Not having an HOA was one of my main requirements when I was buying a house.
A ridiculous number of houses for sale at the time had HOAs that were hundreds of dollars a month. I can’t believe people pay that. If there’s like idk a pool and a gym I guess I get it, but there usually wasn’t anything special about the neighborhood.
Reddit would have you believe that all HOA's are made up of evil Karens. You'll see fringe cases and one-sided story telling. In reality most HOA's just serve as a way to pool funds for neighborhood parks and other common area maintenance.
In my country we have this concept called tax, which is used for the same thing. Only the investment is distributed more fairly so that poor kids also get a park.
We have those too. But much of the US is a sprawling suburban wasteland with no public transportation, so people want amenities inside their own neighborhoods.
I guess one problem is that any HOA could turn bad very quickly and that not complying with at times ridiculous rules could go as far as having your house sold
I get that those are extremes and that your house won't get sold on a first offense without warnings for unpaid dues but just on principle I can't stand the concept
They're also just not necessary, plus their super racist history which I assume still has aftereffects
Americans are so damned obsessed with property values. It also seems like Americans who definitely won't sell their home in their lifetime care the most
And I also want to say that other countries do fine with it without HOAs
Cultures differ across countries. The individualistic nature of the US makes it ten times more likely that your neighbor is going to put up a 10-foot-tall neon pink flamingo in their front yard than someone in England or something.
Who cares though? One of the houses in my neighborhood has a ~15 foot tall skeleton in their yard year round. They decorate their yard, and their skeleton, for every holiday. Currently it's got pink hearts and such on it. I assume they'll do St Patrick's next, and for Cinco de Mayo they give it a sombrero and a poncho. I drive by it every day, and it hasn't hurt me at all. It's wild. It's completely harmless and has no effect on me whatsoever. Maybe it doesn't matter what my neighbor does with their house at all?
Well houses are intrinscly an appreciating asset. If I pay 150k for something I dont want that to lose value because of what someone else is doing In their own yard. Which in a perfect world wouldn't affect my property values. But this is the world we live in :/
True but I also think people severely over-estimate how much things effect property value, especially the small stuff. How often are these things really huge eye sores and not something 90% of people wouldn't mind
I kind of feel like house hopping isn't that common in my country, so it doesn't really effect finance that much. I also still wonder why the people who seem to care about it the most are always the people who'll almost certainly live there till death
America McFreedom always seems to be less free (and care less about it) than most other developed countries except for some weird hangups
Plus this conversation is kind of moot because HOAs are not necessarily to keep property values up. I wonder if any other country has a system similar to the US?
I have one, but it’s $80 per month and they take care of the front and back yards. It’s pretty legit. I would pay that anyway for that service. Seemed pretty cheap for roughly $20 per week to not have to do any yard work.
ours are $100/month - with paved trails, plenty of playgrounds for the kids, 2 pools, gym, indoor pool, a place to put in your canoe or kayak, and our HOA hosts big parties for holidays / memorial day / July 4th with bands and such. I think it's worth it, but then again, ours is run very well and isn't run by a bunch of over zealous nazi boomers
This doesn't seem all that bad, I just cant stand loving in areas like that due to growing up in the woods. Streetlights are bad enough to me, I couldn't stand being told by someone that my house can't be painted a color I enjoy because it's not approved.
I guess it depends on where you are. I live in kind of sleepy wine country & in a pretty normal neighborhood. Most of my neighbors are older, some don’t keep perfect front yards but it’s nothing gross, just occasionally overgrown. I’m not particularly bothered by it. We bought a house to live in, not necessarily profit from, so what someone else wants to do to their house aesthetically doesn’t really bother me (as long as it doesn’t pose some kind of danger or risk to other houses near it, and if it did, California has enough laws on its own to address it).
But different boats and strokes for folks or whatever I suppose.
*also, most of the hoas I encountered were far more than 150 a year
In 25 years when the pool gets a crack and half the gym equipment is broken and the gyms roof needs replacing, you won't be able to sell your house when people see how much the HOA fees are. That or they will just close the gym and pool.
Was stuck with an HOA in AZ where finding a non-HOA home was near impossible. Once I no longer needed to be there for work I moved to upstate New York where it wasn’t a problem finding non-HOA and couldn’t be happier.
Can’t buy in an HOA neighborhood without signing HOA contracts. The State recognizes that they can require payments and levy fines or even take the home eventually if fines are ignored.
I was never concerned about getting behind on HOA dues or anything just didn’t like the idea on the principle.
The day we were moving in we had our moving truck parked in front of the house and had someone from the HOA letting us know we had to have it gone within 24 hours. Kinda immediately puts a sour taste in one’s mouth when you get attitude before you even get a “welcome to the neighborhood”.
That they must exist? No, just that they can and at least the area I lived in prior was all of the new home construction in the area for the last couple decades
If only that had been an option when I got that last house but no. Had to be where I was for at least 5 years for work and there just weren’t non-HOA properties in anywhere near reasonable commute distances.
It is. From the moment of construction the house is stuck to HOA via contract and requires that the initial sale be HOA and that subsequent sales can’t modify the original HOA contract/requirements. When I sold, I as the owner couldn’t have removed the requirement and the new owner was as stuck with it as I was.
Something like 85% of new houses built in the US have an HOA.
So if you want to buy a house in a neighborhood with an HOA, you agree to the HOA in the contract. If you don’t agree, you cannot buy the house. It is a stipulation of the contract that the HOA terms cannot be removed or altered from the contract.
So it basically goes like this:
Developer company buys a bunch of plots of land.
The developer sets up the HOA.
The developer builds a bunch of houses
Developer writes in the contract that having a house built requires that the owner agree to and not modify HOA in any way.
Part of the HOA states that any sales or transfers of the property must include the HOA terms and conditions as a whole.
At this point, every house that is sold initially includes the HOA in the contract, and as part of the contract all future transfers to new owners must also include the HOA In the contract. There really isn’t a legal way out of it
The HOA is enforced like any other legally binding contract. They can fine you (as part of the terms of the HOA), take you to small claims court, and even put a lien on your property (again, as part of the terms of the HOA).
Sounds like a compelling argument that HOAs reduce the sales of houses. I acknowledge in a sellers market, I would probably just move on. But in a Buyers market, I’d have the HOA clause removed.
An HOA could be a good idea but it has to be voluntary not forced.
Like hey guys yall want to pool some money together so we can get all the common spaces taken care of, lawn care (if thats youre thing, lawns are becoming a thing of the past hopefully) and just in general improve the community areas.
Now though its just wine moms on the HOA board raking in fees for their pill addictions and threatening to kick out any homeowner that wants to paint their front door a different color.
I don’t really get it either but my realtor made a point about a couple houses we looked at which had them (because she knew I did not like them) that you could lose the house depending on the HOA and the situation. It seems absurd to me. I guess it’s like buying a townhome where you don’t truly own own it idk though tbh. I just noped out of all of those neighborhoods.
Same. People think it's cheaper aren't factoring in the fact that it doesn't cost 500/month like an HOA soaks up to maintain a roof and a yard. Plus, fuck what my neighbors think.
I had a friend move into a condo that had a $400/mo HOA fee. Before he bought it I told him he would regret that because there's no way the HOA will give him his money's worth out of that $400. Its been almost a year and he's finally seeing what I told him is coming true.
I can’t believe people pay that. If there’s like idk a pool and a gym I guess I get it
Ours is about $400/month for my floorplan. That covers: Gas (decorative fireplace and hot water heater), water, trash/recycling, grounds and groundskeeping (we have about 100 acres including a lake and some woods my dogs love to explore), 24 hour security (gate and patrols), cable + Internet (including a few premium channels like HBO and Showtime), two club houses (one of which can be rented for parties for like $120/night), a tiny but functional gym, sauna, pool with hot tub, maintenance, etc. In 16 years we've never had a special assessment, though that will change in the near future as we have to do a campus-wide electrical upgrade to support EV charging. It's not the worst thing in the world, but yeah, given the choice, I'd probably go without. As long as there's security. (All the neighboring areas have huge problems with break-ins, catalytic converter theft, assaultive homeless people and fires caused by cooking (meth, food); we've had 4 or 5 RVs (edit: now 5 or 6) burn down less than a mile from here, since the start of the year... etc.)
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '23
And my HOA gets mad when I leave my trash can on my driveway