death to home owners associations (how much, condo, price, better)

[sailordave]

Holiday cheer comes with a price in one North Naples neighborhood : Collier County : Naples Daily News
Above is just another one of the many reasons why I'll never buy property in an HOA. Last thing I need is some nosey power hungry neighbor to dictate what I can or cannot do with the property I own, decisions based upon that neighbor's personal taste or lack of.

[thecoalman]

Originally Posted by sailordave

why I'll never buy property in an HOA.

Agreed but I have no sympathy for these people that signed on the dotted line.

[Magnolia Bloom]

This is ridiculous and he could fight it and win, IMO, unless the Board has very specific information defining "holiday decorations". Otherwise the provision is being subjectively enforced and won't hold water.

According to the letter from Murphy, the gated community’s rules and regulations prohibit “planting or placing of any objects on the turf or any common area.”

But Hayes said he doesn’t believe he is violating the rules, pointing out another community regulation that states “Christmas, Easter or any other holiday decoration cannot be displayed more than 30 days before said holiday and must be removed no longer than 14 days after said holiday.”

[TexasHorseLady]

I'm seeing more and more buyers who are specifying "no HOA" in their list of requirements for a new home. Given that the purported purpose of HOA's is to maintain property values, I'm wondering if this isn't backfiring on them.

[texdav]

But I see more and more that unless they live in the country want a HOA because they don't want trashy neighbors. In fact there are more and more gated communites for this same reason. When I lived in the country these was a huge problem with people dumping in many really nice wooded areas. Actually there were alot of confrontations when they were caught by law enforcement as they had dumped for decades, That includes many companies too.

[TexasHorseLady]

texdav, are you a real estate agent? (I don't see that under your name.) How many buyers do you see?

I was talking about this with another agent recently, and he's seeing the same thing. Folks that actually want to own their own property rather than the association actually doing so, or folks that have had, or had friends that had, really bad experiences with HOA's and never want to live in one. I'm taking a sort of informal poll of agents in this area to see if this is a trend or not, since the agents hear more about buyers' wants than most folks.

[juggler]

As long as you live in an area where people "take pride in their houses/yards", there is really no need for an HOA. Self-regulation works just fine, and usually a lot better than HOA-regulation. And I can tell just by walking around an area just how much pride the residents do indeed take.

There have been a lot of long HOA threads on this board as well as others; the topic always generates a lot of debate.

I personally will NEVER live in an area governed by an HOA. I think there are many like me, and in that regard, an HOA actually drives property values DOWN.

[newtoli]

Take a look at the picture and you can figure out why they're asking them to take stuff down... it's a little much... if they had done simple decorations he probably wouldn't be facing a fine.

including an inflatable snowman, a Santa Claus who waves at passers-by, a Santa Claus on a see-saw, light-up presents and a Christmas countdown clock.

[crash330]

Originally Posted by juggler

As long as you live in an area where people "take pride in their houses/yards", there is really no need for an HOA. Self-regulation works just fine, and usually a lot better than HOA-regulation. And I can tell just by walking around an area just how much pride the residents do indeed take.

There have been a lot of long HOA threads on this board as well as others; the topic always generates a lot of debate.

I personally will NEVER live in an area governed by an HOA. I think there are many like me, and in that regard, an HOA actually drives property values DOWN.

This may be true in higher priced areas, but I have seen (not to generalize or stereotype) neighborhoods that are lower income that tend to not take care of their yards. When my husband and I were house hunting, the homes in our price range were mostly in less desirable areas. We chose to buy a condo instead of a single family home because we didn't want to live in those areas. As a result, we have a HOA. Sometimes, they're unavoidable based on the price range. This is just my opinion, but several of my friends were in the same boat.

[Donn2390]

That HOA does sound like the power went to his head. I live in a gated community with a HOA, and we have no problems like that. The rules we have say you must take your decorations down by the end of January, that's all.
I suppose it all depends on the people running the HOA, but ours is well run and every resident loves all the association does for them.
The guy in the OP's story would get voted out in a hurry in our development...