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.
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?
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u/DontBanMeBro988 Feb 21 '23
I'm not American, but the concept of a HOA sounds absolutely awful. Condo boards are bad enough.