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Absolutely. I really wish, when purchasing in an HOA neighborhood, each buyer would be required to serve on the HOA Board for a period of at least 1 year. They would learn the following:
1. No, the HOA Board is not policing your behavior and looking for violations. Your neighbors are doing that and reporting you to the Board who then has no choice but to act on the information or be in violation of their duties as Board members.
2. Some people are stupid, lazy and/or arrogant and do not believe the rules apply to them despite agreeing to the HOA rules when purchasing their home. Good luck interacting with these idiots.
3. Some people are busy bodies and report things constantly to the Board that are not even violations. You never hear about this because the Board has to deal with them instead of them ringing your doorbell day and night.
4. The Board members didn't make the rules, take no pleasure in enforcing them and for the most part are just on the Board because someone has to do it and most people are too lazy/self involved to volunteer their time. The biggest whiners and complainers are those who would never lift a finger.
5. Serving on an HOA Board is, for the most part, a thankless job. Despite what you read on the internet, most Board members are not drunk on their power as Board members and cannot wait for their sentence to be up.
Good response.
I have not read through six pages of "I like/Don't like Hoa's", but I can imagine that it is similar to every other discussion of HOA's over the years.
For the OP, if you like the idea of rules and regulations being evenly applied. then perhaps you might consider an HOA community. If, on the other hand, you prefer the free spirirt/do as you iwsh with YOUR property, then maybe an HOA is not for you.
There is no right or wrong; there are just different views on how people wish to live.
I live in a community with a moderately good HOA. We had some real morons running it for several years, and a LOT of things slipped. As stated above, the Board has no option but to enforce the CCR's. Our Board just ignored that for several years, and it created the idea of free wheeling behaviors which had to be curtailed--not an easy task because "Bob never made me mow my lot".
In 2015 our HOA dealt with a major marina move, maintained the common grounds, resurfaced tennis courts, installed entrance way security cameras (that alone is a HUGE project--both legal and practical), addressed unkempt lots, dealt with a HUGE project (bigger than my whole house!) which a resident had proposed to build in their back yard, published a monthly news letter, dealt with a building project which had well exceeded the one year window for completion, addressed a fencing violation, approved two swimming pool projects, held a community "summer fling" and kept the entire budget on track with no change in HOA dues. At the end of the year, we had new faces volunteering for new activities, and old dead wood begging to get off the Board.
Did I like/appreciate everything the Board did in 2015? No, but on balance, they did a good job of carrying out their legal responsibilities, developing the community to make it a more desirable place to live, brought people together by encouraging open dialogue through formal process, and didn't pizz off people such they "hated" living in an HOA community. I would consider it favorable, and would not hesitate to move to such a community again should the situation arise.
We had a huge blow out over being forced to store GARBAGE cans inside our garage, which was completely and utterly UNSANITARY, and which we won't do.
We had the same rule, we tried to get our neighbors to sign a petition allowing residents to store trash cans outside but while everyone agreed that it sucked to keep them in the garage only about 30% would sign the petition because they were afraid of retaliation from the Board of Directors.
In my City you can drive through the HOA and non HOA neighborhoods and DEFINITELY tell them apart. We were hit hard here by the mortgage crisis and there are so many homes around here with 3 foot tall wheat fields and rotting cars in the driveways, not in HOA neighborhoods though. They can also prevent renting to multiple family tenants. In my mother in laws neighborhood there are houses with as many as three families living together, which brings other added headaches.
In mine they also take care of the common areas, playgrounds, etc.
We had the same rule, we tried to get our neighbors to sign a petition allowing residents to store trash cans outside but while everyone agreed that it sucked to keep them in the garage only about 30% would sign the petition because they were afraid of retaliation from the Board of Directors.
A lot of people arent aware that there is this special meeting every year where you can...gasp...VOTE OUT the board members. In our HOA no one can be bothered to show up to this one hour a year meeting....
There is NO other inventory here! When you have kids, then talk about how parents have to make certain choices not because they "want to" but because they "have too".
To be a builder, and not account for the fact that garbage cans need to stay outside and create a space for it is what this is about. Building just because you can does not make you a builder. A succesful builder is one that take "life" into account, and HOW these homes will be used!
Nope. It's not up to the builder to intuit how YOUR life is lived. And believe it or not, YOU are not the arbiter of what everyone needs or wants. It's really about you whining that, in hindsight, you shouldn't have purchased a home without outdoor space. Or that the city shouldn't have gone to larger trash cans or that the HOA shouldn't require they be in the garage.
Honestly, I understand how kids change our choices based on personally spending a few decades taking their needs into account before my own. But, that has nothing to do with you not fully thinking through your purchase and being angry that things aren't exactly as you'd like them to be. Maybe more inventory will show up and you can remedy your situation by making a more informed choice next time.
A lot of people arent aware that there is this special meeting every year where you can...gasp...VOTE OUT the board members. In our HOA no one can be bothered to show up to this one hour a year meeting....
Exactly. Around here the most disgruntled people are those who NEVER participate in the annual meeting or any vote we may have. Nor do they ask to attend the monthly Board meetings to discuss their gripes. They just like to whine that the people actually volunteering their time aren't doing it "right". In other words, they aren't taking whatever personal agenda the whiner has into account when making decisions and are instead focused on making decisions that are for the good of the community as a whole.
I'm researching buying my next home. I'm pretty sure I want a condominium, but I'm not completely ruling out houses, either. Over time, I learned that tract home subdivisions almost always have a home owner's association (hereafter: HOA). Houses on traditional gridded streets usually don't have one. So far, I'd prefer not to have one. It's easier to deal with just one set of cops (city) than two (city + HOA).
In the research process, I've read plenty of horror stories about HOA's. The horror stories were plentiful, ranging from having to fix a broken window (reasonable, even good) to paying a $50 fine for a newspaper left out in the yard (stupid). In that light, it seems like HOA's are just a nuisance, run by people with too much time on their hands, who were bullied in school, and are now delighted to make other people's lives more difficult, not to mention play favorites with certain residents. Plus, charge X dollars per month for the privilege of that. True or not, don't shoot the messenger; I'm just posting what I read in other sources.
But there has to be some tangible purpose to HOA's. Otherwise, they'd be disbanded long time ago. So what do HOA's actually do? What benefit do they provide for residents, outside of enforcing rules? Either way, if I were to buy a house and not a condo, I'd buy one that doesn't have an HOA. But I'm still interested in finding out about its role.
Before we had a management company in place, our HOA made all the decisions about what was going to get fixed when and by whom, along with enforcing condo rules, collecting dues and so on. The management company has been a lot more efficient about getting things done, but the HOA retains the priority-setting prerogative.
HOA's make sense in neighborhoods that are not of an affluent demographic. It provides another layer of protection from the riffraff that can often be associated with the lower middle class demographic.
However, HOA's in upper middle class and affluent neighborhoods are just plain silly.
Don't tell the Kardashians. The Oaks and Hidden Hills are both HOA communities.
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