouldn't, and we don't.
Regarding the MLS and being able to weed out non-HOA homes, a good agent doesn't need the MLS listing to tell them which homes are and are not in an HOA if they know the area.
I work South/SW Austin and if someone wants a non-HOA neighborhood in SW Austin west of Mopac, we know they will be looking in Westcreek, Beckett Meadows, Scenic Brook, etc. but NOT in Legend Oaks, Western Oaks, Circle C, etc. We don't need an MLS listing to tell us what we are suppose to already know. Working an unfamiliar area would be tougher, but the age of the homes is almost going to dictate HOA or not anyway. Most 1990+ homes around Austin will be HOA neighborhoods.
Regarding the MLS and being able to weed out non-HOA homes, a good agent doesn't need the MLS listing to tell them which homes are and are not in an HOA if they know the area.
I work South/SW Austin and if someone wants a non-HOA neighborhood in SW Austin west of Mopac, we know they will be looking in Westcreek, Beckett Meadows, Scenic Brook, etc. but NOT in Legend Oaks, Western Oaks, Circle C, etc. We don't need an MLS listing to tell us what we are suppose to already know. Working an unfamiliar area would be tougher, but the age of the homes is almost going to dictate HOA or not anyway. Most 1990+ homes around Austin will be HOA neighborhoods.
Steve
Yeah, I just don't get it. I know I didn't want to deal with a HOA, so I looked into older neighborhoods. If I went to see a newer house, I'd ask if it had a HOA, if the answer was yes, I'd move on. I don't get the controversy, unless it's one of those 'blame others' when you should do your own homework kind of thing.
What Steve said. If it's not in the MLS, extra work is required - either the extra work that was done beforehand to familiarize yourself with a specific area, or the extra work to do a little bit of research in a less familiar area (if you have one of those clients who is interested in looking at homes from Cedar Park to Dripping Springs to Manchaca to Elgin to Round Rock to Georgetown).
IC, why on earth did you buy in a neighborhood with a HOA if you hate them so much? Did you have a buyer's agent to help you with your search? Did you tell them you didn't want to live in a HOA neighborhood? Did you know at the time that you didn't?
HOAs are often sold as a "club". "Look at what these low dues allows you access to", etc. They are also sold as "democratic organizations".
How could anyone expect to have Board members establishing "nominating committees" to ensure only people they "approve of" are permitted to run in an election. It isn't that people necessarily wanted to participate until they needed to dump an unscrupulous Board and such activities ensure that you cannot. Since when do incumbents decide 'who gets to run'?
Guess what the bad behavior, graft, and corruption is institutionalized as evidenced by the Gates vs. Clear Lake City Community Association. These problems are not "isolated incidents" but rather SOP.
If you receive Bylaws providing members the right to access financial records, etc. how could you know that the HOA Board would actively resist providing them and then change the bylaws to eliminate your right to access them? State law protects the Boards and this is a very common complaint.
If your Bylaws provided that members took over at 80% of 233 lots and you were told that transition was imminent, why would you have reason to believe up front that the bylaws would simply be amended AFTER the sale to ensure the declarant would control for a much, much longer timeframe?
How would anyone expect that a non-owner of your property could impose a transfer fee on each subsequent transfer of property and direct that fee to yet another entity.
How would anyone know the dirty secrets about these management companies and the private fining process?
The owners' associations I had knowledge of in the past had open records, open elections, and open voting. State law ensures that the purpose of these planned communities today is wholesale graft and corruption for the benefit of the declarant and the VENDORS of the association - NOT the homeowners. Today when you ask questions, you find yourself at the end of threats of fines and foreclosure. Don't like what's going on? Shut up or it's going to cost you a whole lot more - like your house.
The problem with all the HOA proponents is that they often falsely portray HOAs as democratic organizations and perpetuate myths about the benefits of HOAs. Sure everything might seem fine for awhile, but every one of them is only one crooked declarant or Board election away from disaster. State law PROMOTES the graft and corruption because it is heavily tied to the vendors of the association who profit from the same. State law was put in place by lobbyists from organizations like Community Associations Institute who claim to represent the interests of homeowners when in fact homeowners are the prey for the organization.
Ever heard of the priority of payment scam where the management company convinces the Board to re-characterize your assessment payments to management company fees, etc. against your instructions? The purpose is to extort money from homeowners by threatening them with the loss of their home. These homeowners aren't deadbeats, their assessment payments are recharacterized against their will to whatever fees the management company deems. Since the payments are diverted from the homeowners assessment accounts to the management company, the management company earns even more monies by claiming late payments. A high-profile legislator, Senator Carona, promotes this scheme through his legion of management companies. In fact he generally promotes legislatively any scheme that will enable him to extract more money from homeowners in HOAs.
I was minding my own business and no knowledge of any of these organizations, state law and federal law in this area, the truth about some of these legislators, private fining, corrupt boards, etc. until the cancer hit my subdivision. The power structure of HOAs tends to attract the very worst people into controlling positions of those organizations.
Few could anticipate such behavior in these neighborhoods until you've experienced it. I regularly meet individuals who were actually pro-HOA until the cancer infiltrated their neighborhood too. Never underestimate the desire of some people to control their neighbors and to expect to be worshipped for doing so. As I stated before, the currency of trade for the vendors is money and the vendors will collude with the directors and officers who are rewarded with ego. Some people really enjoy playing lawyer and judge, having the power to disenfranchise people from voting, threatening people with financial ruin, or forcing them out of their homes.
And although I have made this far longer than intended, you might be surprised to know that in state after state, CAI is trying to get legislation passed to force HOAs on people in neighborhoods that never had them. Sen Carona tried to do this with TUPCA. You might be surprised to know that there is already legislation that can force mandatory HOAs onto residents in the Houston area by the vote of a relatively small number of people. You should also be aware that CAI and its proxies routinely lobby to make it easier to amend restrictions in order to extend them, create HOAs, and disenfranchise the vast majority of the people that would be affected.
I am not alone and this is not an isolated instance. You might take a look at just a couple of decent sites that illustrate the manner in which the VENDORS are using the HOAs to the detriment of the majority of the members. Here's a decent one where the homeowners prevailed in the North Carolina Supreme Court. These folks are far more succinct than I am and their website is very thoughtfully arranged: Anatomy of a Lawsuit
Members truly only live in their homes at the discretion of the Board. It has very little to do with "rules". An HOA presents a very real threat to your investment in your home.
Instead of "pro" or "con" prior to being here, I would say a better word would be "misinformed" about present-day HOAs. However, education does not "make it okay" for these HOA Boards to have such powers.
The Gates case above was so egregious that she sought legislative changes. Her legislative representative witnessed the priority of payment scam, the wholesale disenfranchising of residents from voting on an institutional scale - one of the largest HOAs in the state at 4000+ homes. I believe she will win her lawsuit and she was successful at getting legislation passed last year to force her corrupt HOA to have to abide by the Texas Open Records and Open Meetings Acts. You'll always find organizations like Community Associations Institute out there trying to ensure a system of utter despotism in order to preserve those lucrative vendor relationships that result from the corruption accompanying secrecy and disenfranchisement of residents from having any vote or speaking in a "democratic organization".
The rampant abuses are generating more and more people who will educate others about these management companies, legislators, corruption, and graft in these HOAs.
Any more areas in NW Austin up to Cedar Park with NO HOA?
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