Times When The Homeowner’s Association Ruined Everything

Moving to live in a Homeowner’s Association (or HOA) may seem like a good idea in theory. Every home looks neat and tidy, and the community is more pleasant as a result, right?

That’s not always the case, though, as some HOAs can end up feeling more like a gang than a friendly neighborhood committee. Here are some true life stories from times when Homeowner’s Associations ruined everything.

Splash Zone

My wifes aunt and uncle live in an HOA neighborhood. Their current problem is that the ground is higher than their 1st level and it’s slopped towards a group of condos. Every time is rains bad, their condos flood. They don’t have basements.

HOA won’t do anything and it seems a few of their residents are lawyering up. This has happened since they put in a storm drain and for some reason it backs up into their common area which is behind the group of condos. bwalz87

Proactive

I was putting on new siding… very obviously too, had ladders up and everything. But there was just plywood up one morning on part of my house, facing the street.

I got a knock on the door at 7:30 AM, a code enforcement officer (in uniform, looking vaguely like a cop) was visibly upset and acting like I’d taken a dump on the front sidewalk or something. Told me if I didn’t have the siding up by the end of the day I’d start getting fined every day. SanchoMandoval

Revenge is Sweet

I love reading contracts and agreements so when a friend of mine told me about his HOA troubles and not letting him keep his boat behind his house I jumped on the opportunity.

After reading, sourcing and finding a few rulings I learned that they have very little power to enforce what they can’t see from the road (which affects property value). He took my documentation to the HOA and requested that they remove his fines.

They refused saying “the agreement says nag nag nag” and after a few months he finally paid a real estate lawyer $2000 to go talk circles around the HOA and they finally backed down removed his fines and allowed him to keep his boat.

Then out of pure spite and with my design we built a 40’ tall “temporary” structure, conforming to both the HOA agreement and building code to fly a flag on a further 25’ pole.

We took it down and put it back up every 3 months for a year. You could see it from almost anywhere in the neighborhood.. It was a real triumph and IT WAS HIDEOUS!! taylorm92

Lien in the Sand

HOA “lost” paperwork for change of ownership when we bought our house. They sent us letters saying there would be a lien placed on our home if we didn’t pay the overdue amounts plus over $200 of late fees. I had to call them 3 times to even get someone on the phone who knew how to help me.

Then I contacted escrow who said they had already not only sent all the paperwork, but turns out we had already paid the fees. Called HOA again and they were insistent that we hadn’t paid or sent over paperwork.

Called escrow again and requested they contact the HOA themselves to sort this out and HOA still insisted we owed a late fee. Started losing my cool until escrow said they would pay the late fee.

A month later we got a letter in the mail saying we were being fined for leaving our trash bins out longer than necessary. sneakypandas