Public Shaming and Denial of Services to Condo Owners Who Can't Pay HOA Fees (salary, fence)
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Also, pretty much anyone who has anything to do with your home can file a lien on it preventing you from selling. I know many laborers and plumbers who do this all the time, especially in the "good old days" of house flipping where my plumber buddy would do 10K worth of labor switching out the pipes in a home, and then the seller would not pay him b/c it would eat to much into their profits when they flipped the home.
Liens are not just useable by workmen. HOAs can use them too. Whether they should or not, I cannot say. It would depend on the situation for me.
Foreclosure notices, tax deliquency, etc., are public records and published in newspapers, so the public shame argument is invalid.
Foreclosures are taking up to 3 years so some could basically live there free that long. That isn't fair to the owners or paying residents, regardless of personal feelings about it.
It's getting increasingly more difficult to do that....at least where i live it is.
Well....I understand what you are trying to say.
I live in Austin, and it CAN be difficult to find a home in a desireable area that is not HOA controlled.
BUT...That's because HOA's make for desireable areas. LOL.
I am not trying to be flippant with you. I am just saying, that even in Austin, I could live in a place with NO hoa pretty easily. But I would have a Junkyard to my right, and a Dog breeding factory to my left.
HOA's help a neighborhood to STAY a neighborhood. Helping to keep property values steady and providing an enviornment that MOST (not all) people are looking for when they buy a new home.
Sure, HOA's (like any other group that contains humans) can abuse their power. But there is a reason that most nice neighborhoods have HOAs. The HOAs are what keeps them nice.
So I have problems with people who ***** and moan about HOAs and how they are all up in everyone's buisness, but then they insist on buying a home in an HOA because it has parks and pools and all the houses look nice and no one has painted their house pink or put an 80 foot statue of Elvis in their front yard. (I am not saying you are one of those people)
In my mind it's clear. Either:
1) Buy into an HOA. Enjoy the piece of mind, the pools, the parks, the proximity to shopping and the steady property rates, and endure the (usually reasonable) covenants and Rules. Oh, and pay your fees! (shocker)
OR
2) Build out in the country. Enjoy the freedom and the solitude, and Endure the junkyard next door. But hey!! No dues to pay!
HOAs need to be ground up into tiny pieces and burned in a plasma fire.
Why? Most people who buy in an HOA development do so with their eyes wide open. They do it just to prevent neighbors from ruining the value of their adjacent property. No one has to live in an HOA. However, if you want the condo lifestyle you'll likely have to make that choice of condo or no condo depending on your feelings about HOAs. Part of the condo lifesytle attraction is having an HOA to take care of the common areas, trash, maint. etc... . YMMV.
Thanks for the comments so far and, yes, PLEASE leave politics (other than those of HOA organizations) out of this thread.
I have a friend in the very same situation as the woman profiled in the story, and she is terrified that the public shaming and denial of services aspects of her being behind in her HOA dues due to a job loss will negatively impact her chances of getting re-employed if prospective employers do background checks where this kind of information has gotten into a database.
She should accept denial of services by her HOA, IMHO, but I have real problems with the public shaming.
.... You most DEFINITELY don't want to put my name out there like that cuz i'mma come visit you if you do....especially if you didn't talk with me first.
On behalf of the rest of the world, let me talk with you first. When you fail to meet your obligations, particularly in a way that creates hardship for those around you, there are negative consequences.
I don't agree. Unless the amount owed in arrears to an HOA is equal to the value of the property being foreclosed on, this is a bit of overkill. Even the IRS wouldn't do this. If you had a $500K house, and owed the IRS %20K in back taxes, the worse that would happen is they would garnish your wages. You don't force foreclosure on real estate that is worth 20 times the debt owed.
That's because the IRS has no claim on your house, nor a lein on it for payment of income taxes. Try not paying your PROPERTY taxes for a couple of years. That can lead to a forclosure sale of the real estate. Same with HOAs. If you sign an agreement allowing the HOA to place a lein on your property if you fail to pay your HOA dues, they have every right to do so.
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