6 ms·

I fail to understand the hatred towards HOAs, I swear that most people simply parrot what they have heard before and the story just reaches legendary proportion

I fail to understand the hatred towards HOAs, I swear that most people simply parrot what they have heard before and the story just reaches legendary proportions and becomes accepted as fact. HOAs also protect quaint neighborhoods from becoming chain link fenced over grown slums too. They can protect some older homes from being razed or having a 6k square foot home replace a 1.5k house on the same lot. The can protect you from neighbors who won't maintain their homes, leave disabled cars out, and generally just make a neighborhood annoying. They are very little different from building management groups that keep people from making the high rise you live in hell. Yes there are some bad ones but you can usually predict those by simply talking to people in the prospective neighborhood. Also read the HOA and architectural guidelines of any place that has them you look at, when it gets into details about what can be planted, ground cover, and down to the type of pine bark/straw use there is, well that is an indication you will have HOA Nazis. Given what I have seen with subdivisions that ended their HOAs or didn't have them I would keep them in any small lot setup (once you pass an acre HOAs become less relevant as your neighbors are less noticeable)

bmelton 10y ago
I refused to move to a neighborhood with a compulsory HOA, and instead landed in an area with a voluntary HOA. We moved to an older suburban neighborhood that is just filled with community pride, and just exudes a neighborly feeling. We felt the same way about your 1+ acre rule, but man, were we wrong. That said, while we've been here less than a year, we've had run-ins with the HOA. The HOA has determined that the big yellow recycling bins are 'ugly', and should be kept out of sight except when they are at the curb on pickup day. The HOA has been hounding my neighbor for having a three car garage, which they've determined to be tacky. HOA guidelines assert that none of the houses in the neighborhood should have garages larger in capacity than 2-car (which has led to the hilarity of my neighbor across the street having 2 2-car garages). He didn't put the three car garage in; he bought the house that way, and a part of the reason he bought the house was for the third bay. Regardless, the HOA has asked him to tear it down repeatedly, even though he's not an HOA member. Personally, I removed a tree from the front yard that was dead -- it probably wasn't dangerous yet, but if it had fallen, it would have gone into the road, so we took it down just to be safe. Since then, we've gotten three notes about 'unsightly tree stumps', even though we aren't HOA members. The 'old-guard' seems to think that nextdoor.com was written by somebody in our neighborhood, and got mad when it was opened up to adjoining neighborhoods, posting a call to action on the site and insisting that "we've all agreed" not to let other people use Nextdoor.com, as it should only be used to report suspicious activity. I could go on, but the point is that the HOA entails a shocking amount of drama. Thankfully, as non-members, we aren't bound to their terms, and even when I donated the membership fee, I made it a point to highlight that this donation was not a membership payment, because I refuse to be bound to their arbitrary standards, and membership means granting them force-of-law authority over me. In hindsight, it was the wisest possible choice.
- pc86 10y ago
  HOAs are made up almost entirely of people who have nothing better to do. Retired school principals and dentist's spouses who have all the time in the world to think of things like "those bushes are too tall" or "those yellow recycling contains are ugly."
  - st3v3r 10y ago
    But if that were true, it would take only a small amount of effort to get the people who aren't like that, which usually outnumber the fuddy duddys, rally them behind one person, get that person elected head, and do away with crappy rules.
    - bmelton 10y ago
      ... and then be subjected to their new crappy rules of what they think the perfect neighborhood looks like.
GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
Those are all things the town should be doing, not some private organization. Fence needs to meet zoning rules and get a permit if it doesn't. Renovation, demolition, expansion, all something controlled through the permiting and zoning process. Disabled cars? The town again. Neighbor not mowing their lawn? Code enforcement. So I really really don't see the point of an HOA.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  No, no, no. Those are things that no one should be doing. If you want to control an entire community to the extent that most zoning boards and HOAs do, the proper thing to do would be to retain ownership of the property and write the restrictions into your leases. Your neighbors' property is not your property. If they wish to make their home into an eyesore, that's unfortunate for you, but they really like being able to dispose of their owned property as they see fit. If they wish to use their yard to grow nothing but dandelions, tamp down on your outrage and let them; for all you know, they will be using them for organic salads and floral wine, and to stop them would be taking food out of their mouths. The only thing that the county/municipality should be doing is to assess and levy the costs of any externalities upon the property owners, and to ensure that no property owner can cause so much damage that they cannot subsequently pay to repair it. No amateur nuclear reactors in the backyards, for instance. No dumping PCBs into the creek. That car on blocks should be fine, provided that any parts containing toxic pollutants have been removed and disposed of properly. Once you remove the lead-acid battery, gas tank, and exhaust system, then drain the fluids, there isn't much left in it to worry about. You don't, after all, have any property interest whatsoever in the view from your front porch. The more you forcibly remove the illusion of control that people have over their own lives, the greater the number who will crack and become les petits Napoleons, seeking to control others in petty ways. Some number of HOA officers follow the mentality "if I can't have a purple garage door, then no one else can do what they want, either".
  - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
    This is wrong. There are reasons for the town to control what you can build on your property. My neighbor should not be able to tear down his two story house and replace it with a five story apartment building built up to the property line. My neighbors should not be allowed to leave a rusting hulk in their front yard, nor should I. We shouldn't be allowed to not mow the lawn for a month, pissing everyone else off (they were not growing dandelions, they were simply neglecting their property out of laziness). And no, I really do have a property interest in the view from my porch. And so do my neighbors. Which is why I don't care if you have a rusting hulk in your backyard, or you never mow it. There is a very large difference between "you cannot allow your property to go derelict" and "you must paint your house this shade of puce."
ocschwar 10y ago
Where I live, the biggest source of blight is elderly residents who are getting too old and frail to properly maintain their yards. There's no HOA, so the only thing you can do about it is help them. There's no option for bossing the geezers around. And I'm okay with that. If your home value can be ruined by a little bit of yard neglect, the problem isn't the neighbor's yard. It's a neighborhood designed on such a brittle basis that the yard becomes a problem.
- ChoHag 10y ago
  > the only thing you can do about it is help them You say this like it's a bad thing.
hx87 10y ago
HOAs are great in theory, but in practice they're staffed by people with no sense of aesthetics whatsoever, and too often define "aesthetically inappropriate" as "different from my house". Thus overcomplicated monstrosities with squiggly hip roofs, no lintels or arches over openings in masonry walls, and fake historical details are allowed while a simple, elegant box house with gables and a standing seam metal roof isn't.
jandrese 10y ago
Having been in a couple of HOA now I can say that they just don't work as advertised. Basically, in truth the HOA has little power over people who don't (or can't) play along. They can make life hell for people who are trying to be good neighbors with tons of arbitrary rules that do nothing but make the board members feel better about themselves, but if someone wants to be a deadbeat their options are limited. About the worst they can do is put a lien on a house, but even that threat is of little effect against someone who is letting his house fall apart because he's planning to default on it anyway. The paperwork to put a lien on a house costs money too, so the HOA has to decide if it is worth the effort, especially if it ends up being dismissed in the foreclosure anyway. HOAs are basically good for one thing: maintaining common areas. If your development has a private park or a clubhouse or something like that then the HOA can be useful. If they only exist to collect dues and boss you around about the exact shade of tan on your mailbox post then they should be disbanded.
dragonwriter 10y ago
> I fail to understand the hatred towards HOAs, HOAs and the restrictive covenants that enforce them became popular for the purpose of keeping out Blacks (well, and other undesirable minorities, but mostly Blacks), and while they've been prohibited from actually (directly, at least) doing that for some decades, they continue to represent (because of who is willing to devote energy to regulating their neighbors through them) the same kind of cultural identity enforcement and homogenization by narrowminded elites that would keep out the "other" if they could.
- trgn 10y ago
  Or hippies. I bid on a property once in an HOA that specifically prohibited "geodesic domes".

bmelton 10y ago

I refused to move to a neighborhood with a compulsory HOA, and instead landed in an area with a voluntary HOA. We moved to an older suburban neighborhood that is just filled with community pride, and just exudes a neighborly feeling. We felt the same way about your 1+ acre rule, but man, were we wrong. That said, while we've been here less than a year, we've had run-ins with the HOA. The HOA has determined that the big yellow recycling bins are 'ugly', and should be kept out of sight except when they are at the curb on pickup day. The HOA has been hounding my neighbor for having a three car garage, which they've determined to be tacky. HOA guidelines assert that none of the houses in the neighborhood should have garages larger in capacity than 2-car (which has led to the hilarity of my neighbor across the street having 2 2-car garages). He didn't put the three car garage in; he bought the house that way, and a part of the reason he bought the house was for the third bay. Regardless, the HOA has asked him to tear it down repeatedly, even though he's not an HOA member. Personally, I removed a tree from the front yard that was dead -- it probably wasn't dangerous yet, but if it had fallen, it would have gone into the road, so we took it down just to be safe. Since then, we've gotten three notes about 'unsightly tree stumps', even though we aren't HOA members. The 'old-guard' seems to think that nextdoor.com was written by somebody in our neighborhood, and got mad when it was opened up to adjoining neighborhoods, posting a call to action on the site and insisting that "we've all agreed" not to let other people use Nextdoor.com, as it should only be used to report suspicious activity. I could go on, but the point is that the HOA entails a shocking amount of drama. Thankfully, as non-members, we aren't bound to their terms, and even when I donated the membership fee, I made it a point to highlight that this donation was not a membership payment, because I refuse to be bound to their arbitrary standards, and membership means granting them force-of-law authority over me. In hindsight, it was the wisest possible choice.

pc86 10y ago
HOAs are made up almost entirely of people who have nothing better to do. Retired school principals and dentist's spouses who have all the time in the world to think of things like "those bushes are too tall" or "those yellow recycling contains are ugly."
- st3v3r 10y ago
  But if that were true, it would take only a small amount of effort to get the people who aren't like that, which usually outnumber the fuddy duddys, rally them behind one person, get that person elected head, and do away with crappy rules.
  - bmelton 10y ago
    ... and then be subjected to their new crappy rules of what they think the perfect neighborhood looks like.

GunboatDiplomat 10y ago

Those are all things the town should be doing, not some private organization. Fence needs to meet zoning rules and get a permit if it doesn't. Renovation, demolition, expansion, all something controlled through the permiting and zoning process. Disabled cars? The town again. Neighbor not mowing their lawn? Code enforcement. So I really really don't see the point of an HOA.

logfromblammo 10y ago
No, no, no. Those are things that no one should be doing. If you want to control an entire community to the extent that most zoning boards and HOAs do, the proper thing to do would be to retain ownership of the property and write the restrictions into your leases. Your neighbors' property is not your property. If they wish to make their home into an eyesore, that's unfortunate for you, but they really like being able to dispose of their owned property as they see fit. If they wish to use their yard to grow nothing but dandelions, tamp down on your outrage and let them; for all you know, they will be using them for organic salads and floral wine, and to stop them would be taking food out of their mouths. The only thing that the county/municipality should be doing is to assess and levy the costs of any externalities upon the property owners, and to ensure that no property owner can cause so much damage that they cannot subsequently pay to repair it. No amateur nuclear reactors in the backyards, for instance. No dumping PCBs into the creek. That car on blocks should be fine, provided that any parts containing toxic pollutants have been removed and disposed of properly. Once you remove the lead-acid battery, gas tank, and exhaust system, then drain the fluids, there isn't much left in it to worry about. You don't, after all, have any property interest whatsoever in the view from your front porch. The more you forcibly remove the illusion of control that people have over their own lives, the greater the number who will crack and become les petits Napoleons, seeking to control others in petty ways. Some number of HOA officers follow the mentality "if I can't have a purple garage door, then no one else can do what they want, either".
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  This is wrong. There are reasons for the town to control what you can build on your property. My neighbor should not be able to tear down his two story house and replace it with a five story apartment building built up to the property line. My neighbors should not be allowed to leave a rusting hulk in their front yard, nor should I. We shouldn't be allowed to not mow the lawn for a month, pissing everyone else off (they were not growing dandelions, they were simply neglecting their property out of laziness). And no, I really do have a property interest in the view from my porch. And so do my neighbors. Which is why I don't care if you have a rusting hulk in your backyard, or you never mow it. There is a very large difference between "you cannot allow your property to go derelict" and "you must paint your house this shade of puce."

ocschwar 10y ago

Where I live, the biggest source of blight is elderly residents who are getting too old and frail to properly maintain their yards. There's no HOA, so the only thing you can do about it is help them. There's no option for bossing the geezers around. And I'm okay with that. If your home value can be ruined by a little bit of yard neglect, the problem isn't the neighbor's yard. It's a neighborhood designed on such a brittle basis that the yard becomes a problem.

ChoHag 10y ago
> the only thing you can do about it is help them You say this like it's a bad thing.

hx87 10y ago

HOAs are great in theory, but in practice they're staffed by people with no sense of aesthetics whatsoever, and too often define "aesthetically inappropriate" as "different from my house". Thus overcomplicated monstrosities with squiggly hip roofs, no lintels or arches over openings in masonry walls, and fake historical details are allowed while a simple, elegant box house with gables and a standing seam metal roof isn't.

jandrese 10y ago

Having been in a couple of HOA now I can say that they just don't work as advertised. Basically, in truth the HOA has little power over people who don't (or can't) play along. They can make life hell for people who are trying to be good neighbors with tons of arbitrary rules that do nothing but make the board members feel better about themselves, but if someone wants to be a deadbeat their options are limited. About the worst they can do is put a lien on a house, but even that threat is of little effect against someone who is letting his house fall apart because he's planning to default on it anyway. The paperwork to put a lien on a house costs money too, so the HOA has to decide if it is worth the effort, especially if it ends up being dismissed in the foreclosure anyway. HOAs are basically good for one thing: maintaining common areas. If your development has a private park or a clubhouse or something like that then the HOA can be useful. If they only exist to collect dues and boss you around about the exact shade of tan on your mailbox post then they should be disbanded.

dragonwriter 10y ago

> I fail to understand the hatred towards HOAs, HOAs and the restrictive covenants that enforce them became popular for the purpose of keeping out Blacks (well, and other undesirable minorities, but mostly Blacks), and while they've been prohibited from actually (directly, at least) doing that for some decades, they continue to represent (because of who is willing to devote energy to regulating their neighbors through them) the same kind of cultural identity enforcement and homogenization by narrowminded elites that would keep out the "other" if they could.

trgn 10y ago
Or hippies. I bid on a property once in an HOA that specifically prohibited "geodesic domes".