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.
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.
Cities or counties suddenly having to take over lots of road, playgrounds, sidewalks, street lights, and etc is going to be a big drain on their budget. Sure they could run with the HOA's money for a while but eventually they're going to have to pay.
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
You pay the current owners as of the date of dissolution. The current owners bought into the HOA from the past owners, and thus assume future liabilities (or profits) from the HOA.
Edit: If/when it becomes known that there will be some kind of a payout, people selling their homes will need to adjust the price and/or expect some kind of credit from the buyer at closing.
I would guess it will vary by state laws. How about a force liquidation of all tenants in common properties and any other joint properties to pay off the HOA debts and disband the HOA's. Maybe even treat it much like a chapter 11 bankruptcy / reorg? Or get investors to pick up properties?
There must be cases of HOA's being force disbanded / dissolved in the past to use as a template. I think it's just a majority vote from home owners and submission of articles of dissolution? If enough properties could be liquidated then a good incentive could be giving home owners back a few years of dues. As a bonus all the over-zealous rules that have grown over the decades get dissolved and people just default to county and state laws.
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.
I would assume the sale price of your property would be higher if it's part of a well managed HOA with 500k in reserves than if it's part of a dysfunctional, insolvent HOA, so the previous property owner kinda already got paid out for their contributions.
It's like selling shares of a company with significant cash reserves before/after they choose to liquidate a chunk of them into dividends or stock buy-backs, I would hope you priced the shares accordingly and have nothing to be mad about.
Where I'm from we call a HOA a body corporate, and every home owner in the scheme has a % ownership in the BC. The title deed includes the ownership share. So if the house ownership is transferred, so is the share in the BC.
Size of the share is determined usually by the dwelling floor area divided by the sum total of all dwellings in the scheme.
So if you sell your house after decades of contributions, and then the BC is dissolved, then too bad, you sold your share in a going concern and lost your say in it's affairs.
Arguably you benefitted from the contributions from someone who came before you, and now someone will benefit from yours.
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
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.
What you are saying is not typically in HOA governing documents nor State law so law would have to be changed and / or governing docs updated which would take a majority vote by all homeowners (60% in some cases per State law)
Imagine you dissolve a company that has a lot of money in the bank. What do you do with that money? Distributing it to the shareholders seems like the right way to dispose of it. What if somebody sold all their shares a day before? Well, they get nothing, that's how it works. The company's money should be accounted for in the share price, so it all works out, there's nothing unfair.
An HOA is no different. All the owners are also owners of the HOA. When you buy a place in the HOA you also buy into the HOA, and when you sell you also sell your interest in the HOA.
There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc.
I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff?
AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that?
This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan.
If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violating peoples rights, like not being able to have cars in your drive way or only display flags certain ways.
Not all townhomes have HOAs but it is absolutely insane to say a townhouse that does, where land is owned by the HOA, would have land redistributed to various individuals by legislature fiat.
It's even a crazy proposal for detached single family homes. Will a government official show up and decide what land is owned by each owner and record by government decree what the new property lines are?
Probably true in general but, to the degree there are shared areas, someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious. Not really suburban but I have a relative who lives on a private road with other houses and (primarily) plowing and road maintenance needs to be dealt with.
I agree that "your lawn isn't neat enough" HOAs are generally a plague at least up to a certain point.
"someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious"
In most places, this is called the city government.
Ultimately this feels like the "low tax area" myth is getting exposed. You still need to pay for all the same things your taxes would otherwise pay for, but for some reason it's different as long as it's not called a tax.
Ok, how about "Other people in our city refuse to raise taxes enough to maintain things to our standards, let's make a coalition of neighbors that all donate monthly to pay for additional upkeep for our neighborhood instead of each negotiating individually with different landscapers etc?"
It's popular to shit on HOAs, largely because Americans (of which I am one) are allergic to paying taxes and being told what to do, but if you call it a "Neighborhood co-op" all of a sudden it's not clear why it shouldn't be allowed. Whatever happened to freedom of association?
So shared facilities for a group of private individuals have to approved by and ongoing maintenance provided by the a government (as long as they feel like it) or they're not allowed to exist?
In the absence of an HOA, what you're describing as "shared facilities for a group of private individuals" would be commonly considered a private club. The difference is most private clubs that are not HOA's are not tied to owning specific property. For example, my sister belongs to a private pool club in their neighborhood. They pay membership dues to the club which provides operating revenue for the pool facilities, but it's not tied to any property ownership.
Some things like beaches/pools/golf clubs/etc. can generally be policed with tokens/keys and so forth. That is not generally true of all shared facilities in a neighborhood. And I'm not at all sure the local government should be responsible for anything that residents should care to share on a communal basis. Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe. But now that's up to a broader section of voters.
>> Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe
Yes, this is how it works pretty much everywhere else. Even my rural hometown with <1500 people has an elected park board that is responsible for parks, the swimming pool, tennis courts, summer rec programs, etc.
And the 7K person town where I live in, there are some conservation lands (no idea how maintenance splits up between town and conservation/commission and other volunteers), along with other conservation organizations. But dog parks, playgrounds, etc. just don't exist.
In my suburban neighborhood the HOA mostly takes care of common areas. Things like community swimming pools, dog parks, tennis courts, sports fields, landscaping, etc... They also organize fun runs and movie nights and other seasonal events.
There's occasional drama, but mostly things just run fairly smoothly.
I think he's only planning to try to ban them for single family homes:
>Porras acknowledged condominiums, with shared roofs and common areas, present a more complicated case. But he said single-family HOAs in particular have lost their purpose.
Are HOA officials elected by the residents? I live in a country where building management is compulsory and their meetings are subject to law and even can be witnessed by state officials. I know it sounds a bit fascist and I can't say it isn't, but that's how buildings are taken care of. If you don't like the management you can change it in the next meeting if you gather enough support.
By the way land is usually collectively owned by the apartment owners too.
Agreed. The logical answer here is to limit the things HOAs can and cannot do rather than ban them outright. But that doesn't make for a good headline.
Same problem you have with any kind of local government: time. Busybodies with too much time on their hands will dominate. People who actually have lives to lead don't have the time to compete.
If the house is covered by an HOA, it's typically not optional.
And in some areas it's very difficult to find housing not part of an HOA. I think somebody mentioned elsewhere in this thread that all new housing in Phoenix requires an HOA.
Those things are usually rentals here in Florida. HOAs are a real problem here due to the legal protection they have. They can literally take your house because your mailbox is blue.
There are over 1 million condos in Florida, and many of them are in buildings that need repairs the HOA can’t pay for. Remember the Surfside collapse?
Sure, it’d be interesting to see how people work out the concept of shared benefits that need being paid for from scratch, but I know and like some people in Florida so I’d still be sorry to see them do it.
Maybe just take away that protection? Where I live nobody is losing a house for having the wrong color mailbox, but there are certain historical protected areas where beauty is an externality — you can’t demolish a historic house in the middle of the beautiful downtown
HOA's are ultimately run by the homeowners themselves. It's right there in the name. If the HOA is such a problem, elect different people to the board and change the rules.
You can't because they don't have elections... It's up to the documents to determine when elections can be held and often these HOA's in FL make it so that once elected, they don't hold elections again for 25 years.
Just long enough to milk the other homeowners for their own personal mortgages - paying off their own home, earn a cool $100k, and watch their property values go up.
An HOA that has $500/mo dues and 240 homes pulls $120,000/mo yet we have to cut our own grass, follow their paint scheme, follow their trash rules, keep our roofs new, front door clear, driveway clear, and packages out of sight.
EDIT for those downvoting, here's some cases for ya...
It's a slightly longer process but it basically comes down to:
1. HOA has stupid rule about mailbox
2. Homeowner is found to be in violation of the rule and fined.
3. Homeowner does not pay fines
4. HOA places lien on house and is eventually able to force a sale to pay the fine.
It has to escalate to get there, but it is possible.
Also I can state from personal experience with two different HOAs on two different sides of the state of Ohio that they are exactly that petty.
The first one harassed my grandparents and threatened them with fines over having the "wrong" mailbox despite my grandparents literally being the first owners of the home and the mailbox they had having been put up by the developer who built the neighborhood and still controlled the HOA at the time (if you're not familiar with HOAs, in new developments it's common for the developer to have a controlling vote until a certain percentage of lots have been sold which allows them to exercise tighter control over the way the neighborhood appears to potential buyers). If I recall correctly the "right" mailbox was also one that was built by some random local shop that was connected to the developers so you couldn't just go buy one retail.
The second one was a decade later when I was renting a room from a friend, he had one of the common "Step 2" brand plastic mailboxes which had been installed for years and was also common around the neighborhood. Apparently it wasn't the right color, it was tan and only the black and green variants were allowed.
I don't mind the concept of a HOA for maintaining shared areas and such. The one in the second case actually was responsible for all yard maintenance in the neighborhood which was nice (except that their vendor loved to show up at 6 AM on a Saturday to wake us all up with the sound of two-stroke engines) and that was fine. The problem is that they have too much power over individuals' property. Outside of special cases like historical properties there is no excuse for HOAs to care about what color I paint my front door, what brand of mailbox I use, what type of shingles I install, if I have a satellite dish, etc. If it does not objectively affect others who are not on my property the HOA should keep its nose out of it.
>Last week, I-Team Investigator Adam Walser reported how a Riverview homeowner ended up in jail and her neighbor faced foreclosure over what started out as HOA violations.
One of the remedies HOAs typically possess is the ability to put a lien on your property. The end game to one of these liens can be complicated, but losing your house is among them.
There’s like 5 intermediate steps you’re just sort of glossing over there. This is like saying the inevitable result of a paper cut is losing the entire arm to gangrene.
HOA will put a lien on your house, you won't even know it, eventually when you don't pay it, they'll take your house through the courts. Happened to a friend of mine and almost happened to me until I sold my house and got out of the HOA. I'll never buy in an HOA again.
The irony here is I've never found my neighborhood HOA problematic. They plan the block party and take care of the landscaping of the neighborhood signage.
My condo HOA experience was so bad I would never again recommend someone buy a condo. They refused to look at a structural issue until I got a lawyer and then refused to let the residents see the engineering report for the building we legally own. (Note: If you ever experience this, get out. There is no louder signal of an unsafe structure than "the engineering report is privileged".)
I would have thought your lawyer would be salivating at the prospect of raking your HOA over the coals. Or at least of mailing a nastygram with all sorts of colorful threats. I suppose not?
It is most decidedly not legal, but they had the largest condo law firm in the Chicago area on retainer who made the statement they wouldn't provide it. (Literally the lawyer I was recommended to use until it turned out... it was theirs.) Their lawyer's own website basically said the HOA can't hide stuff like this from owners.
Which is to say if I had had the time and money for a protracted court drama, I do think a judge would have literally laughed them out of the courthouse, but everyone involved knew the case wouldn't get that far.
One really fun fact I learned from this is lawyers mostly just email each other polite requests with the vague threat of "this could escalate to court" as the grease that moves things. And if one side doesn't think it'll end up in court they just... say no!
The building could have been perfectly safe but the lawyer wants to "win" so says "fuck you we won't provide the report". The lawyer has no stake in the health of the project, if they are a litigator they just care about "winning".
Alternatively the building could have been about to collapse but the lawyer wants to "win" and doesn't live there so says "fuck you we won't provide it." Same result, different safety profile.
So in Illinois merely refusing to provide the report is illegal on its own. So it's unlikely a condo lawyer did this "just to win" for a safe building. Specifically if you take the HOA to court for not revealing a document they legally have to, and the judge sides with the unit owner, the HOA has to pay the owner's attorney fees.
The issue is HOAs and management companies have warchests for stuff like this, individual owners of partial-buildings generally do not have a lot of money to fund lawyers until the judgment happens.
So the HOA was indeed quite concerned with their property values and that a higher assessment impacts sale value. It's also important to note that this HOA covered multiple buildings, and none of the board lived in mine: So their unit was not at risk from the structure, but their assessment price was.
The buildings were approaching an age where more significant/costly maintenance is necessary and I don't think they wanted to have to do those things.
HOAs get lots of hate because many are terrible, but like all things there are good ones and bad ones.
My current suburban HOA is fine. My only gripe with them is when I had to get some outdoor changes approved, I never heard back from them so I had to wait until it was approved by default after no response for X days. Dues are $160/year so I'm not really complaining. Other than that, they maintain the common areas and the only times I've seen them flex their muscles were to pressure the bank to maintain and sell foreclosed homes in the neighborhood to get somebody living there again.
I also used to own a condo in a four unit building and the HOA board was just everyone who lived in the building.
I can imagine some scenarios where portions of the report may be privileged - if there are photos of people's apartments or unique information. But the summary with a list of deficiencies and recommended/required actions should certainly be provided!
Florida is just kicking the can, as they always do. Their real estate market is rapidly cooling due to ever increasing carrying costs (insurance), and they are doing whatever they can to enable existing real estate owners to sell and to attract new people to the state.
The problem you'll run into is when the HOAs are responsible for common areas or shared infrastructure. In some places the HOAs are responsible for the roads and there may be a common pool, gym, or other amenities.
You'd be better off preventing HOAs from doing petty things like requiring homes to be painted certain colors and requiring them to have their books audited yearly to ensure there's no fraud or abuse going on.
The HOA's authority should end at each homeowner's individual property line, in the case of a SFH HOA, and their authority should end at each condo-owner's doorstep in the case of a condo or townhome. So, sure they manage the shared amenities and infrastructure, but should have no power over the individual homeowners' property. There are probably reasonable exceptions to this, but I don't understand how it's justifiable that an HOA should have the power to tell someone how often to mow their lawn or what color to paint their door.
Pretty wild that HOAs are not required to have audited books. Where I'm from HOAs are regulated by law, is registered as a legal entity, and therefore needs audited financials submitted to the tax man every year.
There is also a very powerful ombud created to mediate and resolve the kind of hoa horror story bullshit we often hear about online.
We used to have local governments provide that sort of thing (and still do to an extent). One reason for the prevalence of HOAs is that they have a much easier time keeping out the riffraff with uncomfortably dark skin, but maybe people will just have to put up with them.
Privatize it. If I want the road in front of my house fixed, I'll pay for it, I can get a pool membership, gym membership, or other amenities ad-hoc. Fuck the HoA.
In Florida, condominium associations (COA) and homeowners associations (HOA) are not legally the same thing, but in discussions like this people often refer to them interchangeably. There is a big difference between an HOA requiring mowed lawns and paint colors and a COA that maintains roofs, pools, playgrounds, common elements, etc. People will refer to Surfside as a reason HOAs are important but the Champlain Towers was a condo.
I volunteered to run my HOA in Massachusetts because I was afraid someone would come in and abuse their power and fine everyone for trivial matters.
What I learned was that the town "forces" all new developments to have an HOA because town politics prevents the town from adopting roads from new housing developments. Thus all new neighborhoods in the town have "private" roads.
It's a lot of "BS" work that's pushed on residents simply because of malfunctioning politics.
Sounds to me like the more effective use of residents' time would be to get several of them together to run for town office and break the deadlocks. Assuming you can contact enough other frustrated HOA members and get them onboard, even if the problem is several town board members (or whatever body it is), it could be possible to replace them with sane people.
I don't want to say too much because it would reveal where I live. But, to be general, my town has a very unique political system where a plurality of voters is the deadlock.
Basically, to break the deadlock, it would require a very large plurality of people to overrule a large group of retirees who have nothing better to do but reject adopting our private roads.
Typically there is a special tax assessment district when inside city limits - for example, my property in Georgia inside an HOA has a city millage of 0.003, but the streets of the community were indeed deeded to the city. On the other hand, if someone wants to build not actually inside city limits, of course they’ll need to pay for their own roads and utility maintenance since the county isn’t responsible for things like that.
As a non-American, I've always been surprised with how common HOAs are, and how over-bearing they seem.
I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
In some places they act as a kind of local governing authority similar to a town or village council. In much of the US the lowest level of governing body us the county, and those can be pretty huge and diverse areas so HOAs are used to fill that gap.
Sure, I guess I can kind of understand that. It's just not something I've experienced. I've never felt that there was a "gap" that needed to be filled. Especially not by a group that can also tell me that my paint has to be a certain color or whatever.
Things like maintaining a community’s cohesiveness (eg via restricting exterior cosmetic changes, requiring lawn maintenance, etc) are in the HOA contract in an effort to maintain/increase the community’s home values over time. And, of course, people can choose not to buy a home in a community like this if they don’t agree to the provisions of the HOA.
Even before the 2021 surge in home values, homes on city streets almost never saw as much growth in value (except for homes in the heart of metro areas where people will pay for location to work. On suburban city blocks, home values are often stagnant even in good markets)
> And, of course, people can choose not to buy a home in a community like this if they don’t agree to the provisions of the HOA.
One of the common problems I've heard of (not firsthand, so this may be apocryphal—but it wasn't just once that I heard it) is that buyers don't get to see the HOA agreement, or even know it exists, until after they've bought the property. (IIRC, the situations where the latter was the case were either buyers not reading their purchase contract closely enough, and thus missing the actual requirement to agree to the HOA, or neighborhoods where the HOA was not legally required, but if you didn't join it they'd gang up and make your life a living hell.)
They're not common everywhere in the US. Here in West Michigan I don't know of anyone that's part of one (other than condo associations, where it's part of the selling point).
America hates government and taxes but occasionally someone thinks wow, it’d be nice if we could split the costs of this road and water pipes we all use! But all the existing standards for how to do this basic function of society are terrible!
I’ve lived in two. They were fine. They collected reasonable dues, provided some services, and that’s about the extent of it.
I still wouldn’t want to live in another one. Even if they behave well, they’re just annoying. It’s another set of de facto laws I have to keep track of, elections to vote in, proceedings to follow. The HOA’s finances are my finances so if they screw up it’s my wallet on the line. (I see so many people asking, the HOA fucked up, can they make us pay for it? You are the HOA, there’s nobody else to pay for anything.)
And they’re just not necessary in most places. Maintain common areas? We have something for that already, it’s called local government. Prevent eyesores? Fuck off, if you want to control what happens on a property then buy it. It’s unavoidable for a condo, but completely unnecessary for detached houses, and even townhouses don’t really need one.
You hear the bad stories. It all depends on who was elected and who votes. Most HOAs are not the horror stories you hear, just a quiet entity that maintains common property and is a backup solution for problems (when talking to neighbor does not work). Mine is cheap, like $300/year and we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation. They only send out letters for egregious violations and don't police or nit-pick.
If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.
>we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation.
This is where my confusion comes in. My local government handles this sort of stuff. But I understand that we (as countries) have different thoughts on governments and their responsibilities.
> >It all depends on who was elected and who votes.
> If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.
Exactly this. HOA boards have a great tendency to attract the interests of the most busy-body, have to dictate to everyone what they do, Karen's that exist in the area covered by the HOA. Such that, over time, the original HOA that just maintained common areas and only got involved in egregious violations mutates into one that has rules specifying exactly where, by measurement, you are to position your trash container in relation to your garage door when it is not out front for trash pickup day. One of the worst offenders of HOA's near me has exactly that rule (position of trash container in relation to garage door) and the HOA has paid "inspectors" to drive around each trash pickup day after the HOA decreed time that the container should be returned to this location, to look for violations of the position and write folks up.
There was an entire story in the local newspaper about this pettiness on the part of this particular HOA (which is how I learned they had "trash can position relative to garage door" rules and that they had paid "inspectors" to monitor compliance).
And all it takes is for those with "controlling personality disorder" [1] to start running, and getting, elected to the HOA boards for this to happen. And for most HOA areas, the only population group even interested in running for HOA board member are the "controlling personality disorder" types. So no matter who one votes for, the HOA slowly mutates into a "control everyone, everywhere, all the time" one.
[1] I.e., those personality types that want to control everything that someone else is allowed to do.
There are plenty of city owned spaces as well, it's not all HOA run. I suppose I would ask if it's fair for a voter on the other side of town to pay for irrigation on my street?
What's stopping them from charging you $3000 or even $10000 next year, or escalating progressively to these numbers? What's stopping them from adding ten new ridiculous rules? Nothing. It's about giving up your freedom.
The answer to that is always "you". Well, collectively.
An HOA isn't a separate body with no stake in the properties involved—that would be a property management company or something similar. It's a body made up of the people who actually live there. So while they could potentially charge you $3000 or $10,000 in bullshit fines for something they decided you did, they (usually) can't realistically charge you $3000 for dues without charging the same to everyone. Including themselves.
That said, there are definitely circumstances where an HOA is fully captured by a small clique of highly-active, highly-entitled, power-mad people with too much time on their hands and too little common sense or compassion, and they can't be gotten rid of either because of byzantine bylaws or because they actually are a majority of the people in the neighborhood.
Sometimes, this won't matter, because "they" are making millions a year (or are married to someone who is—often, toxic HOA members are stay-at-home spouses with little else to occupy them), so I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but we're not talking about some third-party management company raising prices so that they make more profit. We're talking about a cooperative raising fees for its own members—including the board members—which go into the common coffers.
Unless, y'know, we're talking about active embezzlement. Which does happen, but is obviously a failure mode and not normal operation.
This is a huge problem in Pennsylvania also, but most of the municipalities have abdicated significant maintenance responsibilities to HOAs. They refuse to take over roads, retention ponds, and common land areas requiring the HOA to cover maintenance. Snow removal from "public" roads and landscaping of "common areas" is a significant cost for HOAs. If the municipalitiies are forced to take these dutues over it's going to be a huge hit to their budgets. I'd think this would be a hard sell to most politicians in PA.
It is well known that all the suburbs in the US are just an economic time-bomb waiting to happen due to the maintenance cost of the public amenities (especially when water/sewage/electricity infra).
Seems fair that the people who actually live in them are the ones paying for the costs instead of spreading it over to all residents of the city. Maybe we will see some suburbs converted to more dense housing once the public infrastructure needs to be replaced.
Not here in Southern York County, PA. I would not buy any house in an HOA and all houses i have bought (sold) were not in an HOA in the various towns here.
What I found ironic when I moved to suburban Virginia is that the same Tea Party, "Don't Tread on Me" conservatives that want to dismantle government love HOAs. I lived in a neighborhood full of them, with the most strict and annoying HOA. We were forced to wait several weeks to replace an actively leaking roof b/c the HOA had to sign off on the shingles -- even though they were the same color/size/etc as the shingles that the house was built with. When we bought the house, the previous owner had to pay fines for installing a fenced doghouse in his back yard w/o their permission.
I really enjoyed it when a halfway house managed to find a loophole in their rules and rented a house down the street. That HOA tried and failed to kick them out..
I wonder if this could be part of the Florida/Disney spat? Are some of Disney’s properties under HOA?
Just random speculation, I haven’t been following it too closely. But, always got to be suspicious of a politician who suggests something that seems popular.
And everyone I've ever heard complain about HOAs has never tried to serve on the board. They're not universally volunteer orgs, but a _lot_ of them are -- which means that if you run, you'll probably be elected, because nobody else wants to deal with that.
HOAs are small governments, with plenty of the problems of larger governments via unhappy but nonparticipatory voters.
The problem is that they are untethered from other governments. Or at least less tethered. Contracts aren't constitutions or laws. There might be some benefits to that, but the downsides can be pretty outrageous.
I live in an old neighborhood (1890s) so I'm not very familiar with HOAs, but I assumed they were the ideal solution: small government, very local, voluntary, and not government at all, they're private. These are attributes I was told made for ideal situations. What (or who!) causes this mechanism to fail?
We need a federal level HOA ban. They serve no productive purpose. When people defend HOAs that usually boils down to them feeling like they have some right to tell other people how to live.
Our HOA maintains the roads and the community water system. The county is unwilling to do either. Without the HOA I'd need a specialized vehicle to get through the mud to my driveway in the rainy season, and I'd have to haul in my water, because it's too deep for me to afford a well. So I'd probably end up living elsewhere.
There has to be nuance.
If a community has shared areas then there has to be an organization to maintain and service them and that org. requires funding. This is especially true with Condo style communities. To attempt to shut that management down and replace it with either voluntary fees or some other solution seems destined to fail or to lead to outright war amongst the residents as those that don't contribute continue to use the facilities.
Things start to get a little more complex with SFR communities. I have always intentionally chosen communities where there is no HOA. I have no interest in someone telling me what I can and cannot do with the property I own. This of course means that I have always intentionally purchased in areas with no common spaces. I make sure to drive the area carefully first to see who lives there and the condition of the homes. Of course this could go wrong; nothing stopping someone from selling and the new owner paints his house purple and green and changes his oil in his front yard. Its a price I am open to paying though to ensure that my property is mine fully beside government control.
My MIL has a HOA and they determine what color residents can paint their homes, the type of roof tile, etc.
They also have gated entrances though with security that checks Id's for entrance. No way to run that without some sort of HOA like organization. If someone wants to live in this type of community then no reason to stop it, each to their own.
My major personal issue with HOA's is when they mandate the type of fencing you can have, often requiring open fences that provide no privacy. I want tall 6+ foot solid fences and even taller plant life. The more privacy I can implement the better. I am also getting a pool built and its nice knowing that no one else can have input over it except the city permitting office.
I would be good with a law that says an existing community without an HOA cannot create one without 100% of the homeowners agreeing. That seems like something worth considering.
Other than that its a complicated situation that I just don't think a quick law for cudos is going to solve.
Simply banning something seems... not well thought out.
I lived in an HOA community for eight years and I have mixed feelings. So many things can go wrong without one - old cars in the front yard, political signs (I don’t care what your political persuasion is they are tacky), yard not being kept.
HOAs suck. But so do people. As another poster said, there are shared responsibility parts in some neighborhoods like pools, gyms, tennis courts etc
I'd be super happy if the local government managed the infrastructure and shared spaces of our neighborhood. But they can't raise the taxes to do so, so HOAs end up being the smaller government that people say they want but, in practice, get zero participation from the residents and can turn into shit shows.
i'm ready for this new revolution that breaks hoas. i was on the board of an HOA for about 2 years for the property i own in atlanta and i figured out really quickly it is a way for the eldest residents with more capitol than the youth to essentially drain the financial life from them and protect themselves from change or new ideas.
behind closed doors saying things like "that rule only exist when we don't like someone and helps us be able to get rid of them", "it's supposed to be a fair process but we just let the tenants we like and prefer know first, we will send everyone a letter so it's too late for them to respond against it".
> In Riverview, HOA disputes escalated into arrests and foreclosure threats. One homeowner was jailed for a week over brown grass, while another faced a lien and thousands in legal fees tied to her house paint.
What, excuse me, the hell? I thought "debtor's prison" was outlawed centuries ago?
VISA cannot sue me for not paying my cc. It can ruin my credit history but it cannot sue me.
Wells Fargo cannot sue me for missing mortgage payments, It may repo the house but not sue me.
If HOA's can sue a home owner for breach of contract, who would like to live with that hanging over their heads.
In the US, VISA or the issuing bank can and routinely does sue card holders who do not pay. Well, usually they sell the debt to firms that specialize in collection of delinquent debts, but the effect is the same.
Your bank absolutely can and will sue you for not paying your CC. What they can't do is have you thrown in jail for not showing up to court - they'll just win by default.
One of my only stipulations when buying a SFH for just myself at the time, 15 years ago, was no HOA. Sure I also wanted 1 full bath, a driveway, and a not-awful commute. HOAs were an instant “nope” for any listing I came across.
On one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that.
Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... turn every issue into a mandatory vote, require some kind of above-majority vote (eg 70%), and you're done. If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad.
Getting people to vote on things for their own Benefit is surprisingly hard. My parents’ condo association is constantly fighting each other because increasing monthly dues requires 70% vote and people have been refusing year after year. And what does increase year after year is maintenance requirements. First the nice to have amenities stopped. Then the elevators stopped. Now it’s 24x7 running water because the association doesn’t have money to fix the motors. Now they’re all trying to get the building to be sold so that it can be developed into an even bigger apartment building and that is also failing because it requires 75% vote. Imagine you voting against getting a brand new apartment in 3 years that’s larger in size and you get your rent paid while it’s being built.
Cities and counties have code enforcement to deal with the first case. You don't need another level of unaccountable private government between you and the county.
I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, next to a guy who works on his motorcycle all day, loudly blaring his awful music, and then waking us up at 5 AM every morning when he drives the bike to work.
The HOA will break down my door about grass that is not strictly manicured, or about some algae on my front siding, but you know the one thing they will not lift a finger about? Noise complaints. Funny, that.
> If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad.
Two dangers with that.
First, mandatory votes are ... difficult. They exclude a lot of people, particularly those that gotta work two jobs to make ends meet, thus giving more power to those people who have lots of free time (i.e. pensioners, SAHM busybodies).
Second, tyranny of the majority. The original intention of HOAs was to keep out Black and Asian people and, in some cases, Jews [1]. Getting the majority of 70% in a majority white 'hood is an open invitation for harrassment.
If there is bad behavior, such as someone working on "car projects" at night, or letting junk pile up in their front yard, the solution is zoning, noise ordnances and environmental protection laws. Not HOAs.
I believe the modern purpose of HOAs is for the developer to keep the neighborhood looking good long enough to sell all the homes and make a return on their investment. Fair enough. Then it gets turned over to the residents and they go batshit crazy.
HOAs are a huge problem in Florida. It’s hard to find places to live without one. We escaped one that was controlled entirely by one family. Ten years later, they are still in charge of that HOA.
Now, we live in a neighborhood without an HOA. It’s not without a few minor problems, but people are generally more willing to just talk to each other and the city steps in with code enforcement if something ever gets really bad.
I think a lot of people here have PTSD from living in other places with an HOA. Last year, we had a newer resident get a little bit aggressive in trying to start an HOA. He was going so far as patrolling the neighborhood in a golf cart and calling code enforcement on people for all kinds of petty reasons. We ran him out of the neighborhood pretty quickly after that.
I will never live in a place with an HOA again unless it’s a shared building where you kind of have to have something.
But that's exactly why you need the 70% (example number).
The current situation is, that you have pensoners, SAHM, racists and others bothering with HOA and then bothering the neighbors. The HOA board might be full of them, or consist only of them, but they don't make up the (eg.) 70% of total inhabitants of whatever neighborhood (except maybe in some extreme cases).
To get such a majority, even "the others" would have to be bothered by <something> so much, that they would be willing to go out and vote (voting can be done in a way that even people with two jobs can do it, especially if vote secrecy is not required). If some Karen is bothered by a slighly brownish lawn during a draught, most people wouldn't bother and getting 70% of them to vote would be impossible. If it was a serious issue, then people would bother more.
> To get such a majority, even "the others" would have to be bothered by <something> so much, that they would be willing to go out and vote
Forcing mandatory attendance for HOA votes won't work out, that's the thing. Too many cases of remote landlords, properties stuck in inheritance limbo, or even First Amendment issues (can you be compelled to make speech, aka participate in a vote?). Requiring a "70% of all owner shares" would flat out kill most HOAs, and requiring a "70% of present owner shares" perpetuates the status quo of giving disproportionate amounts of power to the usual suspects.
No idea why you're being downvoted, as this is 100% correct.
HOAs are one of those things that seemingly no one likes, but then people look to buy a house and think it's just some weird coincidence that all of the "nice" neighbourhoods have HOAs. Everyone loves HOAs stopping their neighbours from doing obnoxious things, but are sure that the things they do should be immune from HOA influence.
And FWIW, I live in Canada and here HOAs are very uncommon in subdivisions (though of course condo towers and townhouse complexes with common property and needs have strata/boards that are basically HOAs), because instead municipalities usually have many of the same sort of rules regarding how you upkeep your property, inoperable cars, etc, even if it impinges on "property rights". Indeed, exactly the same stories happen where there are tearjerker stories about how mean the city is bugging someone about their unkempt lawn or junkers in the laneway, when the city in question is coincidentally one of the most desirable cities to live in. It's like people think these are just unrelated things, when the former often follows from the latter.
The “nice” neighborhoods often have HOAs because the government requires new developments to have HOAs as a condition for approving construction. They do this because it saves money by having the HOA maintain things instead of the government.
I live in a delightful neighborhood with no HOA. There are great non-HOA neighborhoods all over for miles around. You know what the real common denominator is for nice neighborhoods? Wealth. That’s it. If you want a nice place, have money and move somewhere other people have money too.
> You can avoid this by not buying a home that is covered by a HOA.
In many areas these either do not exist or are limited to only older construction. I haven't seen a single '90s or newer neighborhood in my home shopping that didn't have one.
Developers love the stupid things because it allows them greater control over how the neighborhood looks to potential buyers while they're still selling lots, and they're mandatory for new developments in some areas where the local government (reasonably) doesn't want to take on more road/utility/etc maintenance but isn't willing to actually stop sprawl.
> Snark aside, it's clear this guy hasn't thought out how condos will operate without a HOA. Going after SFH HOAs may be the best initial play here.
Someone else noted that in Florida the term "HOA" specifically refers to the kind affecting single-family homes. Condos have "COAs" apparently.
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.
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.
Cities or counties suddenly having to take over lots of road, playgrounds, sidewalks, street lights, and etc is going to be a big drain on their budget. Sure they could run with the HOA's money for a while but eventually they're going to have to pay.
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
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.
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.
I understand your point. Thanks for your thoughtful engagement.
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.
> 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.
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.
You pay the current owners as of the date of dissolution. The current owners bought into the HOA from the past owners, and thus assume future liabilities (or profits) from the HOA.
Edit: If/when it becomes known that there will be some kind of a payout, people selling their homes will need to adjust the price and/or expect some kind of credit from the buyer at closing.
I would guess it will vary by state laws. How about a force liquidation of all tenants in common properties and any other joint properties to pay off the HOA debts and disband the HOA's. Maybe even treat it much like a chapter 11 bankruptcy / reorg? Or get investors to pick up properties?
There must be cases of HOA's being force disbanded / dissolved in the past to use as a template. I think it's just a majority vote from home owners and submission of articles of dissolution? If enough properties could be liquidated then a good incentive could be giving home owners back a few years of dues. As a bonus all the over-zealous rules that have grown over the decades get dissolved and people just default to county and state laws.
Florida law says what to do when dissolving HOa and how to do it
Who are you charging $175?
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.
I would assume the sale price of your property would be higher if it's part of a well managed HOA with 500k in reserves than if it's part of a dysfunctional, insolvent HOA, so the previous property owner kinda already got paid out for their contributions.
It's like selling shares of a company with significant cash reserves before/after they choose to liquidate a chunk of them into dividends or stock buy-backs, I would hope you priced the shares accordingly and have nothing to be mad about.
Where I'm from we call a HOA a body corporate, and every home owner in the scheme has a % ownership in the BC. The title deed includes the ownership share. So if the house ownership is transferred, so is the share in the BC.
Size of the share is determined usually by the dwelling floor area divided by the sum total of all dwellings in the scheme.
So if you sell your house after decades of contributions, and then the BC is dissolved, then too bad, you sold your share in a going concern and lost your say in it's affairs.
Arguably you benefitted from the contributions from someone who came before you, and now someone will benefit from yours.
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.
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
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.
What you are saying is not typically in HOA governing documents nor State law so law would have to be changed and / or governing docs updated which would take a majority vote by all homeowners (60% in some cases per State law)
Imagine you dissolve a company that has a lot of money in the bank. What do you do with that money? Distributing it to the shareholders seems like the right way to dispose of it. What if somebody sold all their shares a day before? Well, they get nothing, that's how it works. The company's money should be accounted for in the share price, so it all works out, there's nothing unfair.
An HOA is no different. All the owners are also owners of the HOA. When you buy a place in the HOA you also buy into the HOA, and when you sell you also sell your interest in the HOA.
Existing, current homeowners every quarter
There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc.
I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff?
AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that?
This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan.
If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violating peoples rights, like not being able to have cars in your drive way or only display flags certain ways.
Not all townhomes have HOAs but it is absolutely insane to say a townhouse that does, where land is owned by the HOA, would have land redistributed to various individuals by legislature fiat.
It's even a crazy proposal for detached single family homes. Will a government official show up and decide what land is owned by each owner and record by government decree what the new property lines are?
It’s not insane. Many apartment buildings in Europe work exactly like that.
A HOA for a highrise is a very different beast than a HOA for a suburban neighborhood.
That is, I agree - but the suburban SFH HOAs are shitshows.
Probably true in general but, to the degree there are shared areas, someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious. Not really suburban but I have a relative who lives on a private road with other houses and (primarily) plowing and road maintenance needs to be dealt with.
I agree that "your lawn isn't neat enough" HOAs are generally a plague at least up to a certain point.
"someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious"
In most places, this is called the city government.
Ultimately this feels like the "low tax area" myth is getting exposed. You still need to pay for all the same things your taxes would otherwise pay for, but for some reason it's different as long as it's not called a tax.
Ok, how about "Other people in our city refuse to raise taxes enough to maintain things to our standards, let's make a coalition of neighbors that all donate monthly to pay for additional upkeep for our neighborhood instead of each negotiating individually with different landscapers etc?"
It's popular to shit on HOAs, largely because Americans (of which I am one) are allergic to paying taxes and being told what to do, but if you call it a "Neighborhood co-op" all of a sudden it's not clear why it shouldn't be allowed. Whatever happened to freedom of association?
So shared facilities for a group of private individuals have to approved by and ongoing maintenance provided by the a government (as long as they feel like it) or they're not allowed to exist?
In the absence of an HOA, what you're describing as "shared facilities for a group of private individuals" would be commonly considered a private club. The difference is most private clubs that are not HOA's are not tied to owning specific property. For example, my sister belongs to a private pool club in their neighborhood. They pay membership dues to the club which provides operating revenue for the pool facilities, but it's not tied to any property ownership.
Some things like beaches/pools/golf clubs/etc. can generally be policed with tokens/keys and so forth. That is not generally true of all shared facilities in a neighborhood. And I'm not at all sure the local government should be responsible for anything that residents should care to share on a communal basis. Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe. But now that's up to a broader section of voters.
>> Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe
Yes, this is how it works pretty much everywhere else. Even my rural hometown with <1500 people has an elected park board that is responsible for parks, the swimming pool, tennis courts, summer rec programs, etc.
And the 7K person town where I live in, there are some conservation lands (no idea how maintenance splits up between town and conservation/commission and other volunteers), along with other conservation organizations. But dog parks, playgrounds, etc. just don't exist.
In my suburban neighborhood the HOA mostly takes care of common areas. Things like community swimming pools, dog parks, tennis courts, sports fields, landscaping, etc... They also organize fun runs and movie nights and other seasonal events.
There's occasional drama, but mostly things just run fairly smoothly.
I think he's only planning to try to ban them for single family homes:
>Porras acknowledged condominiums, with shared roofs and common areas, present a more complicated case. But he said single-family HOAs in particular have lost their purpose.
Are HOA officials elected by the residents? I live in a country where building management is compulsory and their meetings are subject to law and even can be witnessed by state officials. I know it sounds a bit fascist and I can't say it isn't, but that's how buildings are taken care of. If you don't like the management you can change it in the next meeting if you gather enough support.
By the way land is usually collectively owned by the apartment owners too.
Agreed. The logical answer here is to limit the things HOAs can and cannot do rather than ban them outright. But that doesn't make for a good headline.
Logical answer is to get reasonable people to vote when HOA is having vote.
Don’t let Karen and her buddies run the meetings.
People nagging about HOA seems like are not owners or not knowing how HOA works o r supposed to work.
Same problem you have with any kind of local government: time. Busybodies with too much time on their hands will dominate. People who actually have lives to lead don't have the time to compete.
Or how about
if you don't want to join an HOA....
you don't join an HOA?
If the house is covered by an HOA, it's typically not optional.
And in some areas it's very difficult to find housing not part of an HOA. I think somebody mentioned elsewhere in this thread that all new housing in Phoenix requires an HOA.
Except it's currently not optional because it comes with the house and it's with almost every house.
Those things are usually rentals here in Florida. HOAs are a real problem here due to the legal protection they have. They can literally take your house because your mailbox is blue.
There are over 1 million condos in Florida, and many of them are in buildings that need repairs the HOA can’t pay for. Remember the Surfside collapse?
Sure, it’d be interesting to see how people work out the concept of shared benefits that need being paid for from scratch, but I know and like some people in Florida so I’d still be sorry to see them do it.
Maybe just take away that protection? Where I live nobody is losing a house for having the wrong color mailbox, but there are certain historical protected areas where beauty is an externality — you can’t demolish a historic house in the middle of the beautiful downtown
HOA's are ultimately run by the homeowners themselves. It's right there in the name. If the HOA is such a problem, elect different people to the board and change the rules.
You can't because they don't have elections... It's up to the documents to determine when elections can be held and often these HOA's in FL make it so that once elected, they don't hold elections again for 25 years.
25 years is wild. No wonder HOA's have a reputation for boards with power trips.
Just long enough to milk the other homeowners for their own personal mortgages - paying off their own home, earn a cool $100k, and watch their property values go up.
An HOA that has $500/mo dues and 240 homes pulls $120,000/mo yet we have to cut our own grass, follow their paint scheme, follow their trash rules, keep our roofs new, front door clear, driveway clear, and packages out of sight.
EDIT for those downvoting, here's some cases for ya...
https://www.wlrn.org/local-news/2022-11-16/prosecutors-hoa-b...
https://www.miamidade.gov/global/release.page?Mduid_release=...
https://wsvn.com/news/investigations/arrested-again-ex-avent...
https://www.volusiasheriff.gov/news/volusia-county-sheriff/f...
> They can literally take your house because your mailbox is blue.
This is hard to believe. Have you got a source?
It's a slightly longer process but it basically comes down to:
1. HOA has stupid rule about mailbox 2. Homeowner is found to be in violation of the rule and fined. 3. Homeowner does not pay fines 4. HOA places lien on house and is eventually able to force a sale to pay the fine.
It has to escalate to get there, but it is possible.
Also I can state from personal experience with two different HOAs on two different sides of the state of Ohio that they are exactly that petty.
The first one harassed my grandparents and threatened them with fines over having the "wrong" mailbox despite my grandparents literally being the first owners of the home and the mailbox they had having been put up by the developer who built the neighborhood and still controlled the HOA at the time (if you're not familiar with HOAs, in new developments it's common for the developer to have a controlling vote until a certain percentage of lots have been sold which allows them to exercise tighter control over the way the neighborhood appears to potential buyers). If I recall correctly the "right" mailbox was also one that was built by some random local shop that was connected to the developers so you couldn't just go buy one retail.
The second one was a decade later when I was renting a room from a friend, he had one of the common "Step 2" brand plastic mailboxes which had been installed for years and was also common around the neighborhood. Apparently it wasn't the right color, it was tan and only the black and green variants were allowed.
I don't mind the concept of a HOA for maintaining shared areas and such. The one in the second case actually was responsible for all yard maintenance in the neighborhood which was nice (except that their vendor loved to show up at 6 AM on a Saturday to wake us all up with the sound of two-stroke engines) and that was fine. The problem is that they have too much power over individuals' property. Outside of special cases like historical properties there is no excuse for HOAs to care about what color I paint my front door, what brand of mailbox I use, what type of shingles I install, if I have a satellite dish, etc. If it does not objectively affect others who are not on my property the HOA should keep its nose out of it.
>Last week, I-Team Investigator Adam Walser reported how a Riverview homeowner ended up in jail and her neighbor faced foreclosure over what started out as HOA violations.
https://www.tampabay28.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigat...
One of the remedies HOAs typically possess is the ability to put a lien on your property. The end game to one of these liens can be complicated, but losing your house is among them.
There’s like 5 intermediate steps you’re just sort of glossing over there. This is like saying the inevitable result of a paper cut is losing the entire arm to gangrene.
HOA will put a lien on your house, you won't even know it, eventually when you don't pay it, they'll take your house through the courts. Happened to a friend of mine and almost happened to me until I sold my house and got out of the HOA. I'll never buy in an HOA again.
The irony here is I've never found my neighborhood HOA problematic. They plan the block party and take care of the landscaping of the neighborhood signage.
My condo HOA experience was so bad I would never again recommend someone buy a condo. They refused to look at a structural issue until I got a lawyer and then refused to let the residents see the engineering report for the building we legally own. (Note: If you ever experience this, get out. There is no louder signal of an unsafe structure than "the engineering report is privileged".)
Is that legal?!
I would have thought your lawyer would be salivating at the prospect of raking your HOA over the coals. Or at least of mailing a nastygram with all sorts of colorful threats. I suppose not?
It is most decidedly not legal, but they had the largest condo law firm in the Chicago area on retainer who made the statement they wouldn't provide it. (Literally the lawyer I was recommended to use until it turned out... it was theirs.) Their lawyer's own website basically said the HOA can't hide stuff like this from owners.
Which is to say if I had had the time and money for a protracted court drama, I do think a judge would have literally laughed them out of the courthouse, but everyone involved knew the case wouldn't get that far.
One really fun fact I learned from this is lawyers mostly just email each other polite requests with the vague threat of "this could escalate to court" as the grease that moves things. And if one side doesn't think it'll end up in court they just... say no!
There's an agency problem here.
The building could have been perfectly safe but the lawyer wants to "win" so says "fuck you we won't provide the report". The lawyer has no stake in the health of the project, if they are a litigator they just care about "winning".
Alternatively the building could have been about to collapse but the lawyer wants to "win" and doesn't live there so says "fuck you we won't provide it." Same result, different safety profile.
So in Illinois merely refusing to provide the report is illegal on its own. So it's unlikely a condo lawyer did this "just to win" for a safe building. Specifically if you take the HOA to court for not revealing a document they legally have to, and the judge sides with the unit owner, the HOA has to pay the owner's attorney fees.
The issue is HOAs and management companies have warchests for stuff like this, individual owners of partial-buildings generally do not have a lot of money to fund lawyers until the judgment happens.
Maybe you could explain why you think they refused to turn the engineer report over?
Obviously I don't know the details but their lawyer being an adversarial asshole sounds most likely to me.
What other explanation is there? Like... was the board planning to sell their units before people realized the building had problems?
So the HOA was indeed quite concerned with their property values and that a higher assessment impacts sale value. It's also important to note that this HOA covered multiple buildings, and none of the board lived in mine: So their unit was not at risk from the structure, but their assessment price was.
The buildings were approaching an age where more significant/costly maintenance is necessary and I don't think they wanted to have to do those things.
HOAs get lots of hate because many are terrible, but like all things there are good ones and bad ones.
My current suburban HOA is fine. My only gripe with them is when I had to get some outdoor changes approved, I never heard back from them so I had to wait until it was approved by default after no response for X days. Dues are $160/year so I'm not really complaining. Other than that, they maintain the common areas and the only times I've seen them flex their muscles were to pressure the bank to maintain and sell foreclosed homes in the neighborhood to get somebody living there again.
I also used to own a condo in a four unit building and the HOA board was just everyone who lived in the building.
I can imagine some scenarios where portions of the report may be privileged - if there are photos of people's apartments or unique information. But the summary with a list of deficiencies and recommended/required actions should certainly be provided!
This.
And then when more of their towers collapse these same politicians will look around with surprised Pikachu faces.
Florida is just kicking the can, as they always do. Their real estate market is rapidly cooling due to ever increasing carrying costs (insurance), and they are doing whatever they can to enable existing real estate owners to sell and to attract new people to the state.
https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2025/05/06/florida...
https://nypost.com/2025/06/26/real-estate/south-floridas-res...
https://www.newsweek.com/florida-condo-prices-plunge-2099157
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-cities-where-house-prices...
You can't run into a problem if you are the problem.
There is no problem being addressed here. You are salivating over a conversation on "peanut butter bad, lets regulate it!"
I genuinely have no idea what you are trying to say here.
The problem you'll run into is when the HOAs are responsible for common areas or shared infrastructure. In some places the HOAs are responsible for the roads and there may be a common pool, gym, or other amenities.
You'd be better off preventing HOAs from doing petty things like requiring homes to be painted certain colors and requiring them to have their books audited yearly to ensure there's no fraud or abuse going on.
The HOA's authority should end at each homeowner's individual property line, in the case of a SFH HOA, and their authority should end at each condo-owner's doorstep in the case of a condo or townhome. So, sure they manage the shared amenities and infrastructure, but should have no power over the individual homeowners' property. There are probably reasonable exceptions to this, but I don't understand how it's justifiable that an HOA should have the power to tell someone how often to mow their lawn or what color to paint their door.
Pretty wild that HOAs are not required to have audited books. Where I'm from HOAs are regulated by law, is registered as a legal entity, and therefore needs audited financials submitted to the tax man every year.
There is also a very powerful ombud created to mediate and resolve the kind of hoa horror story bullshit we often hear about online.
We used to have local governments provide that sort of thing (and still do to an extent). One reason for the prevalence of HOAs is that they have a much easier time keeping out the riffraff with uncomfortably dark skin, but maybe people will just have to put up with them.
That can now be done at the state level.
Privatize it. If I want the road in front of my house fixed, I'll pay for it, I can get a pool membership, gym membership, or other amenities ad-hoc. Fuck the HoA.
HoA is literally privatized governance
Good luck if you're the person who is on the lot where there is more traffic than others. Now you're paying for more road reparis than anyone else.
In Florida, condominium associations (COA) and homeowners associations (HOA) are not legally the same thing, but in discussions like this people often refer to them interchangeably. There is a big difference between an HOA requiring mowed lawns and paint colors and a COA that maintains roofs, pools, playgrounds, common elements, etc. People will refer to Surfside as a reason HOAs are important but the Champlain Towers was a condo.
I volunteered to run my HOA in Massachusetts because I was afraid someone would come in and abuse their power and fine everyone for trivial matters.
What I learned was that the town "forces" all new developments to have an HOA because town politics prevents the town from adopting roads from new housing developments. Thus all new neighborhoods in the town have "private" roads.
It's a lot of "BS" work that's pushed on residents simply because of malfunctioning politics.
Sounds to me like the more effective use of residents' time would be to get several of them together to run for town office and break the deadlocks. Assuming you can contact enough other frustrated HOA members and get them onboard, even if the problem is several town board members (or whatever body it is), it could be possible to replace them with sane people.
I don't want to say too much because it would reveal where I live. But, to be general, my town has a very unique political system where a plurality of voters is the deadlock.
Basically, to break the deadlock, it would require a very large plurality of people to overrule a large group of retirees who have nothing better to do but reject adopting our private roads.
In Phoenix developers cannot build new communities without HOAs.
Even if your HOA is not gated and doesn't have a clubhouse, not a pool, it is the HOA that is responsible for maintaining the streets and parks.
But... that is normally paid for by tax money. Yet the home owner's taxes in those communities are not lower. So the city is double dipping.
Typically there is a special tax assessment district when inside city limits - for example, my property in Georgia inside an HOA has a city millage of 0.003, but the streets of the community were indeed deeded to the city. On the other hand, if someone wants to build not actually inside city limits, of course they’ll need to pay for their own roads and utility maintenance since the county isn’t responsible for things like that.
As a non-American, I've always been surprised with how common HOAs are, and how over-bearing they seem.
I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
In some places they act as a kind of local governing authority similar to a town or village council. In much of the US the lowest level of governing body us the county, and those can be pretty huge and diverse areas so HOAs are used to fill that gap.
Sure, I guess I can kind of understand that. It's just not something I've experienced. I've never felt that there was a "gap" that needed to be filled. Especially not by a group that can also tell me that my paint has to be a certain color or whatever.
Things like maintaining a community’s cohesiveness (eg via restricting exterior cosmetic changes, requiring lawn maintenance, etc) are in the HOA contract in an effort to maintain/increase the community’s home values over time. And, of course, people can choose not to buy a home in a community like this if they don’t agree to the provisions of the HOA.
Even before the 2021 surge in home values, homes on city streets almost never saw as much growth in value (except for homes in the heart of metro areas where people will pay for location to work. On suburban city blocks, home values are often stagnant even in good markets)
>Things like maintaining a community’s cohesiveness [...] maintain/increase the community’s home values over time.
I've heard the arguments in favor of them before, I just don't find them convincing.
> And, of course, people can choose not to buy a home in a community like this if they don’t agree to the provisions of the HOA.
One of the common problems I've heard of (not firsthand, so this may be apocryphal—but it wasn't just once that I heard it) is that buyers don't get to see the HOA agreement, or even know it exists, until after they've bought the property. (IIRC, the situations where the latter was the case were either buyers not reading their purchase contract closely enough, and thus missing the actual requirement to agree to the HOA, or neighborhoods where the HOA was not legally required, but if you didn't join it they'd gang up and make your life a living hell.)
I live in a county with more population than most cities. It works fine. What gap would need to be filled?
They're not common everywhere in the US. Here in West Michigan I don't know of anyone that's part of one (other than condo associations, where it's part of the selling point).
America hates government and taxes but occasionally someone thinks wow, it’d be nice if we could split the costs of this road and water pipes we all use! But all the existing standards for how to do this basic function of society are terrible!
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png
I’ve lived in two. They were fine. They collected reasonable dues, provided some services, and that’s about the extent of it.
I still wouldn’t want to live in another one. Even if they behave well, they’re just annoying. It’s another set of de facto laws I have to keep track of, elections to vote in, proceedings to follow. The HOA’s finances are my finances so if they screw up it’s my wallet on the line. (I see so many people asking, the HOA fucked up, can they make us pay for it? You are the HOA, there’s nobody else to pay for anything.)
And they’re just not necessary in most places. Maintain common areas? We have something for that already, it’s called local government. Prevent eyesores? Fuck off, if you want to control what happens on a property then buy it. It’s unavoidable for a condo, but completely unnecessary for detached houses, and even townhouses don’t really need one.
You hear the bad stories. It all depends on who was elected and who votes. Most HOAs are not the horror stories you hear, just a quiet entity that maintains common property and is a backup solution for problems (when talking to neighbor does not work). Mine is cheap, like $300/year and we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation. They only send out letters for egregious violations and don't police or nit-pick.
>It all depends on who was elected and who votes.
If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.
>we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation.
This is where my confusion comes in. My local government handles this sort of stuff. But I understand that we (as countries) have different thoughts on governments and their responsibilities.
> >It all depends on who was elected and who votes.
> If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.
Exactly this. HOA boards have a great tendency to attract the interests of the most busy-body, have to dictate to everyone what they do, Karen's that exist in the area covered by the HOA. Such that, over time, the original HOA that just maintained common areas and only got involved in egregious violations mutates into one that has rules specifying exactly where, by measurement, you are to position your trash container in relation to your garage door when it is not out front for trash pickup day. One of the worst offenders of HOA's near me has exactly that rule (position of trash container in relation to garage door) and the HOA has paid "inspectors" to drive around each trash pickup day after the HOA decreed time that the container should be returned to this location, to look for violations of the position and write folks up.
There was an entire story in the local newspaper about this pettiness on the part of this particular HOA (which is how I learned they had "trash can position relative to garage door" rules and that they had paid "inspectors" to monitor compliance).
And all it takes is for those with "controlling personality disorder" [1] to start running, and getting, elected to the HOA boards for this to happen. And for most HOA areas, the only population group even interested in running for HOA board member are the "controlling personality disorder" types. So no matter who one votes for, the HOA slowly mutates into a "control everyone, everywhere, all the time" one.
[1] I.e., those personality types that want to control everything that someone else is allowed to do.
There are plenty of city owned spaces as well, it's not all HOA run. I suppose I would ask if it's fair for a voter on the other side of town to pay for irrigation on my street?
What's stopping them from charging you $3000 or even $10000 next year, or escalating progressively to these numbers? What's stopping them from adding ten new ridiculous rules? Nothing. It's about giving up your freedom.
What's stopping my city, county, or state from doing the same?
Exactly, so why would I volunteer to one or a few more of these layers of uncertainty if I can avoid them?
The answer to that is always "you". Well, collectively.
An HOA isn't a separate body with no stake in the properties involved—that would be a property management company or something similar. It's a body made up of the people who actually live there. So while they could potentially charge you $3000 or $10,000 in bullshit fines for something they decided you did, they (usually) can't realistically charge you $3000 for dues without charging the same to everyone. Including themselves.
That said, there are definitely circumstances where an HOA is fully captured by a small clique of highly-active, highly-entitled, power-mad people with too much time on their hands and too little common sense or compassion, and they can't be gotten rid of either because of byzantine bylaws or because they actually are a majority of the people in the neighborhood.
They can keep increasing the fees 10% every year which compounds pretty fast, certainly a lot faster than the pay raise offered by an employer.
But, again—it compounds for them, too.
Sometimes, this won't matter, because "they" are making millions a year (or are married to someone who is—often, toxic HOA members are stay-at-home spouses with little else to occupy them), so I'm not saying this doesn't happen, but we're not talking about some third-party management company raising prices so that they make more profit. We're talking about a cooperative raising fees for its own members—including the board members—which go into the common coffers.
Unless, y'know, we're talking about active embezzlement. Which does happen, but is obviously a failure mode and not normal operation.
First good idea out of Florida in a long time
This is a huge problem in Pennsylvania also, but most of the municipalities have abdicated significant maintenance responsibilities to HOAs. They refuse to take over roads, retention ponds, and common land areas requiring the HOA to cover maintenance. Snow removal from "public" roads and landscaping of "common areas" is a significant cost for HOAs. If the municipalitiies are forced to take these dutues over it's going to be a huge hit to their budgets. I'd think this would be a hard sell to most politicians in PA.
It is well known that all the suburbs in the US are just an economic time-bomb waiting to happen due to the maintenance cost of the public amenities (especially when water/sewage/electricity infra).
Seems fair that the people who actually live in them are the ones paying for the costs instead of spreading it over to all residents of the city. Maybe we will see some suburbs converted to more dense housing once the public infrastructure needs to be replaced.
Not here in Southern York County, PA. I would not buy any house in an HOA and all houses i have bought (sold) were not in an HOA in the various towns here.
What I found ironic when I moved to suburban Virginia is that the same Tea Party, "Don't Tread on Me" conservatives that want to dismantle government love HOAs. I lived in a neighborhood full of them, with the most strict and annoying HOA. We were forced to wait several weeks to replace an actively leaking roof b/c the HOA had to sign off on the shingles -- even though they were the same color/size/etc as the shingles that the house was built with. When we bought the house, the previous owner had to pay fines for installing a fenced doghouse in his back yard w/o their permission.
I really enjoyed it when a halfway house managed to find a loophole in their rules and rented a house down the street. That HOA tried and failed to kick them out..
> "Don't Tread on Me"
It's right there in the name: don't tread on me, not us. Rules for thee, not for me.
This sort of glib banality is tiresome.
[dead]
Well, it's different if you're the government
Don't ban it, just add a mandatory warning form that the seller of a HOA-encumbered house must get the buyer to sign. Treat it like asbestos or lead.
HOA = Homeowner association
Took me a while to figure this out.
I wonder if this could be part of the Florida/Disney spat? Are some of Disney’s properties under HOA?
Just random speculation, I haven’t been following it too closely. But, always got to be suspicious of a politician who suggests something that seems popular.
That issue was resolved several years ago. Both sides have moved on.
HOAs are benevolent dictatorships. That's supposed to be better than democracy. What could possibly go wrong?
Every HOA I've lived in had an elected board.
And everyone I've ever heard complain about HOAs has never tried to serve on the board. They're not universally volunteer orgs, but a _lot_ of them are -- which means that if you run, you'll probably be elected, because nobody else wants to deal with that.
HOAs are small governments, with plenty of the problems of larger governments via unhappy but nonparticipatory voters.
The problem is that they are untethered from other governments. Or at least less tethered. Contracts aren't constitutions or laws. There might be some benefits to that, but the downsides can be pretty outrageous.
We don't have a procedure to reliably establish a benevolent dictatorship.
I live in an old neighborhood (1890s) so I'm not very familiar with HOAs, but I assumed they were the ideal solution: small government, very local, voluntary, and not government at all, they're private. These are attributes I was told made for ideal situations. What (or who!) causes this mechanism to fail?
We need a federal level HOA ban. They serve no productive purpose. When people defend HOAs that usually boils down to them feeling like they have some right to tell other people how to live.
Our HOA maintains the roads and the community water system. The county is unwilling to do either. Without the HOA I'd need a specialized vehicle to get through the mud to my driveway in the rainy season, and I'd have to haul in my water, because it's too deep for me to afford a well. So I'd probably end up living elsewhere.
Those are both functions of the local government. If the county approved the development, they need to maintain the infrastructure.
There has to be nuance. If a community has shared areas then there has to be an organization to maintain and service them and that org. requires funding. This is especially true with Condo style communities. To attempt to shut that management down and replace it with either voluntary fees or some other solution seems destined to fail or to lead to outright war amongst the residents as those that don't contribute continue to use the facilities.
Things start to get a little more complex with SFR communities. I have always intentionally chosen communities where there is no HOA. I have no interest in someone telling me what I can and cannot do with the property I own. This of course means that I have always intentionally purchased in areas with no common spaces. I make sure to drive the area carefully first to see who lives there and the condition of the homes. Of course this could go wrong; nothing stopping someone from selling and the new owner paints his house purple and green and changes his oil in his front yard. Its a price I am open to paying though to ensure that my property is mine fully beside government control.
My MIL has a HOA and they determine what color residents can paint their homes, the type of roof tile, etc. They also have gated entrances though with security that checks Id's for entrance. No way to run that without some sort of HOA like organization. If someone wants to live in this type of community then no reason to stop it, each to their own.
My major personal issue with HOA's is when they mandate the type of fencing you can have, often requiring open fences that provide no privacy. I want tall 6+ foot solid fences and even taller plant life. The more privacy I can implement the better. I am also getting a pool built and its nice knowing that no one else can have input over it except the city permitting office.
I would be good with a law that says an existing community without an HOA cannot create one without 100% of the homeowners agreeing. That seems like something worth considering.
Other than that its a complicated situation that I just don't think a quick law for cudos is going to solve. Simply banning something seems... not well thought out.
I lived in an HOA community for eight years and I have mixed feelings. So many things can go wrong without one - old cars in the front yard, political signs (I don’t care what your political persuasion is they are tacky), yard not being kept.
HOAs suck. But so do people. As another poster said, there are shared responsibility parts in some neighborhoods like pools, gyms, tennis courts etc
I'd be super happy if the local government managed the infrastructure and shared spaces of our neighborhood. But they can't raise the taxes to do so, so HOAs end up being the smaller government that people say they want but, in practice, get zero participation from the residents and can turn into shit shows.
PSA: never serve on an HOA board in Florida. You can be individually named in lawsuits involving the HOA.
i'm ready for this new revolution that breaks hoas. i was on the board of an HOA for about 2 years for the property i own in atlanta and i figured out really quickly it is a way for the eldest residents with more capitol than the youth to essentially drain the financial life from them and protect themselves from change or new ideas.
behind closed doors saying things like "that rule only exist when we don't like someone and helps us be able to get rid of them", "it's supposed to be a fair process but we just let the tenants we like and prefer know first, we will send everyone a letter so it's too late for them to respond against it".
It's a small scale dictatorship.
> In Riverview, HOA disputes escalated into arrests and foreclosure threats. One homeowner was jailed for a week over brown grass, while another faced a lien and thousands in legal fees tied to her house paint.
What, excuse me, the hell? I thought "debtor's prison" was outlawed centuries ago?
IIRC, they missed their court appearance and a bench warrant was issued.
VISA cannot sue me for not paying my cc. It can ruin my credit history but it cannot sue me. Wells Fargo cannot sue me for missing mortgage payments, It may repo the house but not sue me. If HOA's can sue a home owner for breach of contract, who would like to live with that hanging over their heads.
In the US, VISA or the issuing bank can and routinely does sue card holders who do not pay. Well, usually they sell the debt to firms that specialize in collection of delinquent debts, but the effect is the same.
Your bank absolutely can and will sue you for not paying your CC. What they can't do is have you thrown in jail for not showing up to court - they'll just win by default.
Debtors prison with extra steps?
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
One of my only stipulations when buying a SFH for just myself at the time, 15 years ago, was no HOA. Sure I also wanted 1 full bath, a driveway, and a not-awful commute. HOAs were an instant “nope” for any listing I came across.
The problem is always with the extremes.
On one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that.
Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... turn every issue into a mandatory vote, require some kind of above-majority vote (eg 70%), and you're done. If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad.
Getting people to vote on things for their own Benefit is surprisingly hard. My parents’ condo association is constantly fighting each other because increasing monthly dues requires 70% vote and people have been refusing year after year. And what does increase year after year is maintenance requirements. First the nice to have amenities stopped. Then the elevators stopped. Now it’s 24x7 running water because the association doesn’t have money to fix the motors. Now they’re all trying to get the building to be sold so that it can be developed into an even bigger apartment building and that is also failing because it requires 75% vote. Imagine you voting against getting a brand new apartment in 3 years that’s larger in size and you get your rent paid while it’s being built.
Cities and counties have code enforcement to deal with the first case. You don't need another level of unaccountable private government between you and the county.
That sounds suspiciously like democratically enacting local government ordinances.
I lived next to a guy who would do maintenance and repair on his motorcycle which had “pipes” until nearly midnight.
I would’ve killed for an HOA back then.
I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, next to a guy who works on his motorcycle all day, loudly blaring his awful music, and then waking us up at 5 AM every morning when he drives the bike to work.
The HOA will break down my door about grass that is not strictly manicured, or about some algae on my front siding, but you know the one thing they will not lift a finger about? Noise complaints. Funny, that.
Your city/county police don't take noise complaints?
Why not kill the guy with the motorbike and cut out the middleman?
It's the libertarian dream. Unfortunately, the state has an outrageous monopoly on violence.
Outrageous government overreach. Why can't you just choose the corporation to pay the weregild? It would be far more efficient!
If we can put it on the blockchain and power it with genAI, I’ve got a term sheet for you!
> If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad.
Two dangers with that.
First, mandatory votes are ... difficult. They exclude a lot of people, particularly those that gotta work two jobs to make ends meet, thus giving more power to those people who have lots of free time (i.e. pensioners, SAHM busybodies).
Second, tyranny of the majority. The original intention of HOAs was to keep out Black and Asian people and, in some cases, Jews [1]. Getting the majority of 70% in a majority white 'hood is an open invitation for harrassment.
If there is bad behavior, such as someone working on "car projects" at night, or letting junk pile up in their front yard, the solution is zoning, noise ordnances and environmental protection laws. Not HOAs.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association#History
I believe the modern purpose of HOAs is for the developer to keep the neighborhood looking good long enough to sell all the homes and make a return on their investment. Fair enough. Then it gets turned over to the residents and they go batshit crazy.
HOAs are a huge problem in Florida. It’s hard to find places to live without one. We escaped one that was controlled entirely by one family. Ten years later, they are still in charge of that HOA.
Now, we live in a neighborhood without an HOA. It’s not without a few minor problems, but people are generally more willing to just talk to each other and the city steps in with code enforcement if something ever gets really bad.
I think a lot of people here have PTSD from living in other places with an HOA. Last year, we had a newer resident get a little bit aggressive in trying to start an HOA. He was going so far as patrolling the neighborhood in a golf cart and calling code enforcement on people for all kinds of petty reasons. We ran him out of the neighborhood pretty quickly after that.
I will never live in a place with an HOA again unless it’s a shared building where you kind of have to have something.
But that's exactly why you need the 70% (example number).
The current situation is, that you have pensoners, SAHM, racists and others bothering with HOA and then bothering the neighbors. The HOA board might be full of them, or consist only of them, but they don't make up the (eg.) 70% of total inhabitants of whatever neighborhood (except maybe in some extreme cases).
To get such a majority, even "the others" would have to be bothered by <something> so much, that they would be willing to go out and vote (voting can be done in a way that even people with two jobs can do it, especially if vote secrecy is not required). If some Karen is bothered by a slighly brownish lawn during a draught, most people wouldn't bother and getting 70% of them to vote would be impossible. If it was a serious issue, then people would bother more.
> To get such a majority, even "the others" would have to be bothered by <something> so much, that they would be willing to go out and vote
Forcing mandatory attendance for HOA votes won't work out, that's the thing. Too many cases of remote landlords, properties stuck in inheritance limbo, or even First Amendment issues (can you be compelled to make speech, aka participate in a vote?). Requiring a "70% of all owner shares" would flat out kill most HOAs, and requiring a "70% of present owner shares" perpetuates the status quo of giving disproportionate amounts of power to the usual suspects.
So, no vote then, no action, same as in every other non-HOA neighborhood.
But if something bothers 70%+ of people enough to come and vote, it gets resolved HOA-style.
No idea why you're being downvoted, as this is 100% correct.
HOAs are one of those things that seemingly no one likes, but then people look to buy a house and think it's just some weird coincidence that all of the "nice" neighbourhoods have HOAs. Everyone loves HOAs stopping their neighbours from doing obnoxious things, but are sure that the things they do should be immune from HOA influence.
And FWIW, I live in Canada and here HOAs are very uncommon in subdivisions (though of course condo towers and townhouse complexes with common property and needs have strata/boards that are basically HOAs), because instead municipalities usually have many of the same sort of rules regarding how you upkeep your property, inoperable cars, etc, even if it impinges on "property rights". Indeed, exactly the same stories happen where there are tearjerker stories about how mean the city is bugging someone about their unkempt lawn or junkers in the laneway, when the city in question is coincidentally one of the most desirable cities to live in. It's like people think these are just unrelated things, when the former often follows from the latter.
The “nice” neighborhoods often have HOAs because the government requires new developments to have HOAs as a condition for approving construction. They do this because it saves money by having the HOA maintain things instead of the government.
I live in a delightful neighborhood with no HOA. There are great non-HOA neighborhoods all over for miles around. You know what the real common denominator is for nice neighborhoods? Wealth. That’s it. If you want a nice place, have money and move somewhere other people have money too.
You can avoid this by not buying a home that is covered by a HOA.
Snark aside, it's clear this guy hasn't thought out how condos will operate without a HOA. Going after SFH HOAs may be the best initial play here.
> You can avoid this by not buying a home that is covered by a HOA.
In many areas these either do not exist or are limited to only older construction. I haven't seen a single '90s or newer neighborhood in my home shopping that didn't have one.
Developers love the stupid things because it allows them greater control over how the neighborhood looks to potential buyers while they're still selling lots, and they're mandatory for new developments in some areas where the local government (reasonably) doesn't want to take on more road/utility/etc maintenance but isn't willing to actually stop sprawl.
> Snark aside, it's clear this guy hasn't thought out how condos will operate without a HOA. Going after SFH HOAs may be the best initial play here.
Someone else noted that in Florida the term "HOA" specifically refers to the kind affecting single-family homes. Condos have "COAs" apparently.