Banned is maybe too far, but why should we as a country allow people to have petty power over meaningless things their neighbors do? Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it’s sold the new owners have to opt in?
For the most part, I’m wondering about this in the context of single family homes since for homes like condos, you could make the case that HOAs are useful for shared things like roofs and whatnot. Maybe limit mandatory HOA involvement to things like what’s truly necessary and shared and not how tall your grass is?
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Yes.
HOAs, at base, are there because the municipality the development is being built in doesn’t want to pay for anything. Not paying is part of the deal worked with developers that now has inertial momentum to it such that it’s baked into just about every new development.
Houses, people, and taxes are added to the municipality with as little responsibility as possible. It’s a great deal, for them.
The grift is this. Normally, sidewalks, parks, and snow management fall to the city, town, or village governments. With HOAs, the town government gets to say it’s not our responsibility, let that neighborhood manage itself. We don’t want to pay for another park or police the snow, so build your houses within our borders, but leave us out of it. The town grows, has enough people to attract new business, but adds less new costs and responsibility than they otherwise would.
So now the people are managing themselves and the only enforcement on it is the risk of losing your house (having it sold out from under you to pay random fees), depending on how Karen the people in the HOA happen to be.
Example. You’re alone in the world. You get sick and end up in an extended hospital stay, let’s say 62 days. It’s a GI problem and you had an ileus. Your lawn isn’t mowed for the duration. You finally get a taxi ride home and find you’ve been fined $1000 a day for 6 weeks because your lawn isn’t mowed. Alongside the incredible medical bills, you can’t pay this. A lien is placed on your home.
That this scenario is even possible with HOAs is very wrong.
An HOA makes perfect sense in a condo scenario because people share walls and the HOA deals with building management. But with single family homes, absolutely not. At that point, it’s no longer a single family home but a condo, just not one that shares walls.
Disclaimer: I’m very anti-HOA. But I do think the case could be made for them in high-density housing like apartment buildings and condos.
Single family homes, though, no. When I was house shopping, I removed any that were part of an HOA from my search. I’m not saying there are no “good” HOAs, but I’ve heard too many horror stories, and good HOAs can become bad HOAs over time, and your only recourse is to move. No thanks.
I don’t think they should be banned, per se, they definitely need reigned in as far as what they can mandate and an opt-out mechanism. I’m not sure how the latter would work if there’s things like street maintenance, etc that’s part of it, but I’m sure some solution could be found.
Wouldn’t things like street maintenance be handled by the city? If they aren’t currently and HOAs got banned, it seems like cities could step in and take over without much fuss.
The maintenance costs are why cities make this deal with developers. The city will green light the development provided an HOA is present so their responsibility is kept at a minimum.
The HOA of today isn’t an idea born of people saying they want to govern themselves. It’s from government yelling “less regulation” and pushing their residents into an adrift situation where it’s the only option.
The ethos from the gated community is there, somehow, but that’s the grift. The HOA is only there, in most cases, to remove cost and responsibility from the municipality.
In theory but they do a shit job of it.
Neighborhood associations also exist and are usually much better than HOAs. I would be happy if mine was in charge of the streets instead of the city. But not my HOA, they suck.
I was thinking like gated community type areas which are treated more like private property. And in that example, I meant more like if one house opted out of the HOA, but the HOA was still there, then they’d be using the roads without contributing to maintenance.
But yeah, assuming the HOA dissolved, I would imagine the city or county would take over.
I think I wouldn’t mind an HOA if the dues they collected were used to fund things like maintenance and upkeep of houses to the standards they set, but as far as I can tell all they really do is take your money to tell you your lawn’s too weedy and your fence is the wrong color.
They only exist because everyone in this fucked up country treats housing as an investment vehicle first and a shelter second.
if the dues they collected were used to fund things like maintenance and upkeep
That was basically their original intention until they got perverted to only care about protecting their property values like you said. There are still some “good” HOAs that are basically just that, but you don’t hear much about them. Still, any good HOA can become a bad one at any time, so I just avoid them like the plague.
yeah I live in an apartment type condo and its a necessity.
When I lived in a single-family house, there was technically an HOA formed when the development was, well, developed. Everyone forgot about it until someone wanted to build on an addition to their home. They asked the town for building permission, town said “what’d the HOA say?” and the homeowners went “oh, shoot”, and formed a quick entity to rubber-stamp plans. No dues or anything.
The only other thing they did was send out annual reminders to have your septic system pumped please (we had communal drainage fields but per-house septic tanks).
I’m good with that sort of HOA for single-family homes.
That’s cool it was easy-peasy, but would also have been a prime opportunity to dissolve the HOA (which, I believe, the HOA can do itself).
No, because the town required a HOA in order to approve plans. It was part of the charter for the community and the town did not want to take on the (admittedly trivial) responsibilities it had outsourced to the HOA.
I don’t think HOA’s should be banned, but I don’t think they should have any real legal power around them. Like they should be able to give fines and such, but those fines should not be legally enforceable or affect your credit. So that if the HOA tries to apply something heinous in your neighbourhood you can opt out without much action or repercussion as long as you don’t give a fuck if you’re removed from the HOA.
If the fines are not enforceable, then they are only a suggestion. Thus defeating the entire point of the HOA.
Not taking a side on that, but that is the end result.
Yes. I am fine with that. Because I hate HOA’s.
You chose not to live in an HOA. Why do you think it’s OK to force others that want to live in an HOA from doing so?
There’s tons of horror stories out there, but that’s also because “I live in an HOA and I like it” isn’t really a story that get written and shared on the internet. It’s boring.
I’d never live in one. No one is telling me what color my house is or where I can put a fence. But I also know plenty of people who do live in HOA’s and like it.
Never understood how they gained traction in the US you pride yourselves on freedom and land protection but then allow some curtain twitcher to dictate how you use the land you paid for.
pretty sure HOAs exist everywhere, you kinda need an entity to coordinate local amenities like water pipes and roads. The problem in the US is just that HOAs can make up any arbitrary requirements they want and no one seems to give a shit.
in sane countries HOA-equivalents have pretty strict limits on what they can and cannot do, generally their ability to outright ban things is limited to extreme cases like someone painting their house magenta and lime stripes or having 8 cows in their backyard.
City governments love HOAs, because they can push the responsibility for utilities and public services onto the hoa. The city supplies water to the hoa with a single bill, the hoa bills the residents. Privatized trash and recycling pickup. Maybe even an electrical substation. Hoa builds and maintains the roads and parks.
The city gets the benefits of property tax payments without the costs of infrastructure.
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Yes. When we bought our first house we were told the HOA was optional. The day after closing they showed up and told us we were part of it. We needed to start paying our dues, and we needed a copy of the rules. That was $140 for a photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy at least 13 times over. It was totally illegible.
My elderly grand mother was visiting, so we moved our car to the visitor spot so she could be parked in front of the house. We were towed.
My car had a flat, we were towed because the car appeared to be abandoned.
Everything about it was a nightmare. Shortly before we moved we found out the president no longer lived in the area, and was embezzling. He was reelected after that was revealed to the rest if the neighborhood, but no one was allowed to see the votes.
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The point of HOAs is protecting/increasing property value. We need property to be cheaper, not more expensive. Higher property values benefit speculation, not ownership. Burn them all.
Most HOAs are run by assholes.
But when run properly they keep neighborhoods clean and safe.
In other words, they’re almost never run properly. You’re literally saying it’s great when it works but it rarely works.
HOAs need to die a fiery death, and there’s a special place in hell for HOA managers.
That’s been our experience. It wasn’t the board (who were all neighbors and shared goals), but the management company that sucked.
If the HOA board is a problem, fix the board.
If you’ve ever lived in a place where disrespecting property is common, you’ve seen the need for an HOA.
I’ve seen - and heard about - 100 abusive HOA for every one disrespectful neighborhood.
I’m not sure your experience speaks for all homeowners. Further, your earlier quote
HOAs need to die a fiery death
Indicates a pretty strong (and violent) bias that may exempt you from any objective planning going forward. Sorry bud.
So when they work they do what your government should be doing? How is putting a shit covered bandage over a festering wound gonna help?
I think they have the potential to be good if they were way more democratic, but they’re never run that way.
When I lived in a townhouse that was part of an HOA that had some nice things going for it. There were a couple tennis courts, a swimming pool, a communal garden, a club house thing you can pay to use, they regularly mowed the front yards and trimmed the front hedges and they would periodically repaint the fronts of the houses. However, while I was living there, the head of the HOA was a douche that kept misusing funds.
The house my sister lives in has an HOA that does literally nothing except bitch residents to upkeep their lawn.
it’s baffling that HOAs don’t have strict regulation on how they’re run, how it should work is like any other association: elections every X years, any member can run for positions, and operations have to be documented and transparent.
I have a likely rather unique viewpoint as someone who’s HOA just had their whole board resign and be replaced after a scandal came out proving they weren’t legitimate:
Ours basically only maintains the local park & roads & lights and negotiates fair rates for trash pickup and fuel deliveries for everyone, sort of like how a union can get better wages (if it’s just for this purpose it’s called a collective btw)
Why doesn’t the city, you may ask? We’re in unincorporated county land: there is no city to do maintenance work on these things, so without it things would be… Worse, here
Though in most places yeah, they shouldn’t exist
Probably shouldn’t be able to live there in the first place, frankly. It’s a problem covering a problem caused by another problem. we have a very poorly built society.
Yes.
This might be unpopular, but I don’t think HOAs should be banned. WAIT! I, personally, think HOAs suck and I’d never agree to buying a home in an HOA. That said, not everyone feels that way. Some folks genuinely like living in HOAs, and for all the horror stories, there’s at least a few where the HOA simply exists to provide amenities to the neighborhood i.e. playgrounds, walking trails, pools, etc. People should be free to choose the kind of housing arrangements they want, and if they want an HOA, then that’s their prerogative.
The real problem with HOAs is that we’re trying to solve the housing crisis exclusively with single family residential zoning, which means that HOAs are vastly overrepresented in terms of what’s available on the housing market. It’s fundamentally a zoning issue. People who don’t want an HOA or can’t spend $2,000/mo in mortgage plus another $300/mo or whatever in HOA fees should have options, but they kinda don’t. Ask your city why their zoning sucks.
Don’t ban them, there are some good parts in there
Require yearly elections on who leads
Limit the power they have, especially with giving out citations
Don’t allow to outsource the work. You want a HOA, you do the HOA. Those HOA companies are thr worst
Yes, definitely. They’re just bullies trying to rebrand themselves.
Gonna take a controversial tack here:
No, they shouldn’t be banned.
You have a choice to buy into an HOA or not. You can still buy plots of land, and build to suit; you are not obligated or limited solely to houses that already exist in HOAs. Yes, your up-front costs will be higher, because you’re going to have to pay for putting in a well, septic system, and possibly running electric to your place, and if you want gas you’ll need propane deliveries, versus hooking in to an existing water/sewer/electric/natural gas system. But that’s still your choice.
Some people want HOAs because them come with amenities that people wouldn’t have otherwise. In my area, there are two very large HOAs that both offer things like full golf courses, and horse stables with miles of trails for riding; the people buying in those HOAs buy into them because of those things; having enough land on your own to keep and ride horses is, well, good luck finding that much land as a single parcel within reasonable driving distance of any city.
Finally, if you buy a home, most of the time you want to know that your home isn’t going to plummet in value. You’re dropping a LOT of money on one, and hoping that, if you ever need to move, you’ll be able to get the money you put in back out again. When you don’t live in an HOA, there’s always a risk that the things shitty neighbors will do will end up wrecking your property values. E.g., if the person right next to me starts parking dead cars in their driveway, and has yard dogs that are barking at all hours of the night, not many people are going to willingly move in next to them.
Do I LIKE HOAs? Not really. The best HOAs are the ones that have absolutely minimal interference in your daily life. I live in an HOA; they keep the road functional, specify certain aspects of new construction (minimum size–no tiny homes–colors have to be earth-tones, etc.) and… That’s about it. Yeah, I’m supposed to get permission before I put in any yard statues more than 6’ tall, and I’m not allowed to clear cut the trees on my property (…not that I ever plan to…), I can’t put a pistol range in my yard and practice shooting at home, but that’s about all. As long as I stay quiet, and mind my own business, the HOA doesn’t give a shit. The most high-handed thing they’ve done in the last decade was amend the by-laws to ban short-term rentals; one shithead was renting out their place as an AirBnB, which led to loud parties on weekends and a lot of extra traffic.
I think I can offer some perspective as someone who works in the real estate industry and is on an HOA BOD.
Of the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with, only 1 ever wanted an HOA, because he didn’t have one and it was awful. We’re talking fences laid on the ground, grass several feet high, vehicles parked all over the front lawn, the entire yard front and back being used as a landfill, you name it.
HOAs are essentially the smallest form of government. The HOA carries the force of law. This also tends to attract the worst people for the job. Think about it; who’s going to take time out of their day to volunteer on behalf of the community? People who want power over others.
People are petty as fuck. One person receives one citation and they become salty and begin seeking out and reporting every single violation they can find, which just makes it awful to live in.
Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it’s sold the new owners have to opt in?
That would completely invalidate the purpose of the HOA.
It’s like “right to work” legislation that destroyed unions, but used to destroy HOAs. “Right to home” legislation.
Why should the fact some people a long time ago have away their power to a dubious political entity, permanently destroy the right to make your own house into a home. There has to be a way for people in a neighborhood to phase out of an HOA and a “Right to home” legislation could do it easily. If the HOA really is adding value to the neighborhood then they would easily be able to entice new homeowners to sign up!
“Right to work” legislation exists in other countries with strong unions.
For example, in Germany you cannot be compelled to join or to leave a union which makes “right to work” the default nationwide. Forcing people to join unions they do not want to be part of violates their freedom of contract. For similar reasons, employers cannot ban employees from talking about their wage, from having relationships or demand they sign “non-compete agreements” . The freedom of contract is constitutionally protected and cannot be waived just like that, even if all parties were to agree.
Yet unions are significantly stronger here than in the US.
Why should the fact some people a long time ago have away their power to a dubious political entity, permanently destroy the right to make your own house into a home.
Because people bought into that neighborhood for a reason.
If the reason the new people bought into the neighborhood is that it was managed by a good HOA then they’ll sign the contract voluntarily!
Again, I don’t think you understand why the HOA exists. No one joins because they want to be regulated. They join because they want the neighborhood to be regulated.
Fucked up beyond belief.
The American tradition of telling everyone else what to do and how to behave while not wanting others to tell you what to do and how to behave!
OMG dude. You can’t be serious. Do you just not understand how rules work? The people who join are also, voluntarily “told what to do and how to behave”.
Unless they agree to HOA rules they’re not allowed to live in those neighborhoods, access those schools etc… this is a coercive pressure.
I get that you’re part of an HOA board so you think they’re great, but for the most part you’re part of a system that’s a net negative in people’s lives and society. See the Jon Oliver video linked above if you ever actually want to evaluate HOA more objectively.
