6 ms·

As a non-American I have never understood why a people that values personal liberties are sometimes happy to be dictated to by housing authorities. I get it wit

As a non-American I have never understood why a people that values personal liberties are sometimes happy to be dictated to by housing authorities. I get it with apartment buildings with shared walls and communal property, but I just don't get why you would with suburban homes.

vkou 6y ago
They aren't happy to be dictated to by housing authorities, it's just something they have to put up with in order to live. The cost of resisting is too high, so people end up picking their battles.
- hinkley 6y ago
  There is a surprisingly small overlap between walkable neighborhoods and HOAs. These are, in fact, battles you can pick. HOAs feel like living in an apartment but you're also the superintendent.
  - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
    > These are, in fact, battles you can pick In some sections of the US, you can’t buy a single-family home built after 1980 without being part of an HOA. I’m not sure what that has to do with walkable neighborhoods?
bobbob1921 6y ago
most likely the reason some Americans are fine with a HOA is because they do give up some liberties/freedoms for the other benefits that come with a HOA. Such as amenities, security, upkeep of surroundings, and other benefits from the pooling of resources (ie hoa fees). You also have essentially an arbitrator to deal with disputes between neighbors (mainly over appearances). (and generally when homes are constructed together/all at once and on a single large plot of land; their final costs are much less thus you can purchase homes for cheaper). In the case of subdivisions like this, Not all come with an HOA but that is generally the case.
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  I'm on the fence, so to speak. have lived in subs with and without HOA, and mostly haven't noticed much of a difference. we did get a curt letter once about a trashcan "visible from the street" but they didn't followup when I asked for more info. Depending on what street you're on, it might be visible against the back of the house, but it wasn't visible from the front street, which is all I'd assume we'd care about. One of the values I've found is that it does provide a way to collectively prevent certain eyesores. I don't really want to have someone with 5 cars in the street on in their driveway for extended periods of time. Having a BBQ party? Sure - have 15 cars there for a few hours. Want to collect cars and work on them and leave cars 'in repair' out the street for weeks at a time? I'd rather you didn't, and would rather there be some agreed upon process to resolve those disputes. I do understand some HOAs have people that get power hungry - grass being a 1/4" too tall, etc. That's generally bullshit, and I think there's probably other things going on in those cases where the HOA issue is the public face of some other private neighbor disputes going on. Oh, we did have a letter once or twice about "your lawn is not kept properly". We have a lawn service and they got delayed, then it rained heavy for 3 days, and they were backed up again, and... we had really long grass. It was cut the moment someone could cut it at that point. Nature happens. If the worst that came out of that was a $50 fine or something... meh.
  - lostapathy 6y ago
    A lot of HOA's send letters about things they don't have authority over, and people comply anyway. If you push back or ask for clarification, they just drop it so they aren't exposed as lacking authority.
hinkley 6y ago
If memory serves, Adam Ruins Everything thinks suburbia is about racism with a dash of classism. HOAs just seem to ratchet that up another notch.
- msla 6y ago
  Adam Ruins Everything is inherently contrarian, to the point he doesn't have a show unless he's pouring some poison on something. This influences his "hot takes" to the point I doubt any of them are honest, and I wouldn't put it past him to make shit up.
  - mikepurvis 6y ago
    Maybe, but it's hardly a unique take: "Critics of HOAs have attacked them as a “tool for exclusion” that can encourage racial segregation. There’s no available data on the race of the owners of each particular house, so Clarke and Freedman couldn’t test this accusation directly. But they did compare the racial demographics of neighborhoods with or without HOAs, and found that neighborhoods with HOAs tended to be richer and less racially diverse." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-04/do-homeowners-associations-replace-local-law https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-04/do-homeow...
    - calvinmorrison 6y ago
      > that can encourage racial segregation. Unnamed critics state things "can" do things, while the following sentence shows there is no evidence. Then there is a follow up statement that the racial demographics show that HOAs tend to be richer (A major point of HOAs is to improve and maintain neighborhood values), and less diverse. The second part on its face might seem upsetting but, you'll find largely suburban communities ARE overall less diverse. It would maybe be relevant if they found and stated "HOAs in the same zip codes as non-HOA neighbrhoods of equal value are less diverse", that might show some racial differences, but then not even necessarily bias. In short, bloomberg is a rag and should be used to pickup your favorite pets droppings with. edit: forgot a word
pradn 6y ago
Americans only seem to value freedom from government interference in their lives. There's far more control from schools, universities, workplaces, and HOAs. Many rights like freedom of speech are curtailed in schools and workspaces, for example.
- product50 6y ago
  You are talking as if somehow non-Americans have access to more liberties across non-government entities in their lives. If anything, Americans treasure and enjoy the most freedoms across the widest gamut of institutions vs. non Americans.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Germans for example have an expectation of privacy at the workplace. It's not allowed to monitor a German employee's web browsing on a work computer. In the US the employer can monitor them all they want.
    - dependenttypes 6y ago
      That does not seem very enforceable. Surely their internal DNS server and routers keep logs for example.
      - groby_b 6y ago
        The use and access of those logs is strictly regulated, and yes, it is enforced. Given that Germany has a much healthier employee representation than the US, it's much more difficult for management to slide in surveillance under the radar. (It's also rather painful if they get caught)
        TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        I wonder if those German workplace freedoms stem from a different legal system of culpability. In some US states, for example, an employee who commits a crime using his employer’s computer has opened up his employer to civil liability. If the employer can show that the employee actively sidestepped the employer’s controls, the employer can make a good case against liability. I wonder if anything like that can happen in Germany. If not, then employee privacy on employer-owned devices makes sense.
nightski 6y ago
HOAs provide some value, in some cases mowing, upkeep, and snow removal. I'd never live in a place with HOA dues/restrictions but for older folks who aren't as physically capable it can be really nice.
- SteveNuts 6y ago
  Yeah but they could also seek that out on their own without an HOA.
  - nightski 6y ago
    Of course! No one is forced to buy into an HOA. For some Americans though I think it's less about giving up their freedoms and more about controlling their neighbors :)
  - kamarg 6y ago
    An HOA that represents more people can get a better deal for the residents than a single home can on their own.
    - com2kid 6y ago
      My HOA has 100 home owners (large town home complex), that type of buying power puts us all in a really good negotiating position. Not to mention they save me all the time I'd spend on arranging various home services, from window washing to roof cleaning to pest removal to repaving driveways. Having an HOA means I worry about what is inside my walls and nothing else.
    - giancarlostoro 6y ago
      Ours definitely does, what I pay for HOA dues is nothing compared to what I'd be paying if they didn't cover my cable, internet + HBO. They bundle it up for every resident. I've seen what others pay for cable, my HOA dues basically are in the ballpark of a pretty basic internet + cable plan (in Florida) now imagine paying double, cause that's what it'd be like if they didn't bundle it. I'm pretty sure our HOA pays like $30 - $50 per house or something for plans that normally cost $100+ so it's definitely severely discounted.
thebradbain 6y ago
I've personally never lived in an HOA (and would refuse to move into one), but the best ones, from what I've heard of through friends and family, are those that are hands-off, namely: 1) Optional -- This puts the onus on the HOA to actually serve its residents, because if enough people dislike it enough to leave (after, say, a few elected residents go on a power trip), it will collapse. 2) Give access to neighborhood amenities (e.g. a pool or clubhouse) 3) Provide neighborhood services (e.g. snow removal or tree trimming, extra trash collection) 4) Are NOT in the business of mandating minutiae such as grass length, paint color, approving remodel plans, handing out fines, etc 5) Are NOT part of a private developer's subdivision (usually goes hand in hand with point 4) so much as a collection of residents which formed organically Basically, I like the idea of HOAs if they're more similar to Los Angeles's Neighborhood Councils than LAPD: Home Edition (although, for so many other reasons, I think LA's Neighborhood Councils are unrepresentative and ineffective at serving the wider community's best interest so much as they benefit exclusively the homeowner's interest). Otherwise, I strongly believe they cause more harm than good -- not to mention they can easily be weaponized against a minority homeowner moving into a majority-white community. Unfortunately, it seems like HOAs as described above are in the vanishing minority.
- dependenttypes 6y ago
  The impressive thing is how HOAs are even legal.
  - kortilla 6y ago
    Why are they impressive in that regard? You’re not forced to purchase a home that has legal obligations.
    - lostapathy 6y ago
      I’m about the same sense that I’m not forced to buy electricity from the local power utility Large parts of the country have very little housing stock, especially newer housing, that isn’t HOA-encumbered.
vorpalhex 6y ago
An HOA is typically formed by people who live in the neighborhood to allow a housing development to represent itself as a single larger entity instead of several smaller ones. Like any human collaboration they can be awesome or terrible. A good HOA can manage resources for ammenities like pools and sports courts, they can help homeowners settle disputes over things like fencing and street parking. Like many volunteer orgs, they're run by those willing to volunteer - which are not usually the most capable at the job. At the end of the day HOAs do get a lot of heat because they often enforce community guidelines on things like mowing your lawn and not painting your garage door to be the nazi flag. Like anything, this is a tradeoff - you may want to run a ham antenna in your backyard and be told you're not allowed.
- derefr 6y ago
  > Like many volunteer orgs, they're run by those willing to volunteer - which are not usually the most capable at the job. Sounds like a good use-case for sortition. Require that people "submit to the potential for being drafted for HOA service" as part of the purchase agreement of the houses built in the development. Then at least the HOA will mostly be composed of harried people who don't want to do the job and want to get it over with as quickly as possible; rather than busybodies with idle hands.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- lostapathy 6y ago
  This isn't, at all, how most HOAs come to be in the US. Not even close. Most HOA's are formed when a developer plats a subdivision. They attach the Covenants and other deed restrictions at the property at that time. They do it so they can maintain control over properties they have already sold until they have sold every property in the development. They want to maintain that control so they can cultivate the image for the neighborhood that maximizes their ability to profit from it. This notion that HOA's get created for altruistic reasons is almost universally false, and should go away. Yes, some HOA's survive in a way that isn't toxic, but even that is really in the eyes of the beholder.
yks 6y ago
I wonder the same about zoning, can’t still wrap my head around it actually. Your neighbor dictating what you can or can’t do with your property is communism.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  I don’t understand. You are ok with a coal plant or wind farm or slaughterhouse being built in a residential neighborhood? That doesn’t happen right now because of zoning.
  - yks 6y ago
    This sounds bad in theory but in practice I am not sure why developers would purchase an expensive city land to build a coal plant there. But okay, let's have residential/industrial zoning. I am not okay with any restrictions inside the residential zone though. If someone wants to build an apartment tower on their single-family house lot, that should be allowed.
derefr 6y ago
The roads in a gated community are "communal property" in about the same sense as hallways are in an apartment building. I suppose you could care if someone is driving an oversized load through the community and so wearing down the roads; or if they're parking a car on the road that's leaking oil. There's also noise and odor/smoke pollution. An HOA is pretty much the only mechanism to ensure that a group of people who don't smoke marijuana can band together to live in marijuana-smoke-free air. (Yes, some people smoke enough potent skunkweed for the stink to carry multiple houses away. No, the police don't care.) Most of the things HOAs care about are indeed idiotic, though. IMHO, the HOA's right to dictate what I'm doing ends where my property begins. The point of the HOA is to control/constrain the externalities you have on other houses/communal properties. If you put a garden gnome on your lawn, there's no externality.
- davidgh 6y ago
  > IMHO, the HOA's right to dictate what I'm doing ends where my property begins. Actually, the HOA’s right to dictate ends with whatever you agreed to by contract when you bought the property. And the HOA can enforce that contract in court, to the point of foreclosing on your home if necessary. So, yeah, when you buy a house in an HOA, read those covenants before you sign. They are usually at the bottom of the 90 page stack of papers when you close.
  - derefr 6y ago
    There are two types of HOAs, right? There's the type where the property is itself "part of" the HOA from the start (because the HOA is built into the legal structure of the development); and then there's the kind where the HOA is just a contract you enter into independently from buying the property–and which, at least in theory, you don't need to enter into. HOAs created out of regular separately-developed SFH dwellings are the latter kind, and what I was referring to in my previous comment. (I kind of forgot that the baked-into-the-property kind existed for a moment. Oops!) In the voluntarist kind of HOA, it really is up for debate where the HOA's right to tell you what to do ends, because ultimately the HOA's power in such a voluntarist contract derives from the other members' willingness to shun you, annoy you, or at most refuse to give you access to communal resources like tennis courts, for failure to comply.
foolinaround 6y ago
Exactly, I actually had to hunt to buy homes I wife would like that do not have a HOA. I guess it is the 'community' aspect. Most homes that do not have HOAs are on busy streets, which are less desirable.
pak9rabid 6y ago
Well in my case, I put up with it because it's where the better schools are for my son, so I choose the lesser of 2 evils.

vkou 6y ago

They aren't happy to be dictated to by housing authorities, it's just something they have to put up with in order to live. The cost of resisting is too high, so people end up picking their battles.

hinkley 6y ago
There is a surprisingly small overlap between walkable neighborhoods and HOAs. These are, in fact, battles you can pick. HOAs feel like living in an apartment but you're also the superintendent.
- TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
  > These are, in fact, battles you can pick In some sections of the US, you can’t buy a single-family home built after 1980 without being part of an HOA. I’m not sure what that has to do with walkable neighborhoods?

bobbob1921 6y ago

most likely the reason some Americans are fine with a HOA is because they do give up some liberties/freedoms for the other benefits that come with a HOA. Such as amenities, security, upkeep of surroundings, and other benefits from the pooling of resources (ie hoa fees). You also have essentially an arbitrator to deal with disputes between neighbors (mainly over appearances). (and generally when homes are constructed together/all at once and on a single large plot of land; their final costs are much less thus you can purchase homes for cheaper). In the case of subdivisions like this, Not all come with an HOA but that is generally the case.

mgkimsal 6y ago
I'm on the fence, so to speak. have lived in subs with and without HOA, and mostly haven't noticed much of a difference. we did get a curt letter once about a trashcan "visible from the street" but they didn't followup when I asked for more info. Depending on what street you're on, it might be visible against the back of the house, but it wasn't visible from the front street, which is all I'd assume we'd care about. One of the values I've found is that it does provide a way to collectively prevent certain eyesores. I don't really want to have someone with 5 cars in the street on in their driveway for extended periods of time. Having a BBQ party? Sure - have 15 cars there for a few hours. Want to collect cars and work on them and leave cars 'in repair' out the street for weeks at a time? I'd rather you didn't, and would rather there be some agreed upon process to resolve those disputes. I do understand some HOAs have people that get power hungry - grass being a 1/4" too tall, etc. That's generally bullshit, and I think there's probably other things going on in those cases where the HOA issue is the public face of some other private neighbor disputes going on. Oh, we did have a letter once or twice about "your lawn is not kept properly". We have a lawn service and they got delayed, then it rained heavy for 3 days, and they were backed up again, and... we had really long grass. It was cut the moment someone could cut it at that point. Nature happens. If the worst that came out of that was a $50 fine or something... meh.
- lostapathy 6y ago
  A lot of HOA's send letters about things they don't have authority over, and people comply anyway. If you push back or ask for clarification, they just drop it so they aren't exposed as lacking authority.

hinkley 6y ago

If memory serves, Adam Ruins Everything thinks suburbia is about racism with a dash of classism. HOAs just seem to ratchet that up another notch.

msla 6y ago
Adam Ruins Everything is inherently contrarian, to the point he doesn't have a show unless he's pouring some poison on something. This influences his "hot takes" to the point I doubt any of them are honest, and I wouldn't put it past him to make shit up.
- mikepurvis 6y ago
  Maybe, but it's hardly a unique take: "Critics of HOAs have attacked them as a “tool for exclusion” that can encourage racial segregation. There’s no available data on the race of the owners of each particular house, so Clarke and Freedman couldn’t test this accusation directly. But they did compare the racial demographics of neighborhoods with or without HOAs, and found that neighborhoods with HOAs tended to be richer and less racially diverse." https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-04/do-homeowners-associations-replace-local-law https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-04/do-homeow...
  - calvinmorrison 6y ago
    > that can encourage racial segregation. Unnamed critics state things "can" do things, while the following sentence shows there is no evidence. Then there is a follow up statement that the racial demographics show that HOAs tend to be richer (A major point of HOAs is to improve and maintain neighborhood values), and less diverse. The second part on its face might seem upsetting but, you'll find largely suburban communities ARE overall less diverse. It would maybe be relevant if they found and stated "HOAs in the same zip codes as non-HOA neighbrhoods of equal value are less diverse", that might show some racial differences, but then not even necessarily bias. In short, bloomberg is a rag and should be used to pickup your favorite pets droppings with. edit: forgot a word

pradn 6y ago

Americans only seem to value freedom from government interference in their lives. There's far more control from schools, universities, workplaces, and HOAs. Many rights like freedom of speech are curtailed in schools and workspaces, for example.

product50 6y ago
You are talking as if somehow non-Americans have access to more liberties across non-government entities in their lives. If anything, Americans treasure and enjoy the most freedoms across the widest gamut of institutions vs. non Americans.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Germans for example have an expectation of privacy at the workplace. It's not allowed to monitor a German employee's web browsing on a work computer. In the US the employer can monitor them all they want.
  - dependenttypes 6y ago
    That does not seem very enforceable. Surely their internal DNS server and routers keep logs for example.
    - groby_b 6y ago
      The use and access of those logs is strictly regulated, and yes, it is enforced. Given that Germany has a much healthier employee representation than the US, it's much more difficult for management to slide in surveillance under the radar. (It's also rather painful if they get caught)
      - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        I wonder if those German workplace freedoms stem from a different legal system of culpability. In some US states, for example, an employee who commits a crime using his employer’s computer has opened up his employer to civil liability. If the employer can show that the employee actively sidestepped the employer’s controls, the employer can make a good case against liability. I wonder if anything like that can happen in Germany. If not, then employee privacy on employer-owned devices makes sense.

nightski 6y ago

HOAs provide some value, in some cases mowing, upkeep, and snow removal. I'd never live in a place with HOA dues/restrictions but for older folks who aren't as physically capable it can be really nice.

SteveNuts 6y ago
Yeah but they could also seek that out on their own without an HOA.
- nightski 6y ago
  Of course! No one is forced to buy into an HOA. For some Americans though I think it's less about giving up their freedoms and more about controlling their neighbors :)
- kamarg 6y ago
  An HOA that represents more people can get a better deal for the residents than a single home can on their own.
  - com2kid 6y ago
    My HOA has 100 home owners (large town home complex), that type of buying power puts us all in a really good negotiating position. Not to mention they save me all the time I'd spend on arranging various home services, from window washing to roof cleaning to pest removal to repaving driveways. Having an HOA means I worry about what is inside my walls and nothing else.
  - giancarlostoro 6y ago
    Ours definitely does, what I pay for HOA dues is nothing compared to what I'd be paying if they didn't cover my cable, internet + HBO. They bundle it up for every resident. I've seen what others pay for cable, my HOA dues basically are in the ballpark of a pretty basic internet + cable plan (in Florida) now imagine paying double, cause that's what it'd be like if they didn't bundle it. I'm pretty sure our HOA pays like $30 - $50 per house or something for plans that normally cost $100+ so it's definitely severely discounted.

thebradbain 6y ago

I've personally never lived in an HOA (and would refuse to move into one), but the best ones, from what I've heard of through friends and family, are those that are hands-off, namely: 1) Optional -- This puts the onus on the HOA to actually serve its residents, because if enough people dislike it enough to leave (after, say, a few elected residents go on a power trip), it will collapse. 2) Give access to neighborhood amenities (e.g. a pool or clubhouse) 3) Provide neighborhood services (e.g. snow removal or tree trimming, extra trash collection) 4) Are NOT in the business of mandating minutiae such as grass length, paint color, approving remodel plans, handing out fines, etc 5) Are NOT part of a private developer's subdivision (usually goes hand in hand with point 4) so much as a collection of residents which formed organically Basically, I like the idea of HOAs if they're more similar to Los Angeles's Neighborhood Councils than LAPD: Home Edition (although, for so many other reasons, I think LA's Neighborhood Councils are unrepresentative and ineffective at serving the wider community's best interest so much as they benefit exclusively the homeowner's interest). Otherwise, I strongly believe they cause more harm than good -- not to mention they can easily be weaponized against a minority homeowner moving into a majority-white community. Unfortunately, it seems like HOAs as described above are in the vanishing minority.

dependenttypes 6y ago
The impressive thing is how HOAs are even legal.
- kortilla 6y ago
  Why are they impressive in that regard? You’re not forced to purchase a home that has legal obligations.
  - lostapathy 6y ago
    I’m about the same sense that I’m not forced to buy electricity from the local power utility Large parts of the country have very little housing stock, especially newer housing, that isn’t HOA-encumbered.

vorpalhex 6y ago

An HOA is typically formed by people who live in the neighborhood to allow a housing development to represent itself as a single larger entity instead of several smaller ones. Like any human collaboration they can be awesome or terrible. A good HOA can manage resources for ammenities like pools and sports courts, they can help homeowners settle disputes over things like fencing and street parking. Like many volunteer orgs, they're run by those willing to volunteer - which are not usually the most capable at the job. At the end of the day HOAs do get a lot of heat because they often enforce community guidelines on things like mowing your lawn and not painting your garage door to be the nazi flag. Like anything, this is a tradeoff - you may want to run a ham antenna in your backyard and be told you're not allowed.

derefr 6y ago
> Like many volunteer orgs, they're run by those willing to volunteer - which are not usually the most capable at the job. Sounds like a good use-case for sortition. Require that people "submit to the potential for being drafted for HOA service" as part of the purchase agreement of the houses built in the development. Then at least the HOA will mostly be composed of harried people who don't want to do the job and want to get it over with as quickly as possible; rather than busybodies with idle hands.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
lostapathy 6y ago
This isn't, at all, how most HOAs come to be in the US. Not even close. Most HOA's are formed when a developer plats a subdivision. They attach the Covenants and other deed restrictions at the property at that time. They do it so they can maintain control over properties they have already sold until they have sold every property in the development. They want to maintain that control so they can cultivate the image for the neighborhood that maximizes their ability to profit from it. This notion that HOA's get created for altruistic reasons is almost universally false, and should go away. Yes, some HOA's survive in a way that isn't toxic, but even that is really in the eyes of the beholder.

yks 6y ago

I wonder the same about zoning, can’t still wrap my head around it actually. Your neighbor dictating what you can or can’t do with your property is communism.

TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
I don’t understand. You are ok with a coal plant or wind farm or slaughterhouse being built in a residential neighborhood? That doesn’t happen right now because of zoning.
- yks 6y ago
  This sounds bad in theory but in practice I am not sure why developers would purchase an expensive city land to build a coal plant there. But okay, let's have residential/industrial zoning. I am not okay with any restrictions inside the residential zone though. If someone wants to build an apartment tower on their single-family house lot, that should be allowed.

derefr 6y ago

The roads in a gated community are "communal property" in about the same sense as hallways are in an apartment building. I suppose you could care if someone is driving an oversized load through the community and so wearing down the roads; or if they're parking a car on the road that's leaking oil. There's also noise and odor/smoke pollution. An HOA is pretty much the only mechanism to ensure that a group of people who don't smoke marijuana can band together to live in marijuana-smoke-free air. (Yes, some people smoke enough potent skunkweed for the stink to carry multiple houses away. No, the police don't care.) Most of the things HOAs care about are indeed idiotic, though. IMHO, the HOA's right to dictate what I'm doing ends where my property begins. The point of the HOA is to control/constrain the externalities you have on other houses/communal properties. If you put a garden gnome on your lawn, there's no externality.

davidgh 6y ago
> IMHO, the HOA's right to dictate what I'm doing ends where my property begins. Actually, the HOA’s right to dictate ends with whatever you agreed to by contract when you bought the property. And the HOA can enforce that contract in court, to the point of foreclosing on your home if necessary. So, yeah, when you buy a house in an HOA, read those covenants before you sign. They are usually at the bottom of the 90 page stack of papers when you close.
- derefr 6y ago
  There are two types of HOAs, right? There's the type where the property is itself "part of" the HOA from the start (because the HOA is built into the legal structure of the development); and then there's the kind where the HOA is just a contract you enter into independently from buying the property–and which, at least in theory, you don't need to enter into. HOAs created out of regular separately-developed SFH dwellings are the latter kind, and what I was referring to in my previous comment. (I kind of forgot that the baked-into-the-property kind existed for a moment. Oops!) In the voluntarist kind of HOA, it really is up for debate where the HOA's right to tell you what to do ends, because ultimately the HOA's power in such a voluntarist contract derives from the other members' willingness to shun you, annoy you, or at most refuse to give you access to communal resources like tennis courts, for failure to comply.

foolinaround 6y ago

Exactly, I actually had to hunt to buy homes I wife would like that do not have a HOA. I guess it is the 'community' aspect. Most homes that do not have HOAs are on busy streets, which are less desirable.

pak9rabid 6y ago

Well in my case, I put up with it because it's where the better schools are for my son, so I choose the lesser of 2 evils.