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When the Homeowners Association Comes for Your Home
- Simulacra 3y agohttps://archive.ph/yiYTG https://archive.ph/yiYTG
- thedigitalone 3y agoThese links do not work for many, they just result in an endless CAPTCHA. Try this one: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/neBsg https://ghostarchive.org/archive/neBsg
- Simulacra 3y agoThat's probably your VPN, try it without next time.
- djohnston 3y agoThat’s pretty insane. If someone foreclosed on my home when I hadn’t missed a payment, next month’s mortgage would go to a rifle.
- op00to 3y agoDo the perpetrators of this cheap think this through?
- yodon 3y agoDeciding to spend the next ten years to life in prison is not usually as good a way to respond to adversity as it sounds in the abstract.
- djohnston 3y agoHow many mass shootings of HOA boards and law offices do you think it would take to effect change?
- isk517 3y agoI suspect just one, of course the changes will be focused on providing more security for HOA boards.
- cm2012 3y agoEh, anyone can get away with one major crime, it's trying to do more than one which gets you.
- op00to 3y agoI feel like I would immediately want to burn the house down. Illegal and the wrong move, but fuck that with a flamethrower. More realistically I’d spend my last Penny on billboards saying houses can be stolen in this neighborhood.
- ragestorm 3y agoInsane that they have the power to foreclose on a primary residence. Wouldn't a lien on the house suffice?
- saulpw 3y agoYeah but then they could keep living there with that godawful color for the garage door, and the oil stain on the driveway.
- RajT88 3y agoI used to sit on the board of the HOA in my previous condo building. Liens are Plan A generally. Something is fishy with this HOA. I suspect they may have something against this guy specifically and want him gone from the neighborhood. That reason could be good (running a brothel out of his house or something crazy), or very bad (they don't want Latinos in the neighborhood). Oh look, there's something later in the article about it: > Patterson, who is now working with residents to reclaim their homes, says that most of the Green Valley Ranchers he’s met who have been foreclosed upon recently are working-class homeowners of color, many of whom speak English as a second language.
- RajT88 3y agoOh and for good measure, thinking back on my time on the HOA board: - Most of the board were immigrants of some stripe, particularly Latino, but also Eastern European and Indian. - The one tenant we had which we considered foreclosure for was someone who was himself Latino. The issue was he refused to pay the HOA fees - ever - not one cent since he bought the home a few years before. He also had a huge number of people living there (which was by itself not a problem for anyone), but there was only 1 water meter so the water bill was divided among the building based on square footage and his unit made up around half the building's water bill (!) based on historical billing records. - The foreclosure proceedings were intended as leverage to get him to start paying his overdue HOA fees. Nobody wanted to actually turn the guy out on the street. It worked, and he started paying, and even though his unit still (at the time I sold my unit) was using up more water than the rest and people were footing the bill for it, he was at least paying HOA fees and everyone was grudgingly fine with it. - I don't think we ever progressed to filing the paperwork for the foreclosure.
- saulpw 3y agoThe HOA sold a home worth over $500k (almost paid off) for $85k at auction, to recover $6k of fines. Their response is that their "foreclosure rate represents less than 1% of their population". Too bad for those people. Unbelievable.
- giantg2 3y agoI mean, HOA is just another level of government. Same thing happens with sheriff auctions to recover unpaid taxes.
- gabereiser 3y agoIt absolutely is NOT. The issue is when you buy a home in an HOA, you sign a contract with that HOA (outlining these rules and regulations) that is enforced in courts (it’s a signed contract). They are no better than collection agencies, not government agencies. They may use the same methods as backwater sheriffs do to bolster their pay but they are not, in any way shape or form, affiliated with any government agency.
- elmerfud 3y agoYou don't just sign a contract with the HOA because most HOAs are not voluntary. There are some voluntary HOAs because they provide community amenities and you get access to those amenities when you join the HOA and possibly agree to some other restrictive covenants as well. Most HOAs you never even have to sign a contract it is written into the deed of your property that you are required to be a part of the HOA. In order to own the property you automatically are a member of the HOA and subject to all of it regulations.
- gabereiser 3y agoThe contract is part of closing. Like you said, it’s part of the deed. These cases the community was built by builders for the HOA to manage. In this case, the deed you sign for your house is the contract for HOA. This isn’t Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac, or FHSA, or any government sponsored thing. It’s pure greed and privilege.
- bluefirebrand 3y agoHOAs should be illegal. :)
- latchkey 3y agoWhat would you replace it with? I'm in a condo and while the HOA has been a pain in the ass, I don't see who else is going to get shit done in a communal way. I guess you could say that condo's shouldn't exist, but this is the only way I could afford to live in the neighborhood that I do. We could keep going down the rabbit hole of affordable housing... but it seems like we should stick to a bit of reality here.
- r00fus 3y agoNo, just regulated. The real-estate agent in the article had it right: real-estate is regulated way more than HOAs which have almost no regulation. When viewed in a lens of their history (ie, as a means of segregation and exclusion) it would make sense why they were "off limits" to legislators. However, I think it could be a popular thing to regulate them now - most homeowners hate their HOA random fees and correction requirements. And you have examples like the Revolt at the Villages [1] where HOAs take money from one group of residents to fund expansion elsewhere. [1] https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/ron-desantis-florida-villages-oren-miller/ https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/ron-desantis-florida-vil...
- elmerfud 3y agoIt amazes me that people don't know, and never gets taught, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. All of this is strongly embedded in historical racism and it has continued forward to this day although not strictly race-based but there are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races. As with anything when it became impossible to enforce a race-based segregation they simply do it in other ways. HOAs should be abolished in my opinion or their power greatly curtailed and deed restrictions largely removed. Especially given that many HOAs or at least the ones we hear about a lot are quite abusive with the power that they have and they are selectively abusive in that power. Likable neighbors that have the same minor offenses never get fined for them but undesirable neighbors get harassed constantly. One thing to fix the abusive HOAs would be to have it so that if covenants are not enforced equally they cannot be enforced to anyone. Even in the situation where they rely on people reporting violations they can only accept the report if they do a complete audit of all properties to ensure the same violation does not exist elsewhere. If it does they must cite everyone equally even not citing one person means that all the citations are invalid. This would get rid of the buddy system that HOA is used to abuse undesirable people in their neighborhood.
- cafard 3y agoFor fifteen years, I lived in a development with an HOA. It was at least as diverse as where I lived before and since. And the HOA was the least of our problems: cheap and unsound construction was the main one.
- oooyay 3y agoI similarly despise HOAs. I've never actually been threatened by an HOA and most people I know that have an HOA have relatively benign ones, but the concept and the concentration of power outside of official government is frightening to say the least. In contrast, my current neighborhood does not have an HOA but we do have a "neighborhood association" that's entirely voluntary and mostly exists to support a collection of streets with activities, clean up drives, etc.
- drewg123 3y agoI had a house in the suburbs with my ex-wife, in a neighborhood with an unreasonable HOA. We had to replace a leaky roof, and we had to wait 2 weeks for the "architecture committee" to approve our replacing our roof with one of the exact same color and style (and we had to wait because starting without approval would have been a violation). What amazed me was that the neighborhood was full of tea-party conservatives with "Don't tread on me" bumper-stickers, who were always complaining about government overreach. Yet they ceded the right to even begin repairs on their own house to a bunch of busybodies. I vowed to avoid HOAs after that experience (except when they are unavoidable, like when owning a townhome).
- plagiarist 3y agoIt's okay to be tread upon if it is a private enterprise, especially if it is a misstep tread from boots actively stomping someone they don't like.
- drewg123 3y agoThe irony is that while the HOA was great at delaying needed repairs for cosmetic reasons, they were terrible at keeping out the "undesirables" my ex-neighbors constantly lived in fear of. Somebody managed to open a half-way house for addiction recovery just down the street from me, and my neighbors were very upset. I think they finally used a regulation preventing more than a handful of unrelated people living together and managed to get the halfway house closed months later.
- hprotagonist 3y agoover my dead body will i put up with a HOA. the level of yankee spite i have on this particular thing is really quite enormous.
- cm2012 3y agoSame, it was non negotiable for me when home buying.
- morkalork 3y agoSo instead of increased taxation and a municipal government with more powers (mine can fine for unkempt lawns etc), Americans say no, we want freedom and small government. Then you invent HOAs to remove those same freedoms, levy fees instead of taxes, provide services that really should be handled by the city, and are more oppressive? I just don't understand.
- rcpt 3y agoProperty taxes break everyone's brain. Owners will support any alternative no matter how ridiculous.
- Clubber 3y agoThe reason people like them, I've heard, is they help keep the value of your property high. I prefer doing what I want with my property, so I won't buy a property in a HOA. >Americans That's quite a large and diverse demographic to make generalizations with. >Then you invent HOAs to remove those same freedoms, levy fees instead of taxes, provide services that really should be handled by the city, and are more oppressive? I just don't understand. I can live in that same city without an HOA. I can't live in that same city without the high taxation and oppressive government. It's about options, I suspect.
- morkalork 3y agoI don't completely buy the property value argument. Cities like them being high too because it means more tax revenue and they're not afraid of making bylaws to enforce it. So for example, when one gets a building permit to an exterior renovation, the city will calculate the square footage of siding vs brick before and after, with the requirement that the amount of brick doesn't decrease. Because any less lowers the property value.
- Clubber 3y agoNot all cities are like that. The one I'm in isn't. There are also laws in many cities where they can't reappraise the tax value of the home without a significant renovation. This is to keep elderly people in their homes who are on a fixed income. It's a lot more complicated than, "tax good," but yes, that's the gist.
- giantg2 3y agoWhere there's a will, there's a ham radio tower waiting for an HOA.
- socrates137 3y agoThis isn’t the first time I’ve heard of something like this. I learned some disturbing things about HOAs while living in one. Some people think I’m strange or dramatic, but I refuse to ever live in one again. I realize not everyone has that luxury - the article mentioned the “sun belt” states, but it was exceedingly difficult to find a home outside of an HOA in the Midwest, too. If you don’t pay my taxes or my mortgage, you get no say on what color I can paint my shudders. And the only ones who can kick me out are the bank (until I’m done paying) or Uncle Sam, not the bored authoritarian neighbor down the road who doesn’t like that I don’t have an immaculate yard or doesn’t approve of my mailbox. So many of us Americans pretend to care about property and liberty until suddenly it possibly puts a small dent in own your property’s value.
- Kalium 3y agoI wouldn't think a person would struggle to find a HOA-free house in the midwest. If you were to pick a random house on the market in a random neighborhood in Detroit or Chicago, or Kansas City, odds are you wouldn't pick one in an HOA. You might struggle if you're looking to buy a new house in a brand new subdivision.
- toomuchtodo 3y agoPreowned homes are unaffordable at the moment (lack of supply, interest rates, buyers with low interest rate mortgages who don’t want to move), leaving new homes in HOAs the only option for all but the most well heeled buyer. (have also had poor experiences with HOAs and refuse to live in one)
- fortran77 3y agoMany towns, everywhere, mandate HOAs for every new development. No doubt the city council is getting some kickbacks.
- anon291 3y agoAs a staunch conservative, I have no idea why my fellow conservatives are into HOAs. They are a major violation of property rights.
- wccrawford 3y ago> “Our firm — most other firms that I'm aware of — they don't go straight to foreclosure,” he said. “It’s about recovering the funds that were expended, not trying to put an owner out of their house.” Right... So they only care about money, not people. That says it all. Because this is absolutely all about putting someone out of their house.
- jupp0r 3y agoHOAs are just pure evil. I don't understand how anybody would voluntarily subject themselves to being terrorized by them. I'm currently renting a house in one and I promised myself to never buy anything in one.
- jupp0r 3y agoCare to elaborate why this gets downvoted?
- yodon 3y ago> HOAs are just pure evil > Care to elaborate why this gets downvoted? There may be more people living in HOAs who don't have issues with their HOA than you anticipate. Such a person might well view the statement "HOAs are just pure evil" as incorrect, even if they are aware that HOAs can be a problem. By way of example, I watched an HOA, as a community, successfully resolve a complex and potentially expensive legal matter involving multiple residents in a way that was beneficial to all parties. Part of this resolution involved the community as a whole, under the bylaws, amending the bylaws to address a situation the original drafters should have anticipated but did not. One side effect of the amendment was to reduce the demands the HOA itself could make of homeowners, lowering what were already quite reasonable limits. "HOAs can be evil" and "HOAs can have over-reaching clauses" are different statements than "HOAs are just pure evil".
- jupp0r 3y agoThe concept of HOA is pure evil, not every single instance of it. Even if yours is fine right now, this can change next year when other people move in and take the whole thing over in order to make your life miserable.
- vel0city 3y agoThis logic essentially extends into any form of government structure though. Sure, your city council is fine right now, this can change next year when there's another election. Sure, your state is fine right now, this can change next election. Sure, your country is fine right now, this can change...
- rightbyte 3y agoSeems like the members put way to much power into the HOA?
- mistrial9 3y agothe outrage here is vigorous and all, but does anyone consider reading the contract that you sign? Unfair legal agreements are as old as written trade. Do all the HOA members have the same contract? can you verify that somehow? How about any history of past legal matters with that HOA, public record somewhere? not at all defending abusive HOA here, not at all.. AND you sign something and you need to know what is in there, or do not sign until you do..
- rightbyte 3y agoYe it is strange. I am part of a HOA. Six houses, and all we do is maintain the fresh water pump, the gravel road, one lamp post, and we have one party a year. It would be absurd if we somehow agreed to let the HOA set rules for whatever. Oh. Any change to the by-law need to be unanimous. The "it wont happen to me" mentality is poisonous. Read the rules. If they are absurd, the HOA is run by insane people.
- zeta0134 3y agoStupid question I suppose: what's stopping the family from turning right back around and suing the HOA for the now presumably lost value of the home, to the tune of 100% of the mortgage payments made minus the supposedly owed fees?
- plagiarist 3y agoPresumably the legally-binding HOA agreement they entered when buying the home.
- SebJansen 3y agoJohn Oliver made an episode on it: https://youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os https://youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os
- kasey_junk 3y agoConversations about HOA always focus on the nit picky rule enforcement components of them (rightly because they are dumb). But a bigger component of HOA financing is maintaining common infrastructure. The pool, party house, signage, etc. Those actually require upkeep. If the HOA doesn’t have a recourse to collect those obligations the cost of that upkeep falls unfairly on the people paying their bills. I’m all for strict regulations on notification and making foreclosure difficult but if you sign up for an HOA it seems like you ought to understand and comply with your obligations and the HOA should have some teeth to collect.
- drewg123 3y agoMy first house was in a neighborhood where the builder set up an HOA mainly to care for the clubhouse/pool. Before I moved in, the neighborhood voted to disband the HOA and sell the pool. I think it was sold to a private entity.. its been a while. We didn't have kids and never went to the pool, so I'm fuzzy on who owned it. I loved that neighborhood. All of the neighbors became friends. It was the closest nit neighborhood I've ever lived in, aside from my college dorm. Property values did not suffer when the guy across the street and one over painted his house pink, nor did they suffer when my neighbor's parents visited in their RV and parked in front of his home for 2 weeks every summer.
- Ekaros 3y agoAs someone who would never want to use such shared infra. I would be pretty angry having to pay for it. Though I do suppose the saunas and washing room in place I live isn't fully covered by fees, they aren't that high anyway.
- soupfordummies 3y agoMy current HOA is raising dues AND charging a special assessments because they need money so desparately (despite having nearly half a million bucks). Despite that, the head tyrant in charge just pushed through an ultra-low priority parking lot painting project. Not like parking lot was bad, it just bothered him I guess. More often than not (anecdotally of course) they're just Napoleonic power trips for the select few that are bored and no-life-having enough to devote their whole lives to it.
- aidenn0 3y agoI have been on the flip side of this when I lived in a condo (the condo association was legally an HOA, and I was on the board for one year). Literally the only legal lever the HOA has over improper use of shared spaces is fines and, if the fines are not paid, the only way to recoup them is via a lien. Meanwhile other members of the HOA are filing lawsuits against the HOA for not sufficiently enforcing the rules. I'm just glad I can afford to not live in an HOA (of course if you can afford that, you probably also can keep up on your payments and not have a lien taken out).
- sowbug 3y ago"Later [the putative current owner] offered to sell her the house back, [the putative former owner] said, for what he paid for it: around $25,000." If the buyer paid $25K for a free-and-clear title (i.e., the bank took the auction proceeds in lieu of the loan balance), then the former owner should take that deal, because it means her mortgage is now gone! (The article is unclear which kind of foreclosure this was -- did the buyer take title and assume outstanding debt? Or did the bank just wash its hands of the whole thing when it unloaded the property at auction? The low sales price suggests it's the former, rather than the latter. But stranger things have happened.)
- Simulacra 3y agoUnfortunately, that is not the case. If you lose your home in foreclosure, you are still liable for the mortgage. They could buy the home back for $25,000, but they are still going to have to pay on that mortgage that they took out.
- sowbug 3y agoThat actually depends on the jurisdiction and the specific loan terms! For example, in California, mortgages are generally non-recourse, which means that the lender can take back the collateral (the house) upon default, but can't go after the borrower's remaining assets or property to make up any remaining deficit after liquidating the house. That said, in this case you're correct: the article's subjects live in Colorado, which does not allow non-recourse mortgages.
- topkai22 3y agoSummary of my proposals for HOA regulation for single family homes and townhomes: 1) Every 4 years HOAs must conduct a renewal vote. At least 40% of members must actively vote to extend the CC&Rs (meaning that at least 40% of homeowners must a cast a vote in favor of continuing the HOA. Not voting is effectively a no-vote). Upon a vote resulting in the dissolution of the HOA and/or CC&Rs, the HOA executive board shall conduct a second vote 6 months from that date to validate the result under the same conditions. If an entity owns or controls more than 1 property, they shall be restricted to a single vote (meaning that property developers or multi-property owners only get one vote.) 1a) If HOA vote fails, it will continue for one year and conduct another vote. If that fails, the HOA will be dissolved. If the HOA owns community property, it will convert into a property maintenance organization and be able to collect funds solely to fund the maintenance of community property. It will not be able to levy fines or restrict individual properties in anymore. 1b) PMOs may re-adopt a new set of CC&Rs. To do so, a petition must collect the signatures of 60% of property owners within a 6 month period. They PMO must then notify all property owners of an election. 75% of property owners must agree to reformation of CC&Rs. 2) HOAs and property maintenance organizations (PMO) may not begin foreclosure proceedings on a property until the amount owed is at least 1/5 of the value assessed by the county. HOAs must follow the same procedures as the county government for foreclosure, with additional requirements listed below. 3) HOAs and PMOs must collect phone and email information for property owners, unless the property owners opt out. The HOA must remind property owners annually to update their contact information. 4) Notices of delinquency must be sent to all available contacts. 5) If properties are in arrears by more than 3 months the HOA/PMO must post notice on the property physically (not just mail). After 1 more month, and only if necessary for the maintenance of community property, the HOA/PMO may seek and be granted a tax lien to borrow against on the delinquent accounts. Notices must continue to be sent to all available contact mechanisms and posted on the property monthly 6) The HOA/PMO shall have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of both the HOA/PMO and the individual delinquent member. In the case of a foreclosure, they must seek the highest price possible, not just enough to cover the delinquency.