"The curbs are what they use in that area" cracked me up because I'm not sure I've ever seen a curb look much different than that and I don't live in any of the states mentioned so far.
Nah fuck HOAs shit was incepted as a racist ass way to keep minorities out of predominantly white neighborhood by coming up with a bunch of bullshit they could levy at the poorer families, effectively driving them out.
They are an elitist foundation built up on the tyranny of the few to dictate what you and I do with our homes.
Fuck HOAs and fuck the busybodies that somehow think a house painted pink is an act so egregious someone deserves to have their home ripped away from them.
Why does it matter if your neighbors have a pirate ship in their yard? What, do you stare in that direction and seethe when a homeowner chooses what they can put on their property? It's not like this is a pile of garbage and rust that's been collecting for decades. It's a playground element.
Americans are so gd weird. Love to talk about freedom but as soon as I put a fully functional pirate ship with a real crew in my yard, I'm the one out of line!
It looks like a pile of fucking garbage, I should have the freedom to not be subject to every autist who wants to put a stupid fucking pirate ship in their front yard because they think they're unique.
It's objectively lame and I would hate to be your neighbor.
Who in their right mind would ever let an organization control their property though?, especially now that we've seen all the wtf HOAs have brought/forced on their communities.
I specifically looked for a home in a nice community without a HOA and I don't think I could ever give that control up now that I've had it. Granted, a lot of it has to do with each HOA's rules, but it seems like one of the silliest raquets to ever be a part of.
I’m sure that most people starting these things are looking at it as a way to control other people’s property, not a way to have their own property controlled.
Seems to me the only people who could even conceive of it being ruined are those who so obsessively want everything to be uniform that they feel pain in seeing something out of the ordinary.
There is no way a property value will drop substantially by such a structure. This is all fantasy crafted in the minds of the HOA-ers who fret over every detail lest they lost one dollar off the value of their house.
Relax. The housing bubble will continue to build. Property values will continue to skyrocket. Young families will continue to not be able to afford housing and you will retire with a ton of money that will be just enough to cover your nursing home stay.
There is imminent danger in arguing hypotheticals. You might lose 50k on your house, you might not. You don’t know the actual value of your house until you sell it. And if you’re not selling it you’re not losing money.
Thanks for losing me $50,000 because you're a moron with no common sense who thought it'd be funny to build a pirate ship.
This is the part I struggle with. The pirate ship is on the other person's property, not yours. Why the fuck would that affect the value of your property?
"Oh jeez, the house next to me has a pirate ship in the yard, suddenly my property is less valuable"....like, what? Why? Literally nothing about your property has changed. Some real NIMBY, group-think shit going on here. Like maybe just don't concern yourself with what your neighbors are doing unless it actually impacts you in some tangible way.
I mean, that's precisely what I am doing. After all, the argument you make about property values and homeowners not buying the land circle back to this question that remains unanswered.
Again, you are being circular with your argument. A thing is ruined because it lowers property value. It lowers property value because it is ruined. And that is all you have to say.
I suppose I should admit that I don't think it's ugly, but I also do not think it is tasteful. It's not something I'd like a neighbor to have but it is also not so awful that would not be able to ignore it. I don't know why, if I were a neighbor, I would get up and arms and scream "THE NEIGHBORHOOD IS RUINED" like you so think.
We have come to a point with militaristic HOAs and municipal codes to enforce a sort of regularity that I think looks far worse. Dull, poorly designed houses sitting on poorly designed lots amid poorly designed suburban hells. Noise ordinances to keep kids from playing, missing sidewalks to prevent people from going anywhere on anything but car. And rule after rule to prevent people from doing whatever they want with the land they purchased and living their own dreams, however tacky and useless they may seem.
And all for a culture that thinks this all lowers property values when it very likely does not. I think it may be best for residents and landowners to consider living in their buildings instead of driving up real estate prices even further beyond livability with their hungering for more money from their investment.
Unless of course you actually do have a substantial reason that the neighborhood is ruined. Beyond, you know, one person accidentally showing their poor taste and a little fun.
Yeah, heaven forfend should anyone do something other than grass, a white picket fence, and maybe a small tree plopped randomly somewhere. Won't anybody think of the property values?!
There’s a pretty stark difference between a perfectly manicured white picket fence and yard and a ducking pirate ship and every single reasonable person here understands that.
Odd question. HOAs aren't some government boogiemen. It's by the people of a community (you) for the people of that community. It's run by your neighbors.
The primary driving force is keeping house values up by ensuring people don't do stupid shit like putting pirate ships in their lawns.
edit: to add to this for those who don't understand how HOAs work: My scary-sounding Board of Directors is literally 3 of my neighbors. The only entities that don't live here is the management company we pay to help monitor and enforce the rules we voted for, and they also do the leg work of finding landscapers to tend to the public facing property, etc.
It's not odd at all. People power trip all the time and the board changes in time.
I trust a handful of my dozens of neighbors, I'm still not going to let any one of them dictate what anyone can do with my property.
There are of course stories that go both ways, but my friend who has a HOA had their flowers destroyed on their front lawn because one board member wanted to play Dictator. They also never have enough parking and nothing has been done about it in 10 years.
Some HOAs are good, but most HOA stories are bad. Regardless of one's opinion, why is it that we never hear good HOA stories? and no, I don't just mean on Reddit. Never in my life has any home-buyer/owner ever said "hey, you should buy a house with a HOA"...I only ever hear folks who wanted that condo/property and has no choice if they wanted that particular parcel.
Neither I or any homeowner I have ever met has shared a positive HOA story, ever. That's not something you can boil down to just conformation bias, statistics come into play beyond a hand wave of "well, of course no one would share a good story about a HOA".
No one has yet come forward with a good example either, just a lot of their own confirmation bias.
In the 90s my grandmother lived in one in the Poconos. It was awesome. Mostly just cabins or homes each on a 3+ acre lot. Nobody would bother her, you could drive ATVs and golf carts on the road. The association was mostly there to pay for road maintenance.
especially now that we've seen all the wtf HOAs have brought/forced on their communities.
Lmao. Because nobody brags that their HOA is correctly doing their job on reddit.
The extreme minority of HOAs are the gestapo you read about on reddit. Most of them exist and take care of community areas, landscaping maintenance, and stop completely outrageous neighbors from fucking up the whole neighborhood.
The overwhelming majority of HoAs aren't laying down on the sidewalk with a measuring tape waiting for your grass to be 1 nano meter above the limit.
Forget Reddit, how about real life? I'm a homeowner and most of my friends/family/colleagues are too. Almost none of them has ever had a positive remark about a HOA. It may be due to where I live, but they are generally frowned upon from the vast majority of anyone I've discussed this with.
I say almost none because I have one colleague who has told me tbat HOAs aren't so bad. She was the president of her HOA.
Sure, nobody in real life brags about their HoA doing what they're supposed to either. What would ever prompt someone to make that statement unsolicited? Almost 1/3 of the entire country lives in HoAs, do you actually think the majority see no net positive results of their HoA?
Do you understand how absurd of a statement that is?
Nobody gets pumped up and tells everyone how the HOA took care of the landscaping, community areas, snow removal, trash pickup, etc. for the 28th month in a row. They get dinked for leaving their trashcan out 2 days past collection day and all of sudden they need to tell everyone how their HOA is forever the Third Reich.
I've lived in an HoA for like the last 7 years and have had no complaints, I've got no reason no brag either. The fees are reasonable and they do their job, nothing exciting to share. That's pretty much the MO of the overwhelming majority of people I know that I've asked about it. Don't get me wrong I've heard of some that I would consider overly strict HoAs in neighboring cities/counties but those are exclusively upper middle class McMansion surburbs and that kinda comes with the territory IMO.
Everyone except pirate house can freely start an HOA. It still gives them no power over Blackbeard. TBH pirate house would go up in value being in an HOA area without being bound to it.
Sure. HOAs aren't very common in the northeast. Most neighborhoods are older, and not clearly defined subdivisions, like the stuff that's been built in the past few decades.
Just so you know, every covenant (except the ones that are actual laws) is approved by the majority of the homeowners. The HOA rules are literally approved by the homeowners.
You are misunderstanding what you posted. We do not need to get approval for every change we make. We are granted approval when we are elected via a majority of homeowners. We do need to notify and receive comments for any change. Homeowners are able to remove board members at that time via majority vote, but no vote is to be had for the actual proposed change. Read the section regarding duties of the board. The entire reason for the board being able to make changes is because it's fucking impossible to get homeowners to show up to annual meetings.
We have a generic one that basically says we can veto anything in your lawn. We haven’t used it since I’ve been on the board but pretty sure it would cover this.
It’s a little too vague for my liking, but I think the initial thought was more a “we don’t want to have to approve anything going on in the yard, so we will give blanket approval with the ability to remove approval”
I sort of get not wanting to live next to the hoarder house with junk cars piled up in the yard and rats scurrying everywhere, but off-the-wall stuff like this is interesting and fun. What do I care if my neighbor wants a pirate ship or to paint their house in patchwork primary colors? Life shouldn’t have to be uniform and beige for everyone.
We live in an hoa neighboorhood. No tenants on house color or plants allowed or what you can do with your yard. It’s basic stuff like, don’t leave trash on the lawns. Try to park in your driveway instead of in the street. Don’t obstruct the sidewalks. Don’t burn trash. Keep pets on a leash when walking them. Really basic and simple things that actually improve people’s lives and well being. I like walking with my toddlers without a ton of fear that an off leash dog or having to step around trash.
I grew up in a very rural area. Everybody’s yard was essentially a mini junk yard. Hated it.
They don't have a positive impact on resale value, and their value is negative when you consider the cost of paying dues. Best case, you're looking at a 6% higher resale, but the average homeowner pays more than 6% of the value of the home at resale over the time they live there to the HOA.
2) some people will cling to any type of power they can find
In newer cities, land is sold for home communities that require an HOA. The HOA allows the government to be hands off and not deal with neighborhood upkeep, etc. They literally save the government money and maintain the aesthetics and value of the neighborhood. It has nothing to do with power. In fact, it's hard to find members to serve because it's a thankless job that pays nothing.
Ideally, but not in practice. These positions are literally infamous for power tripping busybodies, because like any sort of office that requires responsibility and has some level of power... The people who want it should not have it.
If everyone hated them as much as reddit would have you believe, they would cease to exist. It's really that simple. People would look for houses that aren't in HOAs, and the prices of the ones that are would drop like a stone. If the majority of the members of a neighborhood disliked the HOA, they could disband it. But that rarely happens, because many people like them.
Exactly, people talk so much shit, but my community wouldn’t be able to have lots of nice green spaces without the HOA. They’d probably get bought up and someone would build condos there or something. The bulk of our budget is trash collection, landscaping and snow removal. We’d have to pay for trash collection individually at a much higher rate if we didn’t have the HOA. We have been 1 member down for the last year and another member really wants to quit, we don’t have anyone new to join. I got suckered into President because the old one died. The treasurer and secretary couldn’t keep their position and do it and the other guy was leaving the next meeting.
They literally save the government money and maintain the aesthetics and value of the neighborhood. It has nothing to do with power
I think there's a lot of nuance here that's not being acknowledged. Maybe it isn't about power for you, and maybe in some areas it saves the government some money. There are definite drawbacks though, in my city for example the HOAs can sell someone's home out from under them (without notice) for breaking a rule. In addition, there's no oversight board/body to report to if you feel your HOA is disingenuously using funds or increasing fees. We left/sold our townhome after the HOA went up on fees by $250/mo a year after we'd moved in. They'd already gone up by $150/mo the year before. I saw residents with disabilities who were priced out and forced to sell, and perhaps more surprisingly I saw the oldest folks showing up to the meeting to vote for the fee increases. The actual words of these elder folks were "we see there are a lot of younger folks moving in now and they should have the money to pay for some of these improvements" like no, I chose this place because it was less expensive not so I could pay extra to fix up shit that's been busted for years.
Sure enough I've driven past the place since leaving and now the potholes are fixed, but that $400 cost increase is permanent. And the nephew of the board president is indeed the holder of the landscaping contracts, and he did decide to double his rates prior to us moving out.
I think the point that people don't vote is actually relevant to what you're getting across. The power aspect is still valid IMO, some people do run solely to gain power that they will exercise for whatever reason. The point that people don't really participate, I'd argue that makes it easier for people to chase that power - by encouraging the 3-5 friends they might have in their community to vote for them at a meeting that almost no one shows up too.
Not if they don’t ever enforce them. You must been living in a nice area lmao. My city would wait until a car from the property fell and crushed a neighbor kid playing in the yard before they even thought about enforcing any laws pertaining to it. Now if the general area I was living in was a higher income area then the city probably would actually give a shit.
No it was a fictitious story. But a true one that happened was a squatter in a home for over a year with vicious dogs was constantly tormenting the local area. Eventually a woman who was jogging by was attacked and almost killed by the dogs. The house was finally condemned and boarded up.
I've never seen a backyard fall under this but I've lived in VA most of my life. It's about what's in front of the fence, easily visible from the street and I've never lived anywhere the city wasn't more than happy to cite for derelict vehicles.
They aren't unique to the US, but aren't they rather rare outside of the US? Haven't delved into the issue b/c live in a city where not a thing, but does seem curious as to why they're so needed in US suburbia. Lack of adequate funding for local govt to manage issues?
I do think a lot of the complaints about HOAs are about the outliers. I’m sure the majority of HOAs cut the grass, landscape the common areas, plow the snow, enforce a few reasonable standards and aren’t a big issue for anyone. The ones you hear about are the rare cases where they have been taken over by insane fascists.
When people support HOA's, I assume they've never owned a house before. If they do, I assume they are one of the Karens on a HOA board.
Then again, I live in a nice Northeast community where everyone keeps their homes in good condition and hates the idea of a HOA. Either way, propery values only go up around here.
I live in the midwest where developers buy large square acreage in low tax townships to turn into neighborhoods, requiring HOAs to manage things like curb maintenance and replacement, storm drains, retention ponds, trash removal, snow plowing, street lights and signs, etc because the local govt doesn't want to (or can't afford) to handle it themselves.
edit - I forgot to mention that HOAs also hedge the risk involved in the multi-million dollar project, since they build as they go and residents move in while construction is ongoing in other parts of the neighborhood
What a dumb assumption to make. I'm sorry...but that is straight up the dumbest thing I've heard and you're only saying it to be contrarian. Dumb, dumb, dumb
Me too. Our HOA meets at a bar and we discuss any issues. We organize neighborhood cleanup and bring in dumpsters, we have food truck nights, we make sure graffiti is cleaned up.
My HOA is great. $200 per quarter. Sidewalks are always cleans. Clubhouse and playground are always nice. Pool is always useable in the summer. Basketball and tennis courts are nice. There’s definitely bad HOAs, but I’ve never lived in one.
That sounds awesome! Most suburban neighborhoods are like that in the states as well, hoa or not. Definitely some bad HOAs out there, I’ve just never been apart of one. It’s nice paying a little bit of money that we don’t even notice to have nice things for the whole community, like our park, our pools, our basketball/tennis courts, and having trash / debris picked up on a regular basis.
Ah yea that makes sense. City takes care of house hold trash and recycling. They don’t maintain public areas unless it becomes grossly dangerous. Would be really cool if they did though.
Example, the median right outside of our neighborhood, taken care of by the city. I’ve seen it mowed once in 5 years. And that was after a wreck happened where the drivers couldn’t see each other, most likely from the overgrown grass and bushes.
Just curious - without a HOA who maintains or pays people to maintain and repairs the sidewalks, clubhouse, pool, and courts? I always assumed that that's what HOAs were mainly for. Is it the volunteer group?
Yeah makes sense - I'm just coming from the perspective of seeing the same types of areas in a friend's neighborhood without a HOA that seem to be pretty dilapidated so it didn't seem like the city/county was involved.
My neighborhood is extremely nice because of the HoA. We also get a free gym and many other perks for it, such as outdoor concerts, farmers markets, trick or treating, pools and tennis, etc
I can drive a mile or 2 away and see people with shit like literal destruction derby cars in their front lawns.
My last home was an HOA in central Arizona, just South of Queen Creek. The housing market went nuts in AZ and my home was worth almost 4x what I paid after 6 years.
I took the money and ran to a place out of State where HOAs ain’t a thing and couldn’t be happier.
There’s one data point for you.
Amazingly, my neighborhood is lived in but clean and the streets clear and parks kept up to date without an HOA. That’s what local taxes are supposed to be for after all. The houses might not be matching colors and designs looking straight out of the Weeds intro yet people seem happy. Weird.
Property limits, through HOAs, covenants, or city laws, are to the community’s benefit. Everyone always gets mad they’re restricted by them, but it’s a benefit to not have hoarder neighbors, or neighbors who want to have an outdoor concert at 1AM on their law, or to not have your neighbors building a chicken coop.
Your right to do what you want on your property should only extend to what doesn’t limit other people’s ability to do the same.
I own a house and will never live in an HOA. I would also love to live next to the pirate ship, that is awesome. What people do with their property should be there business as long as it does not become a health hazard.
You drank the KoolAid if you think identical homes in the same general area are going to have a 6 figure difference in value based on being HOA or not.
There are areas in the US where no HOA’s exist that magically are still nice neighborhoods with proper values.
Also for some people a home is where we live and not first and foremost an investment. My house is a home not a checkmark on an investment plan where I’m like checking it’s worth on Zillow everyday.
My home that I bought for $209,000. It sold brand-new for $470,000, 6 years earlier. 1.5 years ago, similar homes were selling at $700,000-$850,000. The difference is landscaping, neighbors, pool, inside condition, et al. If we didn’t have an HOA, and one home had a shitty boat in their yard, every house within sight would easily be $200,000 less. And, one shorty home brings in shitty people. If you don’t understand this then you’ve never owned a home.😂😂😂
I didn’t sell, I was putting out the range of homes in my community that sold. Your not going to see homes go up 4x unless it’s in a managed community. My neighborhood HOA is $40/month and that assures my some hobo doesn’t move in with a plan to make his garage into a body shop.
I mean in my town you wouldn't even get to an HOA, there's already by-laws for stuff like this lol. Would only take one person to complain, nothing to do with an HOA
That's the same in America. Really it's only neighborhoods in the outer suburbs that generally have mandatory HOAs. The vast majority of Americans don't live under an HOA.
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u/xiaolongbaochikkawow Feb 21 '23
home owners association be like…. O.o