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free standing aluminum carports... in front of the house... <slaps forehead> I'm also 2 doors away from about the tenth really bad addition in the last few years.
UGH!!!
There are certainly pros and cons to HOAs, but the above examples are the pros. Of course there are a number of cons, but after living in a non hoa, I think I'll take my chances. I have deed restrictions in my neighborhood and I can enforce them anytime I want, the unfortunate thing about enforcement would mean that I would have to sue my neighbor. And, I'm not going to do that - that would create a whole new set of issues.
And I've got to join the pro-HOA chorus. I'm in a non-HOA 'hot' neighborhood close to downtown. And as we supposedly have become an 'in' place my neighbor has decided to take a turn for the trashy. I literally drove up to the house last week & realized she had put one of those free standing aluminum carports... in front of the house... <slaps forehead> I'm also 2 doors away from about the tenth really bad addition in the last few years.
Yeah but you see, your neighborhood wouldn't be a 'hot' neighborhood if you had an HOA.
HOAs typically discourage uniqueness, which is the opposite of the 'character' thats's part of what makes a neighborhood 'hot'. Some of the most valuable properties in Charleston are next door to tear downs.
HOAs only really work in subdivisions because they're so isolated from the rest of the city. If you're going to live in an isolated neighborhood you at least want it to be nice. There is no value in an isolated neighborhood full of poorly maintained properties, whereas in a traditional interconnected neighborhood there still can be.
Yeah but you see, your neighborhood wouldn't be a 'hot' neighborhood if you had an HOA.
HOAs typically discourage uniqueness, which is the opposite of the 'character' thats's part of what makes a neighborhood 'hot'. Some of the most valuable properties in Charleston are next door to tear downs.
HOAs only really work in subdivisions because they're so isolated from the rest of the city. If you're going to live in an isolated neighborhood you at least want it to be nice. There is no value in an isolated neighborhood full of poorly maintained properties, whereas in a traditional interconnected neighborhood there still can be.
Well said. We're in a 'hot' near downtown neighborhood but haven't run into this sort of issue. Even if it happened it wouldn't be the end of the world, and I would weigh the advantages of being able to do things like have wood finished garage doors, redo the landscaping and get creative with the fencing well above the disadvantage of an unsightly carport.
Yeah but you see, your neighborhood wouldn't be a 'hot' neighborhood if you had an HOA.
HOAs typically discourage uniqueness, which is the opposite of the 'character' thats's part of what makes a neighborhood 'hot'. Some of the most valuable properties in Charleston are next door to tear downs.
HOAs only really work in subdivisions because they're so isolated from the rest of the city. If you're going to live in an isolated neighborhood you at least want it to be nice. There is no value in an isolated neighborhood full of poorly maintained properties, whereas in a traditional interconnected neighborhood there still can be.
I'd disagree. There are plenty of "hot" neighborhoods with HOA's. Ion with it's heavy handed HOA is an example. So is about all of Daniel Island. It just depends on what people want and plenty of people want the "security" of an HOA governing body while others want the independence and the uniqueness.
I do agree that HOA's are less likely to have a lot of rules when in an older or more urban neighborhood. They have to due to the uniqueness making the "one rule fits all" impractical. It's alos nearly impossible to impose an HOA after the fact. They can still have useful HOA rules though. The thing that bothers me and many others about HOA's is when the rules get overly restrictive... your fence has to look like one of these two options... here's the 5 color choices for your house... etc,etc. Of course everyone has their opinion of what's "too restrictive" and that's why we love living in our relatively free country.
Yeah I figured the I'on / DI argument would come up. It's fair, but I treat those as edge cases.
I guess my point is that HOAs are only necessary in neighborhoods where there is little else from which to derive attractiveness besides other houses. Obviously this is mostly a symptom of entire neighborhoods being manufactured by a single builder.
Going back to I'on and DI, I would think that if they decided to remove the HOA tomorrow it would have very little affect on the attractiveness of the neighborhood given where they are and how there is more than just rows of houses around the neighborhoods.
Yeah but you see, your neighborhood wouldn't be a 'hot' neighborhood if you had an HOA.
HOAs typically discourage uniqueness, which is the opposite of the 'character' thats's part of what makes a neighborhood 'hot'. Some of the most valuable properties in Charleston are next door to tear downs.
HOAs only really work in subdivisions because they're so isolated from the rest of the city. If you're going to live in an isolated neighborhood you at least want it to be nice. There is no value in an isolated neighborhood full of poorly maintained properties, whereas in a traditional interconnected neighborhood there still can be.
What is the value in a convenient neighborhood filled with poorly maintained properties. Or homes that are maintained by with poorly selected repairs and 'upgrades.' Truth be told if the neighbor had simply placed the aluminum carport behind the house no one would really notice/care. And I could have placed a couple of strategic plants/low trees to deal with it.
I actually like unique but lazy & cheap are not the same as someone breaking away from a sea of tan or trying to liven up their facades with something original. I've seen other people install trellised carports or even carports with columns/posts that mimic the house which ended up looking fine.
Although now that I think about it maybe I can do some gorilla landscaping and plant Jessamine at all the verticals the next time my neighbor is out of town... Maybe paint the whole thing Charleston green or hang banners between posts...
I'd disagree. There are plenty of "hot" neighborhoods with HOA's. Ion with it's heavy handed HOA is an example. So is about all of Daniel Island. It just depends on what people want and plenty of people want the "security" of an HOA governing body while others want the independence and the uniqueness.
I do agree that HOA's are less likely to have a lot of rules when in an older or more urban neighborhood. They have to due to the uniqueness making the "one rule fits all" impractical. It's alos nearly impossible to impose an HOA after the fact. They can still have useful HOA rules though. The thing that bothers me and many others about HOA's is when the rules get overly restrictive... your fence has to look like one of these two options... here's the 5 color choices for your house... etc,etc. Of course everyone has their opinion of what's "too restrictive" and that's why we love living in our relatively free country.
Too many neighborhoods look like the repeating background in old cartoons. Every 3 or 4 houses and you're back to a clone of the 1st one again.
I had a friend who lived, may still be there, lost touch with her, who she said "Ion was the most expensive tenement housing ever built". Thought that was kind of funny. And, as stated above, the only reason I dislike hoas are because the houses are too cookie cutter for my liking. You walk out your house and neighbors say, oh I see you got the whatever plan, I chose the whatever plan, but I opted for this or that. No pride in workmanship, just thrown up houses. Honestly, they remind me of expensive trailer parks except they have taken off the wheels and put on a foundation, not to mention that the lots are only slighter bigger.....just kidding....or maybe not.
I do like however, that they keep the neighborhoods nicely manicured, etc and you won't, unlike me, live beside of a house that have free range chickens. Not that I have anything against chickens, I had chicken wings last night.
Yeah I figured the I'on / DI argument would come up. It's fair, but I treat those as edge cases.
I guess my point is that HOAs are only necessary in neighborhoods where there is little else from which to derive attractiveness besides other houses. Obviously this is mostly a symptom of entire neighborhoods being manufactured by a single builder.
Going back to I'on and DI, I would think that if they decided to remove the HOA tomorrow it would have very little affect on the attractiveness of the neighborhood given where they are and how there is more than just rows of houses around the neighborhoods.
If by "edge cases" you mean statistical outliers I agree, but it's not like there a black and white line drawn with neighborhoods on one side of the line being HOA dependent and the others not. It's a matter of degrees and while I agree with your basic tenant that HOA's are more necessary and feasible in some neighborhoods than others, I think there's a range of neighborhoods where they work well... not just the remote, stand-alone neighborhoods built on the outskirts. That's where you find more HOA's because that's where the newer (often cookie cutter) developments are but I don't think that should be held up as evidence that the HOA is only useful in those neighborhoods.
Look at James Island which is experiencing smaller infill neighborhoods being built. They are not remote and would be valuable based on location alone but they have HOA's and many folks are happy they do. Unfortunately, they're mostly cookie cutter-ish but that's a function of economics and how the land was parceled out, not the HOA necessarily.
I also don't agree that if you removed the HOA from Ion and DI that it wouldn't affect the values. It wouldn't happen quickly but I believe it would slowly erode values as things got "messier". It might actually help values if some of the HOA rules were relaxed a bit in the more stringent HOA communities too. I have a client who sold her Ion house and built on IOP partly because she didn't like the HOA in Ion.
Quote:
Originally Posted by scuba steve
Too many neighborhoods look like the repeating background in old cartoons. Every 3 or 4 houses and you're back to a clone of the 1st one again.
I agree completely with this. It's mind numbing to see the production builders pumping out the neighborhoods with 6 houses to choose from but such is the state of home building economics. Again, Ion is a good example of a newer neighborhood that is not so cookie cutter. Most of those homes, even though they often use similar materials (fiber cement siding for instance) they're custom built houses which vary quite a bit. It just takes more money to move away from the cookie cutter housing.
FWIW- Ion is a strong HOA but it was not built by one builder. A developer came in and laid out the neighborhood with a national design firm (and a pricy one) and then sold off individual lots. There tend to be a lot of similar house styles because of lot sizes & people locally rediscovering the Charleston single.
My non-HOA neighborhood has a ton of repeated plans. There are definitely some variety & one offs and houses that were built 10 or 15 years later in a different style but a large portion of them are 3 or 4 noticeable plans. Since the neighborhood was mostly built from about 1938 to the mid 40s there was already a reasonable of alterations big and small to knock off some similarities. But every once in a neighbor notices a house from a certain angle or is inside a particular room or two and realizes which other houses that one is the same as. One plan is also noticeable in Riverland Terrace and Park Circle.
So HOA is not the same as cookie cutter and some cookie cutter developer neighborhoods actually do not have HOAs. I just wish mine had some mechanism to stop the truly bad alterations.
And its best to think of the mass builders not as developers/builders of olden days but as the corporations they are. At one point a GM higher up explained that GM functioned more as finance business that sold vehicles than a car company that just happened to offer financing. That comment explained a lot about where the quality and vehicle development came off the rails in the 80s/90s. The bigger builders are no different. They offer a nice enough overall community to attract buyers and offer finishes/styles that are attractive at a given price point. But the homes designs are really incidental to providing a location/square footage/ feature package/price to entice a sale.
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