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Nevada legislature has a pending bill to give HOAs more power to punish critics considered "abusive" by the HOA. Complaining about alleged corruption, requesting "too many" documents, etc. punishment include permanent banning persons from running for HOA office.
Another reason to pay attention to what is happening in state capitols.
I am sure there are bad actors on both sides but I mainly hear about power-crazed and unreasonable boards. A nearby HOA board ruled for more than decade but when threatened by court action to provide documents, they and the manager simply quit without notice or compliance. Relatively speaking, that was a favorable outcome though challenging and expensive to pick up after.
In my HOA in COLO SPGS we had one very senior person who was sure that all of us were crooks and she was very vocal about it and rude to us. Our HOA budget was only about $50k year and every cent was well documented yet she still accused us of being crooks. One year she made her check payable to The Crooks at XXX HOA -- and the bank cashed it for us. Another year she made her check payable to Filing #2 at XXX, the bank would not cash it for us so we had to put a lien on her home to get her to pay up, which she did and it was the cost of the dues plus lien legal costs. She was just plain nuts, and no one ever did a thing to her, she was just that far gone. Here in AZ we pay as much per quarter as did all year back in COLO SPGS.
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Last edited by Mike from back east; 04-17-2023 at 02:15 PM..
One point that John Oliver made that I found really interesting...
In theory, an HOA is a local municipality outsourcing their responsibilities (like residential code enforcement) to the representative residents in the community - the Board. But a ton of HOAs, are now also hiring Management companies to do the work for them.
Which means that what we have here...is a government (a local one) putting affairs into the hands of a private entity. You are still being "taxed" via HOA dues it's just that the ones collecting are private, not government. And they make the rules, and they enforce them through civil action.
And it is a certain persuasion of politically affiliated person in the US of A who often likes to go on about how every conceivable thing would be best taken out of the hands of any kind of "government" and put into the hands of private or business entities...well... How d'ya like them H-O-Apples, eh?
Again, I've got mixed feelings about it all. I do like the idea of some restriction from people doing "whatever they want on their own property"... I don't want to live next to somebody who is hoarding animals, cooking meth, or building a junkyard next door. I'd rather not have all of the street parking taken up by one neighbor's friends all the time or even every single Saturday night. I see some value in having an organization managing the sidewalks and the local park. If they keep it restricted to just prevention of legitimate nuisance and bad behavior, I can live with that. But once they start flying drones or looking for unauthorized benches or sheds or shrieking about my holiday lights being up one day early or late, I'm going to get really unhappy really quick.
One thing that I think should be mandated by law in every state... People should be given the chance to review the HOA covenants in full before committing to buy any property. Those should actually be public information available on a website, optimally, I'd think. I can't imagine any reason for them to be sprung on unsuspecting home buyers, that seems very unethical to me.
One point that John Oliver made that I found really interesting...
In theory, an HOA is a local municipality outsourcing their responsibilities (like residential code enforcement) to the representative residents in the community - the Board. But a ton of HOAs, are now also hiring Management companies to do the work for them.
Which means that what we have here...is a government (a local one) putting affairs into the hands of a private entity. You are still being "taxed" via HOA dues it's just that the ones collecting are private, not government. And they make the rules, and they enforce them through civil action.
And it is a certain persuasion of politically affiliated person in the US of A who often likes to go on about how every conceivable thing would be best taken out of the hands of any kind of "government" and put into the hands of private or business entities...well... How d'ya like them H-O-Apples, eh?
Again, I've got mixed feelings about it all. I do like the idea of some restriction from people doing "whatever they want on their own property"... I don't want to live next to somebody who is hoarding animals, cooking meth, or building a junkyard next door. I'd rather not have all of the street parking taken up by one neighbor's friends all the time or even every single Saturday night. I see some value in having an organization managing the sidewalks and the local park. If they keep it restricted to just prevention of legitimate nuisance and bad behavior, I can live with that. But once they start flying drones or looking for unauthorized benches or sheds or shrieking about my holiday lights being up one day early or late, I'm going to get really unhappy really quick.
One thing that I think should be mandated by law in every state... People should be given the chance to review the HOA covenants in full before committing to buy any property. Those should actually be public information available on a website, optimally, I'd think. I can't imagine any reason for them to be sprung on unsuspecting home buyers, that seems very unethical to me.
Most places, the part that I bolded, is already regulated by the town or county. No reason to add another level of government into it.
Most places, the part that I bolded, is already regulated by the town or county. No reason to add another level of government into it.
Yeah, it's mostly a question of whether the town or county wants to be bothered enforcing any of it, or not.
But for instance, one of the rules in an HOA I lived with, was that residents cannot put up chain link fences in their front yards. And that actually seemed pretty good when I thought about it. Not only can those look pretty rough after a while, but I do not like walking down the sidewalk and having someone's dog come running up to a chain link fence losing its freaking mind.
But it's kind of my whole personal philosophy about rules, if I can sit and have a bit of a think on it, and see the rationale and why it will be beneficial for people to live with the rule, then I can usually accept it and abide by it. But nobody likes petty rules that are invasive when no harm is being done and what one is doing affects no one else in any meaningful way.
Like oh my gosh you put up a little Rubbermaid shed (out of sight in the backyard) to store your kids' bikes in, so now we need to take your home away from you. That is right out there in bonkers territory.
I served on a HOA board once (never again). I think most who serve are well meaning, but most are in no way experts on running or maintaining a small community. The president was a retired LEO. The only person who had some credibility was probably our treasurer, whose background was in accounting. It's a completely volunteer board, and it's hard to find anyone who wants to do the job with the best intentions. Some old curmudgeons with nothing better to do used it as a means of controlling others in the community. For instance, there was a resident that made a really nice garden/water feature on their patio. It wasn't causing any damage or destroying property values. The old curmudgeon of the lot became hyper-focused on making sure this resident was penalized for this acute infraction. In the meantime, we had a rat problem and a rampant dead tree problem that nobody would do anything about.
Last edited by digitalUID; 04-17-2023 at 05:46 PM..
Lucky me, I am in 2 HOA. One for my townhouse and the other for the subdivision. The townhouse HOA isn't bad, but have heard nothing but complaints for the subdivision HOA nitpicking everything. Even sending people landscape violations for landscaping the HOA approved.
They sent an email a year or so ago stating they received a lot of annonymous complaints that they won't enforce, because they were anonymous. This tells me there's a lot of karens out there complaining to the HOA about every little thing. Probably makes the HOA think nitpicking is what people want them to do.
We went to a talk/ movie showing on wildfire yesterday (in SW CO) and one question asked after was interesting.
A person in the audience had bought a lot in a fairly heavily wooded area and built a house (likely an expensive house). They built the house something like 30 ft from the property line. As I understand it, you want at least 60 ft or better 100 ft of fairly well cleared land around a house for best wildfire mitigation.
The property owner who built the house (who made the decision to built fairly close to the property line) then wanted the owner of the adjacent undeveloped lot to do wildfire mitigation on the undeveloped lot.
The owner of the undeveloped lot told the neighbor with the house to buzz off, they were not going to do any fire mitigation on a lot where there were no structures.
This area has an HOA and the guy who built the house tried to get the HOA involved.
That is all I know of the story but if the HOA regulations have anything that remotely says something about property maintenance, wealthy guy who built the house could probably get a lawyer to pressure the HOA to act. Then the undeveloped lot owner has to get a lawyer, plus the HOA has to spend money on a lawyer.
No HOA, a situation like this would go no where, the guy who built the house would just have to make some sort of deal with the undeveloped lot owner.
Im in an HOA now, its been easy to work with but you never know.
Takes many HOA's about ten years to get their bearings. Developers turn these developments over to a community who often have no experience in being in charge of anything. To change the rules you often times need 67% of the owners to agree so many times it's a thankless, miserable job. My advice is read the rules prior to buying (you're realtor can provide them) and if you don't like them, make another choice. Don't buy and come in thinking you're going to change the rules, that doesn't make sense. Many times HOA's have Committees of residents that make recommendations to the Board. There are 10 owners on our Architectural Review Board. Even if an application is rejected we meet with the owner and try to find a compromise. So in my experience, the HOA has been a tremendous stabilizer in our gated community.
We went to a talk/ movie showing on wildfire yesterday (in SW CO) and one question asked after was interesting.
A person in the audience had bought a lot in a fairly heavily wooded area and built a house (likely an expensive house). They built the house something like 30 ft from the property line. As I understand it, you want at least 60 ft or better 100 ft of fairly well cleared land around a house for best wildfire mitigation.
The property owner who built the house (who made the decision to built fairly close to the property line) then wanted the owner of the adjacent undeveloped lot to do wildfire mitigation on the undeveloped lot.
The owner of the undeveloped lot told the neighbor with the house to buzz off, they were not going to do any fire mitigation on a lot where there were no structures.
This area has an HOA and the guy who built the house tried to get the HOA involved.
That is all I know of the story but if the HOA regulations have anything that remotely says something about property maintenance, wealthy guy who built the house could probably get a lawyer to pressure the HOA to act. Then the undeveloped lot owner has to get a lawyer, plus the HOA has to spend money on a lawyer.
No HOA, a situation like this would go no where, the guy who built the house would just have to make some sort of deal with the undeveloped lot owner.
Im in an HOA now, its been easy to work with but you never know.
I can't imagine someone would be required to actually cut down trees on a vacant lot. Maybe clear dead ones, but cutting down healthy trees is a bridge too far.
Personally, and I might be the strange one for this, but if the trees surrounding my house burn down, I'd prefer for the house to burn down, too. That way I at least get an insurance payout. I won't live on a lot without trees.
I have seen HOA fees here in SW Florida and in Colorado Springs that are over $600 a month. Granted they take care of a lot of things and some even have the feel of a small town. But I'm not living in a place that tells me what color I can paint my house, whether I can have a bench outside my house or whether my garage door has to be closed at all times except during entering and existing the garage. Also, the thought that an HOA can actually take my house if I fell into unfortunate circumstances is just not something I would ever want to deal with.
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