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Jeff, haven’t seen you on here for a while. Many thanks for all your help when we were considering the village six years ago. We’ve been here since May of 2013 with no regrets.
Thanks again
Just to add my $0.02 here, we were on the fence about investing in HSV so we decided to rent first. We started out at a house and then a Townhome in DeSoto Court, both near the West Gate and give it a trial run; as of Feb 1, we are no longer HSV residents and will not be investing there. I will list some of the Pros and Cons of the Village that we encountered & hope it helps you make an educated decision.
PROs:
* Quiet neighborhood.
* Cheap POA dues which for us resulted in cheap rent compared to Hot Springs proper.
* Secure community where we didn't bother locking our truck or the front door, there is virtually no crime there. The worst thing that happened in the last year was someone's boat was vandalized by some rowdy (and bored) teenagers.
CONs:
* Secluded, there is nothing and I mean NOTHING out there. There's a Walmart, a Walgreens and a few other shops. There are a handful of restaurants. We found it to be small town living at its worst and the isolation really got to us to the extent of triggering a deep depression. The 1 dry cleaner out there, while great, charges double the rate of any other dry cleaner in Hot Springs proper because she can get away with it. Gas is also a lot more expensive than in-town. There is no laundromat or anything else you'd expect in a real town.
* No taxi service, uber or lyft. At one point our truck broke down and we quickly realized without a vehicle you are SOL and utterly stranded in the middle of nowhere. To make matters worse, Village Shell put the wrong kind of brake fluid in my truck, resulting in a contamination that cost me $3,000 to have repaired so we were stranded for 5 months having to order food & clothes every week off Amazon to survive. There is the "Village SCAT" service, which is kind of like a taxi except you have to give them 24 hour notice and they only go 5 or so miles outside the gates so they're pretty worthless.
* Rude, unfriendly neighbors you're forced to share what passes for a backyard with.
* No fenced backyards so you have absolutely no privacy. We left the first house we rented because it had huge windows and people would walk by and stare in as they passed. I felt like a zoo animal on display sitting in my living room.
* Uneven & unjust enforcement of bylaws. Most people don't bother leashing their dogs despite the leash law and no one really had a problem with that; then, out of nowhere, our 72 year old neighbor got hit with a $600 fine for not having her dog on a leash despite there being 50 or so other dog owners that never leash theirs. We helped her fight in court, and thankfully won, the fee amount was absurd; even the judge was shocked at the mount, you'd get less of a fine for a DUI.
* Speeding in the Village is a real problem, people will do 80mph in a 20mph zone, the cops do nothing about it despite continual protesting on Nextdoor which we know they are on and watching.
* Poor street lighting, it gets pitch black at night and just trying to make it from the front door of our Townhome to our parking space I fell several times tripping over rocks, tree branches, etc. that you can not see. We finally resorted to using flashlights to find our truck at night.
* Very few internet options, and extremely slow speeds.
* Very poor cell service, I was lucky to get a signal at all since there is one single cell tower expected to cover that entire village.
* GPS does not work out there, we once spent an hour looking for a hair salon Google swears is there, but never found it. Anything in or immediately outside the village is very hard to find & you can forget about GPS routing you there.
* The outdoor swimming pools, basketball courts, and pretty much anything else that would keep the kids busy & out of trouble were removed. Now they want to build a $1 Million+ outdoor pool, when it would have been cheaper to fix the 2 or 3 pools they removed. They redid the pickleball & basketball courts and turned them into a joke. The basketball court is now half a court when before it was 2 full courts. If I'm not mistaken, they also got rid of the Mini-Golf to make room for the new large pickleball court.
* They'll nickel & dime you to death. $20 to access the dog park, the gym membership fees were absurd, basically every time you turn around there's a new fee for the "luxury" the village offers. So don't let the low POA dues fool you, virtually nothing is included in them which is the only reason they're so low. If you actually want access to any of the amenities, there's an extra (absurdly priced) fee attached.
* Worthless security guards that flag just about anyone through. Every time we went through the gate they were so busy chatting with each other it was pretty obvious they were not checking decals so anyone can drive through that decal lane unnoticed. We had realtors and others show up on our doorstep unannounced, one of which was looking for an address that doesn't even exist but ours was a close match so she tried her luck. The fact that she had no business being there, and clearly was not given permission to enter was obvious, yet the guards let her through anyway.
* POA leadership is a joke. The current CEO and several other executive members are rude, condescending and act like they own the place when it's the exact reverse, the members own it & they work for us. They completely ignore that & frequently send out condescending emails. I have seen them call members that oppose their absurd "Comprehensive Master Plan" or CMP "psychotic", "insane" and worse sending it via email to every, single, person that's subscribed to the email or "eBlast" list.
* At one point we got a hand written notice on our door that people were "abusing" the trash facilities from the Townhome Owner Association by attempting to discard broken down cardboard boxes. They had written out a nasty letter by hand, made copies, and posted it on every Townhome in DeSoto Court. As if that was not unprofessional & juvenile enough, they also made sure to attach a list of the "worst offenders" including their full name, addresses, and phone numbers. My jaw about hit the floor on that one, 20 years I've been a real estate investor and I have NEVER seen such unprofessional, juvenile, high schoolesk "blame & shame" behavior out of a so-called professional organization.
Given the direction the current leadership is taking the village in, the CMP that anyone with half a brain can see will be an utter disaster, and the seclusion affecting my mental health we decided to look elsewhere. Hot Springs Village is a great place to live if you're looking for peace & quiet to be left alone until you die. One man that lived near us did die, and his body was not found for almost 2 weeks. If you're looking for the "active lifestyle" they promise on the website, look elsewhere.
Good Grief! A realtor knocked on your door, so that is a failure of gate security?
I agree on a few points related to the POA, they have been out of control for several years, but they got their butt handed to them in the recent Declaration vote. I suspect we are about to have 3 new Directors that are committed to "fixing" the POA.
Good Grief! A realtor knocked on your door, so that is a failure of gate security?
Considering that the entire point of having guards & gates is to keep people out that don't have a member's permission to be there and she clearly did not have anyone's permission to be there, yes, I believe that is, by definition, a failure of gate security.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffAtkins
I agree on a few points related to the POA, they have been out of control for several years, but they got their butt handed to them in the recent Declaration vote.
From what I've read on other threads here as well as NextDoor they're ignoring the vote and are proceeding as planned anyway.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffAtkins
One cell tower for the whole village, huh? LOL
That is what I was told and that's part of the CMP is to have more cell towers installed because of the fact most of us on the West Side don't get cell signal. Whether I'm right about Cooper only having 1 cell tower installed or not is really irrelevant as the problem & point of that statement is that I had no cell service & neither did my husband, I use Sprint, he uses AT&T, so we know it's not a carrier problem. Whether there's 1 or 2,000 towers makes no difference as the fact of the matter is we had no signal.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffAtkins
I suspect we are about to have 3 new Directors that are committed to "fixing" the POA.
I wish y'all the best of luck, maybe we'll take another look in a few years although I will say another reason we chose to not invest the $3 Million my husband and I are looking to invest into one of these communities is exactly how you've responded here. Rude, condescending and that seems to be the overall way y'all handle things out there. It's all over NextDoor, every day, all day & it gets very tiring, very quickly.
Most of y'all out there are 75+ with the maturity level of a 10 year old. The constant bickering, acting like immature children, rudeness, etc. I hate to break it to ya, but that's not at all attractive to investors then y'all wonder why you can't attract investors & why the Village is digging itself deeper and deeper into debt. The last financial report I read said the Village is falling into debt $7.5 Million per year. At the rate y'all are going, if you don't change and start attracting investors like me, instead of chasing us out the door, the Village will not survive much longer. I can say my husband & I were counting down the days until our lease expired and we could finally get out of there; in fact, we left 2 weeks early & bought property in Lake Hamilton instead. All of that negative energy y'all circulate there is suffocating.
The one and only thing you accomplished with your reply there Jeff, is making me even more glad we left. The village is a beautiful place but unfortunately people with your attitude, ruin it.
Considering that the entire point of having guards & gates is to keep people out that don't have a member's permission to be there and she clearly did not have anyone's permission to be there, yes, I believe that is, by definition, a failure of gate security.
Did it ever occur to you that the Realtor might be a property owner, or a guest of a property owner, or have a work pass, or that there might be a POA policy to allow licensed real estate professionals access?
I won't bother to respond to the rest. If you want to make uninformed statements and not be challenged, you probably aren't going to be happy anywhere. Good luck.
Did it ever occur to you that the Realtor might be a property owner, or a guest of a property owner, or have a work pass, or that there might be a POA policy to allow licensed real estate professionals access?
Nothing in the POA bylaws, if you ever took the time to read them, allow for real estate professionals to have unlimited access so that rules that out. The rest, seeing as she was lost and looking for an address that does not exist, well, simple logic would dictate that she's not a property owner, she's not a guest of a property owner, nor does she have a work pass...what kind of work pass would a Realtor have in the first place? I highly doubt you'll find a realtor doing construction. If she was a property owner, I'd think she'd know where her house was & if she was a guest of a property owner, why'd she come knocking on my door rather than just calling the person she was there to see for directions? Employ just a little bit of logic here Jeff...I mean, come on.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffAtkins
If you want to make uninformed statements and not be challenged, you probably aren't going to be happy anywhere.
I am far removed from being uninformed & we own property all over this country so yes, there are several places that make me happy. HSV was not one of them by a long mile and judging by the attitude we get from a lot of residents there, we were not alone in our misery. There are a lot of unhappy, miserable people there and that's why people, like you, pick fights, bicker, all this other stuff on forums like this one & NextDoor. If the Village really was the wonderful place to live y'all try to pretend it is, you'd be happy, the atmosphere would be happy and the simple reality is, it's not. I have never come across a community quite like HSV, there are so many miserable and negative people it's unreal & that all stems from being unhappy. The reason y'all are so unhappy, well, re-read my first response.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JeffAtkins
I don't do a good job of staying out of trouble
You're absolutely right about that one but at least you're not alone in that when it comes to Hot Springs Village. I get that it's the middle of nowhere and about the most boring place I have ever lived but a lot of y'all need to either move, or find a hobby. All y'all accomplish sitting on these forums & NextDoor all day bickering is driving people away from the Village which is counterproductive to fixing the very real problems it has. So I hope you can find a hobby, other than trolling forums, that actually makes you happy and takes your mind off things. It's really sad the number of miserable people there we came across, a lot of y'all seem like genuinely good people but to put it bluntly, Hot Springs Village sucks and that all ties to the absolute joke the POA has become.
Last edited by Solstice420; 02-08-2019 at 01:42 AM..
Nothing in the POA bylaws, if you ever took the time to read them, allow for real estate professionals to have unlimited access so that rules that out. The rest, seeing as she was lost and looking for an address that does not exist, well, simple logic would dictate that she's not a property owner, she's not a guest of a property owner, nor does she have a work pass...what kind of work pass would a Realtor have in the first place? I highly doubt you'll find a realtor doing construction. If she was a property owner, I'd think she'd know where her house was & if she was a guest of a property owner, why'd she come knocking on my door rather than just calling the person she was there to see for directions? Employ just a little bit of logic here Jeff...I mean, come on.
What if a property owner called the realtor to come look into listing their house for sale? She couldn't find the correct address, maybe a typo, etc. What if she was doing a BPO for a mortgage company? You don't know, there are tons of reasons a realtor would be looking for an address and that would mean he/she would have to be let in. The fact that she knocked on your door because your address was similar bothered you, but if you were looking to sell your house and needed a realtor to come list it and other realtors to come show it to perspective buyers, wouldn't they need to have a pass to get in?
"Most of y'all out there are 75+ with the maturity level of a 10 year old."
"The one and only thing you accomplished with your reply there Jeff, is making me even more glad we left. The village is a beautiful place but unfortunately people with your attitude, ruin it."
Your first statement is quite stereotypical, don't you think? I am no where near 75 and consider myself to be a well-informed, rational person. So is everyone I know.
Good job Jeff, we don't need them here anyway. They actually sound like our neighbors down the street that constantly complained for three years before moving to Reno. Much better neighborhood now. I have been here for almost 8 years now and absolutely loving it.
"seeing as she was lost and looking for an address that does not exist, well, simple logic would dictate that she's not a property owner"
You're a moron.
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