Your Home Owner Association: What does it do for you and what are your dues?

[ReblTeen84]

Our HOA is $85 a month, townhouse neighborhood. Covers plowing, pool, tennis courts, common grounds, playgrounds (2), walking trails, road maintenance, trash pickup twice a week and appliance pickup once a week. During snowmageddon here in NoVA a few years ago, the grounds crews were out while it was still snowing buckets, plowing - they did a fantastic job of keeping our roads passable (though I still needed my 4x4 during the snow and for a short time afterwards). Plus we have assigned parking, so we have a contract with a towing company...we've had to threaten a neighbor with having their guests cars towed before, at their expense. Also covered tree removal.

[Workin_Hard]

We’re in a subdivision of around 100 homes which is about 7-8 years old.* Our HOA dues are around $650 a year.* We have no clubhouse or pool, and no amenities such as playgrounds.* On the surface, our dues cover the cost of trash pickup, landscaping/maintenance of common areas including a large storm water management area that needs to be cleaned and cut several times a year.* As a board member, I also see money spent on the management company (whose services cover basic day-to-day business management, dues collection, CCR inspections and enforcement at board direction).* We also have the costs of running the HOA as a state corporation – accounting and audits.* Then there’s legal fees, mostly for advice in dealing with those who commit the most egregious violations and those who refuse to pay their dues.* In an attempt to minimize using the lawyer as a collection agency after finding it cost a dollar in fees to get a dollar from the non-payers, we’ve turned to a collection agency that adds fees payable by the property owner and the HOA gets its’ entire amount owed.* It’s not perfect, but has generally been successful and more cost-effective than letting the lawyer do it.* We’ve tried to avoid dues increases but as someone else said, the non-payers drive up the cost for those who do pay.* By the time a bill gets into the thousands, we have issued liens, and sought judgments and even wage garnishments.
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Then there’s the homes turned into boarding houses with 5-7 white vans parked outside.* We try to get the county zoning and police to help with that.
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We’ve found over time that the builder/developer left us with several messes that we have to rectify.* Some features in our neighborhood were never properly permitted, and when we’re tried to fix problems have run into complications with county officials.* We have a fair amount of wooded space and discovered that the builder used it as a dumping ground when clearing the land.* Besides the debris, trees that were damaged eventually began to die (which can take a few years to show) or become diseased, presenting a danger of falling onto homes or in some cases across nearby public roads, creating a potential liability issue for the HOA.* We’ve spent $11,000 in the last two years cleaning up some of the areas like this that are on the borders of the community.* It’s taking years but things are looking much more attractive.* We’re also trying to replace trees where possible to reestablish the tree line between us and a neighboring community.* It all takes money.
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We try to get community involvement when we can on solving some issues rather than pay contractors to do the work.* With a wave of foreclosures and abandoned homes, I organized some of the guys to help in cutting grass when it got extremely long.* The county would also step in but that was a long process.* Many Saturday mornings during the summer were spent cleaning up these yards to make the neighborhood look better and reduce the likelihood of pests and weeds what would negatively impact neighboring homes.* We also try to help similarly in cases where homeowners are just overwhelmed, or are facing illness, or where husbands are deployed and the families left behind need a neighborly helping hand.* But, unfortunately, most residents think that they just send in their check and everything takes care of itself for that paltry sum.* Volunteers are hard to find, and I’d love to see some fresh and interested faces at HOA meetings.

No, I don't know why all the * characters appeared in my post when I hit the save button!

[hueyeats]

^^^I feel sorry for you, as a homeowner and a board member.
I have a few friends in your situation as a homeowner...
I used to live in a subdivision w/ HOA as well.

I think maybe the developers & builders have taken advantage of the uneducated homeowners who only saw the "now" but not the "futures" of this investments they bought into... really.

Maybe HOA is not to blame for the whole situation & have that situation dumped unto them (Not to mention the potential of "termites" in your case as above described) by their predecessors who already made off with the money from that home sale... so HOA & the homeowners are "stuck" in that situation.

Originally Posted by hueyeats

Future "plan" also that re-sale value when you sell.

When being a seller of a home in a tough seller's market is already hard... why add one more constraint (that you didn't do / no fault of you eg. say did not miss HOA payments but your neighbours did etc.) "hurdles" to the many already you have to jump through during that sale.

"..... For instance, FHA’s toughened rules on condominium sales — limits on the percentage of residents in the entire project who are delinquent on their condo dues, plus controversial requirements for “recertifications” of condominium developments that many condo boards find costly and burdensome in terms of legal liability — are making units in those communities difficult to get financed, no matter how well qualified the purchasers. Little-publicized recent changes in FHA rules on loan applicants who have outstanding collection accounts buried away in their credit files “can force you to take three to four months to clean up” through mandatory repayment plans, Zavala said in an interview. By that point the contract may well have gone bust....."

--http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/more-realty-agents-report-that-their-home-sales-are-being-canceled-or-postponed/2012/03/29/gIQApXZnlS_story.html

Be educated = "Know" what (futures) you are buying into... all about money.

Post from another thread...

But it shows the "consequences" of the whole mess of CCR... as a member, I am sure you are only following the guide rules & not the ones who wrote them.
Yet.... the whole fines, late fees, uncollected dues ultimately affect the community as a "whole" & not just 1 homeowner that didn't pay.

HOA would be a better association if & when the "advantage" gives back to that community (like home price maintain high throughout)... BUT not when that disadvantage affects everyone else equally (one member did not pay & the rest of the community is affected by that single entity).

[Summering]

Our HOA in SC is $75 quarterly. Not much at all except it doesn't do a whole lot here. We have some electric lamposts, a sign that is lit in the front of the development and some common ground.
Ours does not cover our water, garbage or sewer.
There was a big bill however for drainage that had to be corrected as during one large storm water came up way to far from the lagoons.
We have no pool here.
The best thing I would say is the junk rule. The development looks nice because no garbage is allowed to accumulate. You can't even have your garbage container on the side of your home.
( I got a notice on that)
No parking on the road. Which is fine but I'd need a lot more parking spaces " somewhere" if I had a group of company come.
They don't mind the flags or other decor. But, yes......Our grass has to be mowed and not higher then 6 inches. Which made for a little fuss when I was awaiting the arrival of the riding mower.
We have to get approvals for everything but they let us get the pool and soon a shed will be ok'd.

We also are left with roads that need to be redone. If the town takes over the roads it will cost the homeowners about 10,000 each over many years. LOL.......Many are not willing to do that. ( Its a one million plus expense) So the roads ,I guess, will be fixed at a slower pace. Actually, I like cement roads and find them attractive.

I find that the management company they are dealing with is really the top one around. I think using a less brand name management would have saved a few bucks.

[Caladium]

We pay $63 monthly. For this we get:

--snow plow. During Snowmageddon we really came to appreciate living in Cascades. Our streets were cleared the same day when many other communities struggled for days.
--trash and recycling.
--6-7 pools, 3 gyms, numerous tennis courts, bocce ball, party rooms, a whole bunch of playgrounds.
--driveway resurfacing every 2 years (this is for homes on pipestems, and you pay an extra $3 for it. It's a good deal since some of those pipestems are quite long).
--maintenance of common grounds. And, common grounds that are fairly large and quite pretty. It's almost like living in a park in some areas.
--walking trails through the woods, with bridges over streams and tunnels under the busier roads.
--price break on arbor work. This is an unofficial benefit, but the HOA has an official arborist, and his company gives a price break to anyone in the HOA who needs work on their personal property.
--social programs such as holiday parties, festivals, easter egg hunt, 10Ks, and quite a few ecological events (HOA is really into being "green").
--community programs such as blood mobile, flu shots, etc. Also police and fire programs. When there was a murder in a nearby town several years ago our HOA arranged for the police chief to hold a town hall here to discuss it.

This is an extremely large HOA--the size of a town. In fact, it essentially operates as a city. You pay HOA dues instead of paying city taxes. I think it's a good deal. I'm not sure how many residences, but at least several thousand. Property values have remained high and homes sell quickly here--IMO the HOA is part of the reason.

[carolinacool]

I live in a fairly large subdivision. I think we have 1,500 homes/townhomes. Our dues are $264 a year, paid quarterly or annually. We have a playground, a pond, a walking trail and other common grounds. We actually have several named subdivisions within our subdivision and each one has a lighted sign, so I suppose money goes there. The funniest and most strict thing we have is a mailbox regulation - everyone has to have the same box and your post has to painted the same color (Glidden Ivory!). And there's the whole no clothesline thing, etc, etc. I don't find anything to be obtrusive.

There is a pool and tennis club within the subdivision that carries the name, but that's run by a different group and requires a membership, which is around $800 a year more or less, depending on your family makeup and the options you choose. I think they do social activities (Valentine Day Daddy and daughter dances, etc.), but we haven't joined that. It's also open to everyone in the city.

ETA: Single-family homeowners are responsible for their own yard maintainance. Not sure how it works at the few townhomes we have.