I don't get it, why buy a house in an hoa?

[bogie]

Hell I live down the street from the Munsters and my HOA was bitching to me about grass too. If the damn thing exists at all, they should be concerned about a dilapidated house. Next time I get something, I'm driving around to all the HOA areas and taking pictures of their dead shit.

HOAs are un-American.

[T-Giv]

I have been renting a townhouse for the last year and I have seen the HOA in action at the complex I live in. What a joke. Not to mention the property owner pays $250 a month for it! All I have seen them do is some shoveling in the winter and even then it's sketchy. The cops got called because one of the shovelers whistled and called out to one of the resident's 12 year old daughter. It was a hoot! Money well spent there.

[Drilldov2.0]

Never had an HOA never will. You chose to live in an area where there is one. This is why we always buy in older neighborhoods.

Well it was the only choice at the time. Never again. Some people are afforded enough time to shop around for months. Some work too much.

[MrPrena]

I pay $56/mo.
It covers Trash, general area snow/grass.
Not really happy with paying HOA.
I moved to this place, because HOA was $25 when we moved here. It went all the way upto high 60s, and went down to 56.

We use to have a crappy property management company, but we recently changed to cheaper management who does better job.

[sniper7]

Well it was the only choice at the time. Never again. Some people are afforded enough time to shop around for months. Some work too much.

we were in kind of the same boat. We could either get a HUD home that had potential problems, never knew what it would end up looking like until the current residents moved out....or a brand new home in an HOA but we got to pick everything and have it built the way we wanted, up to standards, with a warranty and worked in lots of extras.

[BigDee]

Holy shit, am I the only one who has a problem with that? Bsically that exempts the local govt. from doing what they are supposed to do and allows a private party to levy a tax against the citizens of their community (private homeowners) without any oversight?

It gets worse.

My wife and I spent over a year house hunting and despite the fact that it was a buyers market we had a tough time finding what we wanted. We were within inches of building a new home in the Wheatlands subdivision (SE Aurora/Centennial) until we found out that they had two HOA's. There is a community HOA (private) and a metro HOA (city). When all is said and done you are paying $85 a month in HOA dues for what they claim to be maintenance of all of the wonderful facilities offered to the residents; a pool is not one of those facilities.

As if the HOA due's aren't bad enough check into the property taxes of newly built subdivisions. City and county government's now allow builders to take bonds out to pay for the roads, street lights and etc. the bonds end up as levies in the form of property taxes. When you buy a new home you assume that the cost of all of the roads and etc. were built into the cost of the home but that is wrong and the sales guy at the new home office will tell you that property tax is 1% which is an out and out lie. New homes now run close to 2%+ for property tax alone. If you purchase a $300K home expect to pay close to $6K in property tax and $85 a month in HOA's. None of that property tax money or HOA money will be recovered when you go to resale your home.

[stevelkinevil]

HOA's and their insidious takeover of all metropolitan housing is why I refuse to buy a house till I can move into the middle of nowhere. However lately it seems now you have POA's (property owner assoc.) I rented a house in an HOA once, and because I dont want this to be a novel I will not go into the outrageous nature of their rule. Bunch of busybodys in a poorly run beurocracy whom have control over your property. I cannot for the life of me fathom how we as Americans allowed this takeover of our communities. (oh that's right it started where all communist anti-liberty movements start, Komifornia)

[GilpinGuy]

I am going to go season some pork shoulder, get the smoker ready and sip some Crown.

We'd get along just fine. I just smoked up 10 lbs. of bacon today.

Wait...does your HOA allow you to emit smoke of any kind?

[Irving]

HOAs are out of control for the same reason that government is out of control. People generally can't be bothered to be involved. I see the signs for the HOA meetings every month and think, "I should go to that and give those bastards a piece of my mind!" but I never go, because I just plan to move instead.

Personally, I think that HOA need to be 100% auditable by the public, and all money collected should be kept in a reserve fund for when things get damaged and need to be replaced. Have enough money in the reserve fund and nothing damaged that year? No fees next year.

The HOA at my place just got switched to some clowns that hire their friends and over pay them. Also, we have an issue where the brick veneer has fallen off of several buildings because it was not installed correctly. Now, EVERY passage way between buildings has been chained off for going on two years now while they wait on a settlement with the builder. You can't even get to any of the "common areas" because the access points are chained off. If the HOA would save monthly fees instead of paying their friends to do who knows what, certainly not repave the parking lot, pick up trash, fix the bird screen on my chimney, or mow the lawn more than once a month, then maybe they could have already fixed the buildings for the residents while being tied up in court. Not to mention that two summers ago they came around and told everyone that all the buildings were going to get new roofs.

[Zundfolge]

Never had an HOA never will. You chose to live in an area where there is one. This is why we always buy in older neighborhoods.

That and mature trees.

HOAs are out of control for the same reason that government is out of control. People generally can't be bothered to be involved.

That and they WANT to be able to tell their neighbors when to mow and what color they can paint their house (as I'm sure well see from the posts defending HOAs that may follow).

I live in a non-HOA area and yes, we have a couple neighbors that don't take care for their own property as well as I'd like but that's just it it's THEIR property. However for the most part our neighbors do just fine without all the nannystaters and busybodies (and most of the ones that don't are old widows ... who wants to hassle old widows on a fixed income? Authoritarians do, that's who ... a pox on them).