We are renters, our least is up for renewal in November and I'm thinking at that time we will sign for 1-1.5 more years and buy our first house.

We currently live in a HOA but it really exists on paper only. Nothing is enforced.

One neighbor across the street has 2 non-functioning cars in his driveway (the tags are kept current, though) and a hole in his garage. Yes, it is literally a hole there. It rains a little bit here in Orlando so I imagine the water damage must be kind of serious. How do the cars affect the neighborhood? Their one functioning car gets parked on the street because 2 non functioning cars take up the driveway. The garage is filled with who knows what. They constantly fail to cut the grass until the county comes and puts a notice on their lawn.

Another neighbor across the street runs a power washing business out of his home and likes to park commercial vehicles on the street (dual wheeled ones at that), both are not permitted by the county.

HOA does nothing about it. Neighbors complained to the HOA, they came out during work hours and said, "the trucks aren't there." No shit, that's because they're at work!

It took multiple neighbors filing complaints with the county until someone came out and told them to move the damn trucks. The trucks leak oil and the employees were parking their cars on the street while at work with the trucks. The neighbors said what they do is complain, the trucks go away for a couple of months and come back. They went away and now they're back.

Now I'm starting to realize why people voluntarily live under the rule of a HOA. Because of shitty neighbors who are shitty people who can't have any damn courtesy for anyone else.

Does anyone here live in a HOA and actually like how the rules prevent neighbors from doing stupid stuff?

I've always heard the bad stories.

I purchased a home in an HOA neighborhood because I liked the rules.

People can be incredibly inconsiderate of their neighbors. HOA rules help keep the neighborhood livable for everyone, and help keep property values up.

I really have to laugh when people complain about HOA rules.
If you don't like HOAs or the rules, don't buy in an HOA neighborhood. Pretty simple.

I've just recently begun looking at buying a house.
Am trying to find a place with enough land where I can make my own little private shooting range (100-200 yards or so) so acreage is a must.
We've been looking at places averaging around 8 acres or so.... and every damn one of these has a friggin HOA.
Hell one of them even had a clause something like "all outdoor hobbies are prohibited".
Why the hell am I gonna go and buy 5-10 acres... then not be able to use it for anything aside from scenery?

We have an idiot neighbor that was "teaching" his kids to shoot a .22 on his 1 acre lot outside of town. Without a backstop. With another neighbor's house directly in the line of fire, maybe 1/4 mile away. He refused to listen to my advice. The Sheriff's Deputy who visited him shortly thereafter convinced him that his methodology was poor.

5-10 acres isn't really very big considering the danger from an errant shot fired by a fool like that neighbor. Even the noise from a centerfire can be bothersome to neighbors on lots of that size. It's unfortunate that not everyone can be trusted to be responsible/reasonable with their "outdoor hobbies".

I ought to post a picture of another neighbor's yard. So you guys can see what a good deal it can be to have the ability to do whatever you want on your own property. Like store used mattresses, brush, scrap iron, piles of rotten lumber, etc, in a residential area. I've considered making a sign that says Brewster County Landfill and hanging it on their gate.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: arfmel,

Some HOA's are OK and some not so good depends on the rules and who's running the HOA. I personally would never live in a community with a HOA since I don't want anyone telling me what I can or can't do on my own property.

The only time I needed my HOA to do something they wouldn't. Neighbor had a dead tree that had broken, blew branches all over the yard, and even crushed part of my fence. Researched it in the HOA rules and was a direct violation against multiple HOA rules. They wouldn't do anything about it.

I won't live in a HOA neighborhood again.

HOAs are a massive double-edged sword. They're great, in theory. And they can be a great tool. But they can also be a pain in the ass. It's all in how well or poorly they're run.

Our HOA is terrible. Headed by a handful of bored, power-hungry retired folks with nothing better to do than harp on their neighbors for petty (and even imagined) infractions. Some highlights of our experience with our HOA:

1) We received a warning letter from someone with the HOA, threatening us with fines, because of the trailer that's been repeatedly parked in our driveway. The thing is, we don't own a trailer. Never have. And there's never been a trailer parked in our driveway. Ever. We asked the HOA board about it. They claimed that they didn't know who sent that warning, but they'd look into it.

2) We received a warning letter from someone with the HOA, threatening us with fines, because of the location where we stored our trash cans. They claimed we were violating both the HOA rules AND THE LAW!!!! (Yep, all caps, with multiple exclamation points.) They backed it up by including snippets from both the bylaws and city ordnance. The thing is, they edited both texts, conveniently leaving out the words and phrases that didn't fit their agenda. When read in whole, our storage location is perfectly legal under both sets of rules. We confronted the HOA board about that. They again claimed that they didn't know who sent that warning, but they'd look into it.

(Notice a pattern? Send unsigned, anonymous threats and warnings, but when they turn out to be wrong, deny ever sending them.)

3) Our neighbor across the street is the HOA President. On the 4th of July, he threw a massive party and decided to set of a huge amount of fireworks in the middle of the street in front of our house. We were gone all evening, but discovered when we returned the next morning that there was a massive amount of fireworks debris in the street in front of our driveway, our yard was covered in debris, and our house was covered in gunpowder residue. We contacted our neighbor about cleaning up his mess and refraining from doing that again, and his response was basically: "It's the 4th of July. Lighten up. Besides, I'm the HOA President, and I volunteer a lot of my time for this neighborhood, so you don't have any room to complain."

4) Our HOA dues were originally set when the subdivision was first being built. The original plan was to have a community pool and clubhouse, so the dues are structured around paying for the maintenance, insurance, etc. needed for those. But neither was ever built, and the land where they were planned to be built was parceled out a few years ago and some homes built on it. However, the dues continue to be collected at the original rate. So now the HOA has tens of thousands of dollars (and growing) sitting in its bank account for no reason, and they continue to collect dues that are significantly higher than needed, for no actual purpose.


We're planning to build a house on some land we own out in the county in the next 5-10 years. I can't wait to get away from this stupid HOA bullshit. I want to live somewhere that the neighbors are far enough away that it doesn't matter what they do on their own property.

Love my neighborhood and the HOA too. We have over 160 homes in the HOA and it's not without it's issues at times. But our neighborhood seems to collect good people who are content and don't get into each other's business. We're all responsible enough not to leave leaky cars up on blocks for everyone to see and other stupid stuff.

The HOA Board of Directors are made up of homeowners who have good sense and a take a reasonable approach to things. There is nobody on a power trip on the board or any committees.

quote:

Originally posted by mod29:
I purchased a home in an HOA neighborhood because I liked the rules.

People can be incredibly inconsiderate of their neighbors. HOA rules help keep the neighborhood livable for everyone, and help keep property values up.

I really have to laugh when people complain about HOA rules.
If you don't like HOAs or the rules, don't buy in an HOA neighborhood. Pretty simple.

Agreed. Doubt I'd ever buy a property that isn't part of a well run HOA. Some people are just inconsiderate slobs. Don't want to have to deal with it.

Not for me. If you gave me a house in a HOA neighborhood it would immediately go on the market. No way I would ever subject myself to the nonsense of some numbnuts with a Napoleon complex telling me what I can or can't do on MY property. No way, no how.

I don't think there is a way to know if the HOA you're buying into is well run or a bunch of assholes until you buy into it.

Back in NJ we lived in a town house community of 400+ units, thank goodness for the HOA. Without it the area would have been a mess. There was a manager who drove around assessing fines, it worked very well!

Now I'm in an HOA in Utah, a redneck HOA. We have rules, our dues are $220.00/yr. After 12 years the HOA is finally trying to take control but it will be an uphill battle. Out of 65 properties about 5 are not up to par, this hurts all of us.

A home was recently sold and the new owner has a "Mobile Boat Repair" business. His idea of mobile is bring the boats to his house. Totally against the rules, so far the HOA has not been able to stop this.

I'm in an HOA and serve on the newly-elected HOA Board as a member-at-large. The owners just took over the HOA from the developer in March. With similar houses and lots right next to each other, HOA rules do tend to keep things looking nice.

The neighborhood is good and folks generally follow the rules.

The new HOA has let a few things slide that were done before we took over. For example, a couple non-complying sheds or dog pens in the backyard, and 2 fences on 1 property line.

A couple people are techs for Time Warner Cable and park the company van in their driveway. The Board discussed it and decided to let it go and not mess with someone's livelihood (at least until someone parks a dump truck).

The biggest pain for the HOA is the pool and folks not complying with the rules - mainly unsupervised minors in the pool.

The HOA recently sent letters to a number of homes regarding mold on the siding, lawn/weed mowing, etc. Several owners are not happy right now.

We're in a subdivision with HOA and happy with the arrangement.

Before we bought the house, I carefully read the HOA covenant and all amendments to it, which are all available online.

There were a fair number of amendments at first, and for each one of them it was clear *exactly* what kind of stupidity on the part of some problem child it was meant to address. And they really made me think "yeah I wouldn't want a neighbor doing *that*".

The frequency of amendments went down over time, with none at all in the past several years. So either the HOA gave up, or the problem children did. When we looked at the place the neighborhood looked great, so the latter. We've found the place to be a lot of reasonable people who wanted to live some place nice, and act accordingly.

Our neighbors are very nice to us, at least partly because the people we bought from were borderline problem children. HOAs exist to keep people like that from shitting the nest for everyone. (We heard stories, and found things, later.)

We're on a half acre lot. That's not terribly close proximity, but close enough that one neighborhood shitbird can ruin things for everyone. As with everything, there's a balance.

I have absolutely no desire to live in an HOA, I don't need people to tell me what I can and cannot do on the land I rent from the government.

I've been in three neighborhoods with HOAs. I'm currently on some lakefront property with no HOA. Having experienced both I prefer my property and no HOA.

I wish I had enough land to have a small range. 25 yards would suffice...

Our HOA is large enough that they have full time people working as part of the organization, we are happy with ours because they make sure folks abide by the bylaws that truly affect your day to day happiness with the neighborhood and your property value. We did have one situation where they sent letters through USPS to a hundred or so homes because someone, somewhere, inadvertently left a bag of dog poop on the sidewalk in front of someones house, which seemed like a ridiculous waste of HOA dollars.

My parents live in an all volunteer HOA small neighborhood and their experience has been awful. People don't want to be bothered to enforce any rules on their neighbors, and it shows. People have built outbuildings, refused to repair their driveways, and take weeks to mow their lawns, it's bad.

It's probably pretty easy to tell how happy people are with the HOA if you check Facebook and Next Door groups. When we bought four years ago, we drove through neighborhoods during the day and in the evening to see which cars are parked where and when, as well as how well kept the houses are.

Yes. It keeps the riff raff from building shit additions and outbuildings. It keeps people from turning their front yards into auto junkyards or goat pastures. It maintains the network of bike and walking trails and the neighborhood pools and playgrounds.

It is pain if you want to paint your house chartreuse, or build a hundred foot antenna, but is worth it.

quote:

Originally posted by FenderBender:
I have absolutely no desire to live in an HOA, I don't need people to tell me what I can and cannot do on the land I rent from the government.

Yeah, screw that. My wife and I are house searching right now, and I have no desire to live in an hoa. We had found a very nice new build home that was located in an hoa, and I just had to tell our agent "no thanks." What cemented that sentiment was a case in that very neighborhood where an owner put up white vinyl fencing all around his property. His property. Well, he failed to ask permission from the hoa first, and they forced him to tear it all down. That was probably $10k worth of fencing. Kiss my butt.

I lived in one for about 7 yrs and then sold the house to move into one that was larger. Liked it since neighborhood always looked good/lawns cut so it was easy to sell.

Now my friend lives in one that they are lousy enforcing the rules, guy next door pulled engine from his pickup in driveway and the engine has been sitting there for about 2 months on the front lawn. Guy across the street painted his house orange, I think he is from India. HOA worked out for me but not my friend.