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I am a BOD and Officer in a HOA. This will be messy - we would have to sell all of our common amenities, parking lots, overflow parking lots, playgrounds, gym,

I am a BOD and Officer in a HOA. This will be messy - we would have to sell all of our common amenities, parking lots, overflow parking lots, playgrounds, gym, pools etc to the government or a private company if this happens. County would have to take over maintenance of our platted common property and property that we mow (and get paid for) by the County. County would have to step up enforcement of parking on street rules, trespassing on what would become County property. What do we do with the $500k we have the operating funds and reserves collected over the past 40 years? County would have to find another place to do their voting as we have offered our clubhouse for years. We would have to fire our LCAM. County would have to maintain some expensive drainage and ponds that our HOA manages. Fountains. Weir replacement alone is $250k that we keep up. Yes, reform HOA laws but abolishing them I am not sure is the right thing to do. It would create such a massive mess and requirement for Counties to maintain things that they don’t currently manage. It may lead to these areas to incorporate because then you would end up with City based code enforcement. HOA reserve funds (not Condo) needs to be relooked at. We have healthy reserves because we have been keeping on top of reserve studies. Be careful what you ask for is all I am saying.

gwbas1c 1y ago
> What do we do with the $500k we have the operating funds and reserves collected over the past 40 years? Uhm, return it to the property owners? The real pattern is that HOAs have been abusing their power; or in other cases are required because municipalities don't want to do their job. As a result the lawmakers will, unfortunately, overcorrect.
- firesteelrain 1y ago
  What property owners is my point? Many are long gone and the (now) $175 a quarter we charge goes towards the common amenities. What would happen is we would have to surrender those funds to the State. So this would lead to a huge windfall for the State. States have rules for what happens when a HOA dissolves. That means the money goes right to the State including the sale of the common property.
  - RandomBacon 1y ago
    Who are you charging $175?
    - firesteelrain 1y ago
      Existing, current homeowners every quarter
    - dgrin91 1y ago
      I think what GP is saying is that if I was a homeowner for 30 years, paid HOA fees all those years, then last year sold to someone else, who gets the HOA reimbursement then? I paid thousands over years and would presumably get nothing, while some other guy who just moved in all of a sudden gets a big check? That seems unfair.
      - Ekaros 1y ago
        Well any funds in HOA is part of the property. Could have reported it when selling and increase price correspondingly or at least some fraction.
        dgrin91 1y ago
        Hoa funds practically never get redistributed back to owners. I've never heard of such a case. We are only talking about it here because a legislature is talking about changing something state wide (and realistically this won't happen anyways). So there is no realistic scenario where hoa reserves factor into home price
        wat10000 1y ago
        Reserves are money available for HOA expenses which would otherwise require new money from the owners. For that to factor into home prices, you just need buyers and sellers to be aware of this and what it means for their wallet in the future. Which may not be the norm since people are often clueless, but it doesn't seem completely absurd.
propter_hoc 1y ago
I upvoted you despite entirely disagreeing with your premise. Yes - negotiate with the county to take over management of the playgrounds and lawn mowing. Yes - make the clubhouse and parking lots open, fee-based and voluntary, and controlled by a private corporation rather than an imposed, taxed service. Yes - return the excess money to the current homeowners, or use some of it to effectuate these conversions. Honestly, the amount of money you have in reserve, plus the list of amenities you list, makes it sound like the HOA has been sitting on a spigot of endless cash for a very long time and finding nice-to-have things to justify the continued fees.
- firesteelrain 1y ago
  We have a reserve study completed by a professional company that requires us to hold this much. For example, we are replacing two AC units for $50k total. Pool needs to be resurfaced for $100k. We have roof repairs that will need to be done eventually, gym equipment replacements, various beautification repairs, weir repair ($250k), fish guards/blockers, pond maintenance etc
  - propter_hoc 1y ago
    Sure - I understand these roofing, HVAC and landscaping expenses are associated to the common amenities? So if you spin out the clubhouse into a country club that members can opt to join, you can allocate the clubhouse an appropriate amount of cash. When you negotiate with the county to take over management of the grounds including the pond, you can negotiate to give them some of the reserve money for the future pond fixes. I understand it wouldn't be easy to change all these management responsibilities, but in principle everything the HOA does can be devolved to either voluntary associations, or to public authorities (as happens in most of the rest of the world). Unlike a condo association, it's not a completely unimaginable shift what this lawmaker is proposing.
    - firesteelrain 1y ago
      Right agree and I think I have tried to articulate that here and below. Florida law says what to do when HOAs are dissolved. Point is it will be extremely messy to suddenly dissolve hundreds or thousands of HOAs. Windfall for the State too because the money by default needs to go somewhere and it won’t go back to the homeowners (which ones btw current or past, law doesn’t speak to it). So it goes to the State based on the sale of the land and properties. I don’t think homeowners will be universally pleased with this.
therealpygon 1y ago
I don’t believe this to be entirely the case, having served as President of a HOA for 10 years. HOAs are generally incorporated and hold said property. Should the Mandatory HOA be banned, the corporation could simply switch to private membership and offer access to amenities to those outside the community. If the residents don’t want that, they’d need to pay up. Condos, however, likely have different needs because of shared construction, but I’m certain a solution for that could be found. I absolutely HATE living in an HOA for private property reasons; I don’t enjoy being told what I can do on and to my own private property and being bound by decisions other people make about my own private property. Things like being forced to use a specific (terrible) trash service and specific lawn care company (charged at 2x what I pay for lawncare with 4x the property), which are things friends complain about in nearby communities. However, I also fully understand their value for communal property/amenities and see nothing wrong with maintaining mandatory membership for those features. The biggest problem is that those costs continue to be inflated in the HOAs around us, and now our own after I stepped down. For many of them it is the unnecessary improvements or using a board members cousin contractor, or a member, who charges 1.5x while providing .5x the value. That, or it gets turned over to a management company that takes a 30% cut and milks the budget with their own in-house contractors doing a similar overcharge/underperform thing.
- firesteelrain 1y ago
  Check your governing documents. I just checked mine and it says that the assets all become public assets. Not private.
  - therealpygon 1y ago
    Upon what? The “dissolution” of the HOA? Assuming so which is common for an HOA, it is generally its own legal entity which is separate from the mandatory membership component. What the legislator wants, and what can be done legally are likely to be two separate things. They could certainly repeal laws that allow for mandatory membership to be durable upon sale, and provide support for HOA bylaw enforcement, but a law “abolishing” HOAs entirely would likely be struck down a day later. That Likely runs afoul of the first amendment among other things. It would be like saying people can’t form private political groups or enter into private contracts; nonsense, as HOAs are often private non-profit corporations.

gwbas1c 1y ago

> What do we do with the $500k we have the operating funds and reserves collected over the past 40 years? Uhm, return it to the property owners? The real pattern is that HOAs have been abusing their power; or in other cases are required because municipalities don't want to do their job. As a result the lawmakers will, unfortunately, overcorrect.

firesteelrain 1y ago
What property owners is my point? Many are long gone and the (now) $175 a quarter we charge goes towards the common amenities. What would happen is we would have to surrender those funds to the State. So this would lead to a huge windfall for the State. States have rules for what happens when a HOA dissolves. That means the money goes right to the State including the sale of the common property.
- RandomBacon 1y ago
  Who are you charging $175?
  - firesteelrain 1y ago
    Existing, current homeowners every quarter
  - dgrin91 1y ago
    I think what GP is saying is that if I was a homeowner for 30 years, paid HOA fees all those years, then last year sold to someone else, who gets the HOA reimbursement then? I paid thousands over years and would presumably get nothing, while some other guy who just moved in all of a sudden gets a big check? That seems unfair.
    - Ekaros 1y ago
      Well any funds in HOA is part of the property. Could have reported it when selling and increase price correspondingly or at least some fraction.
      - dgrin91 1y ago
        Hoa funds practically never get redistributed back to owners. I've never heard of such a case. We are only talking about it here because a legislature is talking about changing something state wide (and realistically this won't happen anyways). So there is no realistic scenario where hoa reserves factor into home price
        wat10000 1y ago
        Reserves are money available for HOA expenses which would otherwise require new money from the owners. For that to factor into home prices, you just need buyers and sellers to be aware of this and what it means for their wallet in the future. Which may not be the norm since people are often clueless, but it doesn't seem completely absurd.

propter_hoc 1y ago

I upvoted you despite entirely disagreeing with your premise. Yes - negotiate with the county to take over management of the playgrounds and lawn mowing. Yes - make the clubhouse and parking lots open, fee-based and voluntary, and controlled by a private corporation rather than an imposed, taxed service. Yes - return the excess money to the current homeowners, or use some of it to effectuate these conversions. Honestly, the amount of money you have in reserve, plus the list of amenities you list, makes it sound like the HOA has been sitting on a spigot of endless cash for a very long time and finding nice-to-have things to justify the continued fees.

firesteelrain 1y ago
We have a reserve study completed by a professional company that requires us to hold this much. For example, we are replacing two AC units for $50k total. Pool needs to be resurfaced for $100k. We have roof repairs that will need to be done eventually, gym equipment replacements, various beautification repairs, weir repair ($250k), fish guards/blockers, pond maintenance etc
- propter_hoc 1y ago
  Sure - I understand these roofing, HVAC and landscaping expenses are associated to the common amenities? So if you spin out the clubhouse into a country club that members can opt to join, you can allocate the clubhouse an appropriate amount of cash. When you negotiate with the county to take over management of the grounds including the pond, you can negotiate to give them some of the reserve money for the future pond fixes. I understand it wouldn't be easy to change all these management responsibilities, but in principle everything the HOA does can be devolved to either voluntary associations, or to public authorities (as happens in most of the rest of the world). Unlike a condo association, it's not a completely unimaginable shift what this lawmaker is proposing.
  - firesteelrain 1y ago
    Right agree and I think I have tried to articulate that here and below. Florida law says what to do when HOAs are dissolved. Point is it will be extremely messy to suddenly dissolve hundreds or thousands of HOAs. Windfall for the State too because the money by default needs to go somewhere and it won’t go back to the homeowners (which ones btw current or past, law doesn’t speak to it). So it goes to the State based on the sale of the land and properties. I don’t think homeowners will be universally pleased with this.

therealpygon 1y ago

I don’t believe this to be entirely the case, having served as President of a HOA for 10 years. HOAs are generally incorporated and hold said property. Should the Mandatory HOA be banned, the corporation could simply switch to private membership and offer access to amenities to those outside the community. If the residents don’t want that, they’d need to pay up. Condos, however, likely have different needs because of shared construction, but I’m certain a solution for that could be found. I absolutely HATE living in an HOA for private property reasons; I don’t enjoy being told what I can do on and to my own private property and being bound by decisions other people make about my own private property. Things like being forced to use a specific (terrible) trash service and specific lawn care company (charged at 2x what I pay for lawncare with 4x the property), which are things friends complain about in nearby communities. However, I also fully understand their value for communal property/amenities and see nothing wrong with maintaining mandatory membership for those features. The biggest problem is that those costs continue to be inflated in the HOAs around us, and now our own after I stepped down. For many of them it is the unnecessary improvements or using a board members cousin contractor, or a member, who charges 1.5x while providing .5x the value. That, or it gets turned over to a management company that takes a 30% cut and milks the budget with their own in-house contractors doing a similar overcharge/underperform thing.

firesteelrain 1y ago
Check your governing documents. I just checked mine and it says that the assets all become public assets. Not private.
- therealpygon 1y ago
  Upon what? The “dissolution” of the HOA? Assuming so which is common for an HOA, it is generally its own legal entity which is separate from the mandatory membership component. What the legislator wants, and what can be done legally are likely to be two separate things. They could certainly repeal laws that allow for mandatory membership to be durable upon sale, and provide support for HOA bylaw enforcement, but a law “abolishing” HOAs entirely would likely be struck down a day later. That Likely runs afoul of the first amendment among other things. It would be like saying people can’t form private political groups or enter into private contracts; nonsense, as HOAs are often private non-profit corporations.