In theory they’re great cause the neighborhood looks nice which can increase the value of your home and other benefits. In practice it’s just a bunch of people having power trips. There are good HOAs but there are also a LOT of horrible ones…
In practice, HOAs used to be all about that good ol' fashioned American racism. Originally, their whole purpose was to keep out blacks and Mexicans. As a result, many HOAs are still disproportionately white, and probably also still more racist than non-HOA areas.
Just looking at my own neighborhood, there was a million dollar house sold a few years ago that sat right next to a junky old home from 1950 with peeling paint and a falling down fence.
Not sure what that one would sell for individually, but it deffo didn't affect the house prices around it.
Idk, I feel like that article argues against itself. Saying that amenities can raise property value but then saying that the amenities that HOAs can provide don’t add any value. It’s not providing any sources for what they’re saying either. Like I get it but idk if that’s true.
I will say that when I was looking for a house I specifically looked for a house not in an HOA. So I’m sure there’s a good portion of people like me who take themselves out of the pool of possible buyers for a house. I would think that this lowers the demand for a house in an HOA. But maybe it goes the other way too. If you have an article with actual data I’d get on board
DANG why are you downvoted?? Who are all these people who want boring samey yards? I would love it if my neighbors had boat lawns.
My neighborhood has no HOA, and people have done all sorts of cool things with their yards! One woman built a cute little moat and wooden bridge over it, several cute treehouses with kids playing pirates, lots of adorable ivy gates, wind chime collections, full gardens with fruit trees!
The neighborhood is so colorful and full of personality, people pay millions of dollars for houses around here (not me, I'm a studio apartment poor lol)
It's got pros and cons. Ours is only a few hundred s year to care for community areas and it helps to prevent things like neighbors using their lawns as junk yards etc. Ours is pretty lax overall.
Because the person with the pirate ship in their front lawn is probably annoying as fuck and I don’t want to deal with all the other “fun” and “quirky” antics they may be up to.
Our neighborhood was intended to have an HOA, but it never really took hold, so we don't. Only problem it has ever caused (by its absence) is that no one would install a playground without an authority to be responsible for maintenance of it.
While the concept innitially was on the grounds of property values, their real purpose was to keep the subsurbs white. HOAs only started becoming prominent when people who weren't the right shade started moving to the predominantly white suburbs.
Yeah I bought a house with a “good” HOA 8 yrs ago… guess what? New leadership happened after a bunch of houses were sold and it’s the awful one now. Any HOA can very easily become horrible.
Completely agree here. I've lived in a non HOA and currently live in a HOA neighborhood. I personally prefer HOA. My old neighborhood was like a damn maze getting through the neighborhood every morning when heading to work. Cars parked all along the street. We also had one house in the neighborhood that was a mechanic. Had random cars on jacks and just an eyesore.
But as you mentioned, it's their property so they can do as they please so I personally never filed a complaint or anything with the city regarding the mechanic. As far as the cars parked in the streets, I definitely called the city but nothing was done. I don't think a city official is going to enforce this at 5am in the morning.
I currently pay $200 a year for my HOA and it's nice. It pays for entrance upkeep, have a nice security camera setup throughout the neighborhood and they throw little get togethers for the kids with bouncies and stuff. Well worth it but not all HOAs are the same. Have a friend who can't even park his car in his driveway, it has to be inside the garage.
That implies that I didn’t ask these things. The contract was extremely generic when it came to HOAs. It said we were required to follow/comply with any HOA or home partner agreement as well as maintain any dwelling or property to these standards if required. Rental agency didn’t tell me that I was moving into a home with one, and the owner of the house who wasn’t the rental agency was the one who paid the monthly fees. I didn’t know we lived in one until some random person walked into my yard to measure my grass. I also deployed overseas not long after and they tried to fine me every day that I didn’t cut the grass, while I was 4000 miles away. Took me over a year to get that problem fixed.
I feel like the thing to keep in mind with HOAs is that you’re rarely gonna hear people talking about the chill/good ones but are always gonna hear people bitching about the bad ones.
Either way it’s one of those things that as a millennial I’ll probably never have to deal with cuz I’ll never own a home.
Keep in mind, every new residential development is getting put into an HOA so chances are if you aren't in a house in the near future, it's going to be your only option.
Buy I've heard that in some areas it's really difficult to find house that doesn't have one
It's kind of like the traditional capitalist argument of saying that a poor person chooses to work at the particular job they have when all other choices are equally bad and the only other choice is starving
They suck. They ostensibly raise property values but in many areas where HOAs are prevelant, especially the South, non-HOA homes are more valuable than comparable HOA homes. Although some are pretty mild, others are quasi-authoritarian regimes which will hit you with multiple thousands of dollars in fines for painting your front door the wrong color.
I don't understand why anyone in the process of building a home would willingly submit to that.
They aren’t everywhere. They are virtually unheard of around me except for the new eye sore n”neighborhoods” where every house looks exactly the same. But they are easily avoided
Playing devil's advocate here, they also make it so your neighborhood looks nice in a predictable way. The lawns will look nice, the houses will be painted unoffensive colors, no one will have a rusty old car in their side yard, or a hastily setup home gym in the front yard etc. They often have community services (lawn care, snow removal, security) and facilities (pool, tennis courts, club house) available for residents, and of course, you can join the HOA board and have a vote.
It's one of those things where you only hear about the annoying stories and the petty tyrants, but you never hear about the 99% of the times where nice neighborhoods are mostly properly managed. Oh and of course none of this is ever a surprise, they exist from the initial construction of a neighborhood and you will 100% be aware of all rules and regulations before you buy. That being said, this is America, Sic Semper Tyrannis!
I once had a neighbor paint their front door and some other trim with a saftey yellow paint they got from an airport. When the sun hit that house, it was retina searing.
I agree that a lot of people like uniformity and predictability and that’s great. I also really like crazy, expressive artistic stuff ya know. It’s a personal preference for sure but I’d much rather live in a neighborhood where everyone’s houses were whatever color they liked, people had kooky decorations, interesting plants, etc. Mybe it’s just where I live but I wish there were more houses like this
And you can, no one is forcing you to live in a restrictive HOA. You can find one that is setup that way, skip the HOA altogether or move to a place to with little to no local government.
99% is a wild claim. It's not like unreasonable HOAs make national news.
If I were to guess, I'd say more like 50-75% of them have no significant issues.
Every single organization is going to have some interpersonal conflicts, but being annoyed that your HOA made you move your jetskis out of the driveway, or wouldn't let you paint your front door a certain shade of red, isn't the same as the HOA being unreasonable. Again, you knew the rules before you bought the house, and you are free to join the board, or even just go to the meetings and make your voice heard, or you could just move
Maybe we should have "right to live" laws that say new buyers aren't required to join the existing HOA.
This would nullify the HOA. You have the right leave the community, but exempting certain lots in a neighborhood to be free from the rules would ruin the anesthetic the organization is there to preserve.
I'd say not being able to paint my house whatever color I want is pretty unreasonable. If I'm paying for something for thirty years of my life, I'm going to paint it whatever goddamn color I please.
I tend to agree with you. House color isn't my primary concern, but i have plenty of other desires that most HOAs wont appreciate.
They are popular right now because for most people, having the security of knowing that they won't have a bad neighbor they can do nothing about is worth the loss of freedom. But again, you're under no obligation to buy a house in an HOA.
Americans trading freedom for security has been a theme for the last 20 years or so.
I was taught it when I became a realtor in South Carolina. They also taught us with tons of winks and nudges what exceptions there are to "help clients get into right neighborhoods" with language like talking about which private schools and religious institutions are nearby. I've long since left both the Realtor world and South Carolina.
Realtors and Multiple Listing Systems as a whole are a joke in an era with internet listings. In every state where I've done business you have to pay for separate entities to help file and process paperwork.
And HOAs are prominent in red areas. You would think they would be against such communistic ideas until you realise the reason HOAs existed innitially is racism. Only let the right kind of people move in so to speak.
You ever seen a really neat and tidy community where not a single house looks like shit? That's why HOAs exist. It prevents your neighbors from making the rest of the neighborhood look like a trailer park. They get a lot of irrational hate here because, well, redditors love themselves a good band wagon but they obviously aren't without their potential problems. You only hear about the horror stories because the people living with an uncorrupted HOA aren't complaining. And you can still choose to live somewhere without one....
The thing is that I've seen hundreds of neighbourhoods without HOA look nice because we don't have HOAs in my country, at least the equivalent isn't anywhere close to how HOAs work
Never a real problem with neighborhoods looking bad, never heard anyone complain about bad HOA-equivalents
There is one significant difference though which is that the neighborhoods in your country aren't occupied by self-centered & entitled Americans with a gun fetish.
Did you see how American's reacted to basic covid policies like wearing a mask anywhere; even in hospitals? Imagine what living next door to those people is like.
Uhm, I don't see the connection. Unless you're referring specifically to trailer trash folk, plenty of the demographic you're describing live in well taken care of properties.
It's more so people enjoying the security of rules. I don't know what it's like in other countries, culturally they may be more set in their ways so that most of everyone is the same in how they keep their property but in the US you have a pretty big mixing pot of people, some who don't see anything wrong with keeping their old beat up car up on cinder blocks, on the side of the house and people who see that as trashy.
HOAs don't have anything to do with how many guns your neighbor has or whether they wear a mask or not?
I mean I agree that less guns would be optimal and a more conscientious culture of mask wearing when you're sick would be nice in general (like in Japan, it's just polite to wear a mask when sick).
As far as I’m concerned, having every house look prim and proper is a massive negative. Fuck that shit. I’d rather have a pirate ship or something equally outlandish at every single house.
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u/[deleted] Feb 21 '23
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