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It's a little different than what you are thinking. The developer (DMB) has several hundred lots left so they ARE the board. Well, other than one slot. That one total spot (so far) could vote for whatever they want and nothing would get done. I don't begrudge the board from having majority voting rights. After all, they have millions that is still tied up in land and buildings.
I know they are extremely concerned about how much they charge for HOA's and they don't want to be viewed as a picky HOA (out of fear of not selling lots). So their point of view is don't rock the boat. About the only thing they clamp down on is garbage cans out too long or someone having the wrong color paint. You could have every single plant dead on the side of your house and it will look that way for a couple of years.
Saying all this, as an aggregate our hood looks great. But there is spots of blight and complaints go nowhere. Verrado is different. It seems they are economically motivated because that is their main thrust.
I think this frames it well on a few other HOA's I've heard about/lived in around the valley that seem to often err on letting things go a bit. The last HOA we lived under in Surprise were very much like that at best. And friends we have who live in an HOA in a fairly new area in Surprise are even worse they tell me in regards to letting many things go, to a fault. Personally when I move into an HOA community, I expect to have to follow the rules and get cited if I don't.
"The recession made it hard to keep up on the maintenance." Not so fast.... The HOA fees were collected 100% of the time (the bank has to pay the HOA fees before the sale of the foreclosed home can be complete). Also, every home that spins to a new owner means thousands of $$'s were paid by the new owner to boost the HOA kitty (that's the policy). So every foreclosure == more revenue to the HOA.
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The recession made it hard because building stopped in that area due to the recession. As someone formerly in the development business, builders have to budget for an "HOA shortfall". In other words, if there's planned to be 5,000 houses, and only 2,500 are built (while the community amenities may have been built and need to be maintained), they don't charge double to those 2,500, the builder has to pay for the "shortfall", which gets lessened as houses close. With builders more than likely vacating the lots for 5 years or more, that money has to come from somewhere. So while the HOA may have collected from these foreclusures, they are still short from where they need to be to maintain the amenities, as the builder was no longer footing the bill when they vacated the project. Now that the building has been back for several years though, this should probably be remedied.
The recession made it hard because building stopped in that area due to the recession. As someone formerly in the development business, builders have to budget for an "HOA shortfall". In other words, if there's planned to be 5,000 houses, and only 2,500 are built (while the community amenities may have been built and need to be maintained), they don't charge double to those 2,500, the builder has to pay for the "shortfall", which gets lessened as houses close. With builders more than likely vacating the lots for 5 years or more, that money has to come from somewhere. So while the HOA may have collected from these foreclusures, they are still short from where they need to be to maintain the amenities, as the builder was no longer footing the bill when they vacated the project. Now that the building has been back for several years though, this should probably be remedied.
Your explanation makes much more sense (costs amortized over a smaller amount of predicted homes). But at the board meeting, they explained it the way I posted.
No time (or inclination) to address every point raised previously, but a few thoughts on previous comments:
If a particular home is not taking care of its landscape and you don't want your name on a Community Concern Form you can call the people at the HOA who handle the enforcement of the CC&Rs and informally request someone do a walk by of the house in question. I know a number of people who have done this and notices have been sent to the residents in question and the issues have been addressed.
I seriously doubt homeowners in long time violation of the CR&Rs have not been fined! The fact is, the HOA cannot, legally, release information on enforcement action taken against individual homeowners. Your neighbours can be racking up fines month after month and you won't know unless they tell you.
Not all the unpaid HOA dues and fines attached to foreclosure homes here in the downturn were actually received by the HOA. Unless a lien was filed against the home by the HOA (and it has to be a fairly hefty dollar amount owed to make it worth the cost to do so) the amount owed follows the property owner, not the home. Whether or not any HOA lien got paid at closing depended upon the priority of liens as well. I don't remember the exact dollar figure but a huge amount was eventually collected over time, luckily. I do know the HOA is very conservative overall in their current budgeting, though, and always over estimates uncollected HOA dues in its annual operating budget (giving them extra income in that category at the end of the year).
Marley Park is not experiencing any "blight"; the homes in the original section are just hitting the 10 year mark and many are in need of painting (which is to be expected in this climate). It would be great if everyone would get the notice and repaint immediately but that isn't a practical expectation. Some people will repaint right away, some people will start saving and shopping for a deal and repaint as they can afford it, some are planning to sell fairly soon and will let the new owners be responsible for doing it, and some will ignore the many notices and end up being fined in time.
The developer and HOA are also right in being concerned about the HOA fees. As of January 1st single family homes will be paying $106 a month to the HOA, and I know for a fact that many buyers who first look at homes here take one look at the high HOA dues and run away! All buyers love the amenities - the Clubhouse and the Poolhouse, the two pools and the splash pads, the tree lined streets and 18 parks and the Arbor Walk - but many don't want to pay for them. The goal is to keep increases to no more than $2 a month per year, which is smart. The sale of the additional 300 or so new build homes in the next few years will help fill the coffers, too.
The best thing anyone who is considering Marley Park can do is come see it for yourself. Drive through and check out the parks and landscaping. Spend a day looking at homes for sale and walking the neighbourhoods. The only other development in the west valley that compares aesthetically is Verrado; if you want to be close the shopping and dining, though, Marley Park beats Verrado hands down.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder as well as blight. Since "blight" is too negative of a word and conjures up so awful visual, that was the wrong word selection. My bad. Neighbors can use that word because they already have a point of reference. But readers who have actually seen some "hoods/blight" in their day could conjure up some bad visuals. That certainly is way too strong of an adjective. Let's use the word "eyesore" instead. We are not talking about swatches of homes but rather pockets inside of the 7-10 year areas where all of the rock is gone in parts of the parks (brown dust remains in huge areas), where 1/2 of the plants have not been replaced in parks or boulevards, and where some houses paint is translucent or their stucco exterior walls are cracked and have chunks missing. I'm addressing a reality that the 7-10 year old sections of the entire neighborhood have not been maintained anywhere near as well as they were just a few short years ago. Some homes have looked this way for over 3 years and fading. I'm talking about less than ideal HOA maintained boulevards and parks. I'm not a lone in my opinion.
I've talked with the former employee in charge a few different times. Last year, I've walked into the office with my cell phone showing them pictures of missing paint on walls and cracked off stucco etc. I've showed them pictures of "leopard" touched-up painted homes that are slap yourself in the face obvious. Some of these homes were news to them which suggested they need to get out of their chair more often. As of that time frame, the employee in charge admitted they have to be sensitive to people because it is expensive to paint etc, etc. The new employee in charge who I talked to by phone also admitted she is getting a fair number of complaints. She intended to be stronger than the person she replaced. I hope she keeps that attitude. That said, I'll bet zero fines have been levied against poorly painted homes but there is one way to find out. As of last year, according to her, zero paint fines were initiated (I asked). The "paint your home memo" that was sent out was simply a global plea and not directed at any home in specific. It was in response to people complaining. So the leopard looking homes are still as shoddy as ever and a few of them, going on 3 years. Again, we are talking about pockets of homes not in the 2005-2008 built sections.
The bottom line is to my eyes and others, the quality of the neighborhood has dropped in specific areas because very little has been done to maintain. I'm a fortune teller: I predict this will slowly grow as other homes hit the 7-10 year old mark unless something changes. If the HOA needs more money and they probably do, then raise the monthly amount to maintain the standard. If $102/month is someone's top dollar budget in order for them to maintain the neighborhood, I'd suggest we are not as affluent as some people assume and I moved in the wrong development. That's why I am working on my exit strategy. What that means to me is we are dummying down the upkeep in order to sell homes (keep the HOA fee low to get the homes to sell faster). The developer HOA board will be the 1st one to admit that and in the board meetings. The more vocal concerned neighbors are that DMB is still paying close attention to Verrado and not-so-much Marley Park. Follow the money.
If I personally lived in a 1-5 year old Marley Park home and only walked in that area, I could see why someone would not be too worried. That's not the case for people in the original area. In the past, I've highly recommended Marley Park. I can point to 3 buyers who leaned on me for my opinion and bought. I can now point to 2 friends who visited and were interested in buying a winter home that didn't after hearing my opinion. I hope things change for the better. I have my doubts when they are making HOA fee decisions based off of new sales versus what it takes to actually costs for needed upkeep. Since the HOA board will consist of the developer (overwhelming majority) for many more years, cheap HOA fees and lip service will be happening for a long time.
If I was at the helm, I would educate the homeowners that they now have responsibility of the boulevard and here are the standards (plant types and qualities as well as rock maintenance). I would clearly layout of the subjective quality level as well as the penalty for not conforming (to my knowledge it is not documented) . Between these two measures, that would take care of a lot of the eyesore. Then take the savings of the boulevard maintenance and reinvest it the massive shortage of park rocks. I don't see that happening for all kinds of reasons outside of the score of this thread.
Last edited by MN-Born-n-Raised; 11-25-2016 at 07:26 AM..
While I don't live in Marley Park I do live in one of the other large subdivisions not far from you built about the same time Marley was started and we just finished full build out. Thankfully our HOA was turned over to the residents about 4 years ago.
We went through landscaper negligence with respect to the common areas where they were looking horrible with dead trees, dead grass, dead buses everywhere. Turned out there was a connection between one of the BOD members and the landscaping company, a company that was charging a couple of hundred thousand dollars a year. Once that became known all heck broke loose and, well, we now have a company that charges less and does a fairly decent job.
Our HOA dues ($90 per month) is about the highest in the west valley for an HOA without much for amenities other than a couple of parks so at $109 y'all have a good thing going on. I'd bet this will change once the developer leaves and stops subsidizing it.
Now, on to the "blight" issue. We're seeing the same thing here with homes that were built 10 years ago and have builder grade, colored water they called paint sprayed on. Last year the HOA sent out notices asking that people repaint (we already had as it was past time to need it) and very few have followed the request. People are allowing their trees to die as they don't feel like taking care of them or the trees planted by the builder were poor choices due to how messy they are. Problem is, many are not replanting as required by the CC&R's and the BOD says "we're working on it". There's been one guy that has a motorhome parked next to his house for the last 6 years, one that nobody else can have btw and when asked the BOD says, yep you guessed it, "we're working on it". I might also mention it's right down the street from the President of the HOA so I'm guessing he doesn't want the hate and discontent on his block that would be sure to follow.
One other big issue is rentals of which there are many as investors purchased hundreds of them at auction during the great exodus of 2009-2010. They could care less about who/what are in those houses as long as the rent is paid so the rest of us are suffering. We've had some real winners over the years...
We are seeing some of what you describe, spotty areas in our subdivision, 10 year old areas that look like 30 year old neighborhoods well into their decline and it's starting to concern us as well. The HOA has to know it's going on, they just don't want to get tough.
An example, we've got a zombie foreclosure on my street, it's been empty for 7 years now and the front yard was waist high weeds. Some of us went to the HOA and asked for them to do something. They said there was nothing they could do except ask the lien holder to take care of it. I finally had to point out to them that the CC&R's allow them to clean it up and lien the home. I also suggested that they "ask" the HOA landscaping company, as a condition to their contract to take care of any long term empty "zombie" homes if they wanted the huge subdivision contract.
Evidently something worked because the house was cleaned up and has been maintained since. The sad part? It's looking better than many others in our subdivision.
I wonder if people buy homes and just figure all they have to do is live in them and pay the mortgage?
We've got one neighbor that had no idea how to mow, how watering systems work or how to operate a blower or rake and refuses to hire a landscaper. We've got a new homeowner who while a nice guy and all has decided that his driveway is a mechanics shop where he buys wrecked cars and fixes 'em or works on friends cars.
Sadly, we are now looking at an exit strategy as well, thankfully we'll make decent money on our sale. If I have my way we'll go back into an RV full time for a while and go look for some property with space between neighbors or no neighbors at all.
One thing I can tell you for certain, as long as your builder is running things nothing will change for you. They don't want to be seen as too pushy as it will impact their sales and it's just too much work. As long as the area surrounding their new builds look good enough to sell homes that's about all they'll care about until they turn over control to the homeowners.
jimj. Are you SURE you don't live in our neighborhood?
There is a philosophy in real estate in that you need to buy into a certain class of property or you risk future problems. The theory is you need to be in a development that is more expensive or you might have neighbors who are broke. When people who get 16+ parks plus a beautiful clubhouse plus a pool think $102 a month too expensive, then that should be clear sign that they are attracting the wrong people. I assumed an HOA was in place to manage the people who don't get it. I was wrong.
MNBR, it's not just the people who are "broke" it's the ones who just don't care about anyone but themselves. We've got an annoying fly problem, bad enough that if it were birds people would be running down the streets screaming ala "The Birds" movie. The issue? People all around us with dogs that don't pick up their poop in a timely fashion. Once a week or every other week is NOT enough given the invasion of flies and STINK. What's the solution these brilliant people have come up with? Stinky liquid filled fly trap bags hanging all over the place...
Gee, if ya'd JUST pick up the poop daily then maybe, just maybe they'd be reduced to a tolerable level. Some of these are the same people that demanded the HOA lighten the restriction on keeping barnyard animals (Chickens). They wanted 'em classified as pets because for some reason having home grown eggs has become a "thing" or a fad in the 'burbs. We live on city lots, not mini ranches with huge yards with people who can't keep control of the pets that are allowed. We actually had to vote on such a STUPID idea. Thankfully saner heads prevailed and it was soundly defeated.
Could you imagine what'd happen if THAT had gone through? The way people kick their dogs/cats out to roam and don't pick up after them I could see us looking like a third world country with chickens sitting/pecking/cackling/pooping all around not to mention an invasion of all the predators that roam the desert (and sometimes our streets) around us. Granted, we'd enjoy eating free range chicken but you can only eat so much before the neighbors realize there might be some fowl play going on...
The bottom line? Read and be prepared to force the HOA to uphold the CC&R's. I've had to do that a time or two by pointing out exactly what they say the HOA must/can do at a general meeting. Sometimes I wonder if the BOD ever really read them from cover to cover.
Most CC&R's allow for homeowners to enforce the rules if the BOD refuses to do so via litigation against the offending neighbor with the loser paying the costs but that's a nuclear option that most are unwilling to take as the hate and discontent in your neighborhood could become unbearable even though you're right.
MNBR, it's not just the people who are "broke" it's the ones who just don't care about anyone but themselves.
I didn't explain myself very well. I highlighted the "broke" statement because it seems that the board is extremely concerned about the total HOA fees to their fault. If you have 16+ parks and thousands of tons of rocks and plants to upkeep, it's going to take more $$'s to maintain and upkeep (to use an example) than your $90 a month HOA fee. So if you keep the HOA artificially low (capping it at $2 increase per year) in order to attract new buyers that are on a budget, you are giving people who buy a false hope as to what it actually costs and bringing in people that cannot eventually afford what it costs to maintain.
My legitimate fear: for the next x amount of years, it is going to get worse and worse. That's my educated guess as to what is going on (as well as them not having any teeth with fines for people not painting). These are probably tied together: The fear of people leaving/complaining because they cannot afford it and fining them for shoddy upkeep and keeping the HOA fee artificially low because $102 is too much for new buyers. Therefore my premise is that they are trying close anybody who wants to buy even if they have champagne taste on a beer budget. In some of the older parks, there are literally hundreds of tons of missing rock (now brown dirt).
MNBR, that is what I meant by the builder subsidizing the HOA. One of the biggest things they fail to do is maintain any reserve fund which will most certainly cause HOA fees to rise when it's turned over. Our subdivision has a million dollar budget and over the last couple of years they've had to really spend some $$$$. Sidewalks that are buckling due to builder stupidity/poor work are having to be replaced. You spoke of rock? Last year they had to do a rock replacement which took a couple of weeks with hundreds of tons of rock. Of course we've constantly had to replace roadway/common area bushes and plants and now they're on a tree replacement mission.
They've had to pay out several thousand $$$ to repair homes that were negatively impacted by common area trees that were planted in wrong locations, too close to walls or people's backyards and they destroyed patios/pools via root damage.
One thing the HOA did a couple of years ago when EPCOR took over and water rates jumped was to let several large green belt areas go back to desert to reduce water consumption, it was that or raise fees which nobody wanted. Then you've got the usual upkeep of playground equipment and repair of vandalism/graffiti.
Back when someone on the BOD was connected to the landscaper (co-owner of the company) the HOA had to be threatened with legal action if they didn't get off their arse and bring the common areas back to their original condition, we had dead grass,no rocks,dead/dying bushes etc.
Magically things started happening.
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Since "blight" is too negative of a word and conjures up so awful visual, that was the wrong word selection. My bad. Neighbors can use that word because they already have a point of reference. But readers who have actually seen some "hoods/blight" in their day could conjure up some bad visuals. That certainly is way too strong of an adjective. Let's use the word "eyesore" instead. We are not talking about swatches of homes but rather pockets inside of the 7-10 year areas where all of the rock is gone in parts of the parks (brown dust remains in huge areas), where 1/2 of the plants have not been replaced in parks or boulevards, and where some houses paint is translucent or their stucco exterior walls are cracked and have chunks missing. I'm addressing a reality that the 7-10 year old sections of the entire neighborhood have not been maintained anywhere near as well as they were just a few short years ago. Some homes have looked this way for over 3 years and fading. I'm talking about less than ideal HOA maintained boulevards and parks. I'm not a lone in my opinion.
Granted, we'd enjoy eating free range chicken but you can only eat so much before the neighbors realize there might be some fowl play going on...
I highlighted the "broke" statement because it seems that the board is extremely concerned about the total HOA fees to their fault. If you have 16+ parks and thousands of tons of rocks and plants to upkeep, it's going to take more $$'s to maintain and upkeep (to use an example) than your $90 a month HOA fee. So if you keep the HOA artificially low (capping it at $2 increase per year) in order to attract new buyers that are on a budget, you are giving people who buy a false hope as to what it actually costs and bringing in people that cannot eventually afford what it costs to maintain. 
