Current Events > How to fuck with a home owner's association

(+) Yeah! (+)

God HOAs sound like dogshit

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... or... you know just get your neighbors to sign off on you getting a trampoline lol.

Ours is so ridiculous, half the people haven't even paid their dues in years and my lawn looks like shit and all they care about is that I mow (I do feel bad that it looks so ridiculous though).

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HOAs are so anti-American, fuck em all.

I will keep this in my advice folder, thanks tc.

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fuck HOAs. i wont live in a neighborhood that has one.

curious if this has worked before

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You dont have to live in an HOA community. I never would.

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Just live somewhere without one.

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Never really understood how HOAs work.

"Okay, i'm so glad you became a Home Owner! Now that you Own your own house, here are some rules you need to follow regarding it. Also, we're going to need you to give us money, and if you do something we don't like, you're going to have to pay us for that as well AND stop doing it!"

If I buy a house and want to paint it purple, no one is stopping me.

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as an english person .. the very idea of HOA's is strange ... good lord am i glad they dont have them here

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KiwiTerraRizing posted...

You dont have to live in an HOA community. I never would.

For many people looking into suburban homes, the options are to buy a home in a community with an HOA, or to buy a plot of land and build your own home. There is no "opt out" for buying an existing home that happens to have an HOA (which is most of them around here)

I'm honestly surprised there aren't more instances of HOA presidents or employees getting their shit rocked by irate homeowners. Guarantee any and all cases would be 100% justified.

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Yeah I'm in the early phases of shopping for a home and there are a ridiculous amount of HOA neighborhoods. Don't really have a lot of options.
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SolidShadow3 posted...

Never really understood how HOAs work.

"Okay, i'm so glad you became a Home Owner! Now that you Own your own house, here are some rules you need to follow regarding it. Also, we're going to need you to give us money, and if you do something we don't like, you're going to have to pay us for that as well AND stop doing it!"

If I buy a house and want to paint it purple, no one is stopping me.

It's basically a Neighborhood Union. The fees are supposed to go towards the HOA paying for upkeep that the township doesn't normally provide, and the standards are supposed to keep your property value from dropping because someone moved in next to you and turned their house into a dump. The problem is that more often than not it's run by bored homeowners who love drama and the end result is complaining about nonsense like flowers being the wrong color.

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treewojima posted...

For many people looking into suburban homes, the options are to buy a home in a community with an HOA, or to buy a plot of land and build your own home. There is no "opt out" for buying an existing home that happens to have an HOA (which is most of them around here)

Where are you talking about?

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SolidShadow3 posted...

Never really understood how HOAs work.

"Okay, i'm so glad you became a Home Owner! Now that you Own your own house, here are some rules you need to follow regarding it. Also, we're going to need you to give us money, and if you do something we don't like, you're going to have to pay us for that as well AND stop doing it!"

If I buy a house and want to paint it purple, no one is stopping me.

Exactly. Once you put the money down on a house, you shouldn't be forced to work with a fruity organisation that bills you for hundreds of dollars if they don't like your mailbox. That shit is your property, and any superfluous committee who wants to police that can get fucked.

That doesn't mean "do what you feel like without any regard for your neighbours" - like don't blast thrash metal at full volume all week, don't leave clutter in your yard etc. Even if you keep to yourself, being a good neighbour is important. I just don't think a bunch of self-important dipshits should be policing anyone about their own property, much less issuing fines. That's demented.

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SolidShadow3 posted...

Never really understood how HOAs work.

"Okay, i'm so glad you became a Home Owner! Now that you Own your own house, here are some rules you need to follow regarding it. Also, we're going to need you to give us money, and if you do something we don't like, you're going to have to pay us for that as well AND stop doing it!"

If I buy a house and want to paint it purple, no one is stopping me.

Some HOAs have really awesome amenities that your money goes towards, though, like fitness centers, swimming pools, tennis courts. I've seen one where it went towards kayaks so you could just grab a boat on the weekend and go paddling on the river.

Kind of unavoidable in some areas, too. p. sure the city of Columbia, MD is just a patchwork network of HOAs

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What is a home owner's association?

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Like, if you buy a house in a neighbourhood with a HOA, can you simply not pay their bills and refuse to take part in it?

Seriously, if you've put money down on a house, there should be no legal standing to evict you given that you're paying your taxes and utilities. A HOA can't reasonably evict you from a house you own, right?

Unless HOA houses actually count as belonging to the association, at which point you're paying top dollar for a glorified rental.

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SolidShadow3 posted...

Never really understood how HOAs work.

"Okay, i'm so glad you became a Home Owner! Now that you Own your own house, here are some rules you need to follow regarding it. Also, we're going to need you to give us money, and if you do something we don't like, you're going to have to pay us for that as well AND stop doing it!"

If I buy a house and want to paint it purple, no one is stopping me.

The core of it is to stop the existence of the trashy house with three junk cars, four camper trailers, and a welded metal dinosaur out front. What it ends up being is a corrupt power fantasy for bored housewives.

treewojima posted...

KiwiTerraRizing posted...

You dont have to live in an HOA community. I never would.

For many people looking into suburban homes, the options are to buy a home in a community with an HOA, or to buy a plot of land and build your own home. There is no "opt out" for buying an existing home that happens to have an HOA (which is most of them around here)

Bullshit. I grew up in one of the nicest developments in the region and there was no HOA, just a civic association that gives zero fucks.
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nemu posted...

The core of it is to stop the existence of the trashy house with three junk cars, four camper trailers, and a welded metal dinosaur out front. What it ends up being is a corrupt power fantasy for bored housewives.

What sort of monster would want to stop that?

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MrMallard posted...

Like, if you buy a house in a neighbourhood with a HOA, can you simply not pay their bills and refuse to take part in it?

Seriously, if you've put money down on a house, there should be no legal standing to evict you given that you're paying your taxes and utilities. A HOA can't reasonably evict you from a house you own, right?

They can take you to court and sue for the fines and if you refuse to pay in that case then they can get your house taken away.

Not all HOAs are equal though. I don't even know why the hell ours exists, like I said they barely give a shit what you do. You do still have to submit any sort of obvious modification plans to them (like if you want to get a fence installed or a completely new porch installed) but as long as it doesn't blatantly violate any rules of the HOA they don't care.

And like I said people have gone without paying for years and no one's done anything to them.

It feels like a technicality that we have it.

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nemu posted...

The core of it is to stop the existence of the trashy house with three junk cars, four camper trailers, and a welded metal dinosaur out front.

that's part of it, but it's not the whole truth -- it's significantly more racist than that

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SolidShadow3 posted...

Never really understood how HOAs work.

"Okay, i'm so glad you became a Home Owner! Now that you Own your own house, here are some rules you need to follow regarding it. Also, we're going to need you to give us money, and if you do something we don't like, you're going to have to pay us for that as well AND stop doing it!"

If I buy a house and want to paint it purple, no one is stopping me.

There's certain logic about them.

Say you move into a nice neighborhood filled with houses that have all nice front lawns. Without any HOA regulation in place, nothing stops legitimate owners from building/expanding their house into their lawn, and if said owner chooses to, it could disrupt the aesthetic of the place, which in turn could affect the pricing of the properties in the area. This is a lesser example, but say your neighbour tears down his house and builds an apartment complex instead. The neighborhood would stop being homogeneous and since the apartments would be cheaper, people with less income would be able to move to the place.

I'm in no way justifying them. But that's the logic of HOA, and why they exist.

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To play devil's advocate, my area has a lot of white trash. They don't take care of anything, their dogs bark, their shit is all over the street, the town looks like a tornado hit it in these areas.

The ONLY nice streets are the HOA streets, where the landscaping is nice, it's quiet, and people are generally calmer and nicer.

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My neighborhood has a voluntary HOA which I'd never heard of prior to moving here. You pay $25 a year.
I don't mess with it though. One of my requirements in buying a house was no HOA which eliminated maybe 50% of the houses we were looking at.

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Hexenherz posted...

They can take you to court and sue for the fines and if you refuse to pay in that case then they can get your house taken away.

Then I maintain - that's a glorified rental. If you're forced to join a home owner's association for a house you bought, where they can fine you for not meeting their standards and take you to court to get you evicted, then you don't really own that house. The HOA own that entire neighbourhood, including your house, and you're not actually free to live in it as you see fit. You really might as well have a fucking landlord.

Not all HOAs are equal though. I don't even know why the hell ours exists, like I said they barely give a shit what you do. You do still have to submit any sort of obvious modification plans to them (like if you want to get a fence installed or a completely new porch installed) but as long as it doesn't blatantly violate any rules of the HOA they don't care.

And like I said people have gone without paying for years and no one's done anything to them.

It feels like a technicality that we have it.

It's good to hear that some HOAs aren't known to fuck people in the ass, and as far as restrictions go the ones in your post at least sound reasonable. But the fact that there are ones that can go so far as to take you to court and try to kick you out of your home is a serious problem. Like that's some shit that happens when you're renting, just on a much larger scale.

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They're associations set up to keep minorities out if white neighborhoods.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=hoas+and+racism&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3DNtJnaVjzyBcJ
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pkmnlord posted...

I'm honestly surprised there aren't more instances of HOA presidents or employees getting their shit rocked by irate homeowners. Guarantee any and all cases would be 100% justified.

It's because all the bullshit HOAs pull is typically codified in one of the many long documents you have to sign when finalizing the purchase of a home. The last thing on your mind is the idea of the HOA gunning for you because your recently replaced shutters are the wrong style

MrMallard posted...

Like, if you buy a house in a neighbourhood with a HOA, can you simply not pay their bills and refuse to take part in it?

Seriously, if you've put money down on a house, there should be no legal standing to evict you given that you're paying your taxes and utilities. A HOA can't reasonably evict you from a house you own, right?

Unless HOA houses actually count as belonging to the association, at which point you're paying top dollar for a glorified rental.

Depending on the area a seller may literally not be allowed to sell you the house unless you sign and agree to participate in the HOA. It varies from state to state and even city to city in some states with HOAs having A LOT of power in some places. If you live in an HOA you do own the property but you are contractually obligated to certain duties and restrictions, usually including not renting it out and proper maintenance etc. I personally think they're just about the worst thing ever fucking created and am glad I live in a state that has given very little power to HOAs on what they are allowed to do at all
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fire_bolt posted...

Depending on the area a seller may literally not be allowed to sell you the house unless you sign and agree to participate in the HOA. It varies from state to state and even city to city in some states with HOAs having A LOT of power in some places. If you live in an HOA you do own the property but you are contractually obligated to certain duties and restrictions, usually including not renting it out and proper maintenance etc. I personally think they're just about the worst thing ever fucking created and am glad I live in a state that has given very little power to HOAs on what they are allowed to do at all

Yeah, there's no point to owning a home if you're going to be held to rental standards. What a bizarrely American thing.

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"No HOA" was the number one requirement on our list of shit we were looking for in a house that we sent to the realtor.

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Hoa is american for strata right?

-confused leaf
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MrMallard posted...

fire_bolt posted...

Depending on the area a seller may literally not be allowed to sell you the house unless you sign and agree to participate in the HOA. It varies from state to state and even city to city in some states with HOAs having A LOT of power in some places. If you live in an HOA you do own the property but you are contractually obligated to certain duties and restrictions, usually including not renting it out and proper maintenance etc. I personally think they're just about the worst thing ever fucking created and am glad I live in a state that has given very little power to HOAs on what they are allowed to do at all

Yeah, there's no point to owning a home if you're going to be held to rental standards. What a bizarrely American thing.

It keeps out the minorities so they're happy to give up their own rights for that.

What was the Johnson quote? Find a black man for a white guy to look down on and the white guy will let you rob him. Is the jist of it.
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MrMallard posted...

Yeah, there's no point to owning a home if you're going to be held to rental standards. What a bizarrely American thing.

The thing is, this isn't usually just some random neighborhood. HOA neighborhoods tend to be the highest property values with the best amenities, the lowest crime rates, and overall just higher standard of living than anything outside of an actual gated community (and those typically have HOAs as well). Joel isn't entirely wrong when he says

averagejoel posted...

that's part of it, but it's not the whole truth -- it's significantly more racist than that

I'd argue its not racist so much as classist since HOAs have had their asses handed to them for trying to block sales to minority owners. Its more they flat out put properties further out of the range of lower income families due to the additional duties required even if they could afford the property somehow.

For some people the extra price/responsibility is worth the perks and I can see that. I can see there being a certain peace of mind in the stability of such a neighborhood... But be fucked if some asshat retiree who bullied his friends into electing him president of the HOA is gonna tell me I can't put an inflatable pool in my yard cuz it'll kill the grass.
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Lmao America at it again.

American Dad had a really funny episode where Roger ousts Stan as president of the HoA

HOAs are definitely a sketchy thing that I'm surprised has so much popularity. In general I refuse to believe that the amount of money you pay the HOA is greater than the amount of increased value they are supposedly adding to the community.

Some HOAs are good including the one that I live in. In fact my boyfriend is even on the board of it. Mostly so that he can help make sure the HOA doesn't become power hungry.

When we were house hunting the first thing on our list was no HOA. But then we ended up in one >_>

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My parents live in a one floor ranch next to multiple McMansions. Million dollar homes or close to it.

I reiterate that nobody gives a shit if my parents have the worst house and gardening on the block.

HOAs are pointless when more upscale neighborhoods don't even need them.
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harley2280 posted...

They're associations set up to keep minorities out if white neighborhoods.

it's a load of BS tbh. everyone should have a fair chance etc.
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bump

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