Tell me about your HOA's

katiewhompus · September 2010

I'm curious about HOA's around the knottie world. Most of my friends complain endlessly about theirs, and how they can't do anything with their property without going through long HOA permissions, permits, etc.
Mine is pretty low key. The things we aren't allowed to do are build a fence around your front door (safety reasons, has to end at the side of the house), leave your trash can in front of your house, and some other minor things. We pay less than $200 a year for ours.

Tell me about yours.

kimheartsscott · September 2010

We pay almost $200 a month for one, and over $200 quarterly for the other. Yep. We have 2 HOAs.

It is a source of never ending annoyance from me in Scott's general direction.

SarahPLiz · September 2010

We live in a condo, so its a little different, but I did have an HOA in my other house.

Here, we pay your yearly dues, per month. That pays for the landscaping, pool maintenance (kept very well), insurance and maintenance on the outside of the building (foundation, parking lots, gates, etc), garbage and water. I don't mind how much it is because everything is very well kept. We had to make some major foundation repairs to part of the complex this year, so there was an additional special assessment. They are very transparent regarding the financials and we can request them at any time, even between monthly meetings.

At my old house, I paid $80/year. All they did was cut the grass in common areas, like near the mailboxes, and send letters if your yard was messy. I didn't find them particularly useful, but I could easily ignore the $80/year.

katiewhompus · September 2010

Holy crap, that's a lot of HOA money.

SarahPLiz · September 2010

Yes it is. We made sure to factor it into our mortgage budget when we were looking for a place. But ours includes a lot, and if we lived in a house we'd probably pay that much in insurance, maintenance, and water every month, even without the pool.

Blueyed228 · September 2010

sorry i read this wrong and thought it was home owners insurance.

comprehension fail.

Blueyed228 · September 2010

We dont have HOA. Well not that I am aware of. We can do whatever we want.

kd.joseph · September 2010

DH specifically stayed away from any houses that required paying a HOA.

Although we have one that butts up to our property that send us mail requesting money every year, that doesn't benefit us in any way. My neighbors b!tch about it also. We don't pay and they cant make us.

zippityb · September 2010

My HOA is comprised of a-holes who like to spend my dues on sending me certified mail about the state of my yard. I pay $680 a year, which is a lot around here, but my neighborhood is small. They promised us the first year we lived here that they would do a brick fence along a back street here (I would benefit from this), but it's never happened. We still have crappy wood fences that were probably erected to be only temporary. I lose a picket just about every other month. There are two homes that back up to T intersections that have had cars drive through those fences multiple times.

Wrkn925 · September 2010

This isn't a HOA, but a Historic Society.

We rent and share a house with a couple who are great friends of ours. It's a college town, and common to buy a huge house and rent rooms out.

They were from California and were kind of swindled in this purchase. They were told that this was a historic house, but not that the historic society was a bunch of idiots that rule the area.
They pay nothing for being in the historic society, there is no way out, and they had no option of being included.
The historic society says they cannot replace the windows unless they are done in a historic fashion. They had put energy efficient windows in, but the historic society found out, gave them a warning, and told them they'd be charged $? a day if they didn't put the old windows in, or have windows made that atleast looked historic.
They can't put up a fence, install central heat/air, remodel, etc., without approval from the historical society. It took months of fighting with the board to be able to build their deck.
HS doesn't care about expense, and does not offer incentives for upkeep. Therefore, many homowners have had to let the properties just degrade because it costs so much to repair within their demands.

Good ole boys fail. I'm hoping the HS will crumble soon, like they've made the early 1900s homes that they did a crappy job of preserving.

tidetravel · September 2010

If a house is in a HOA area, I will purposely look elsewhere.

thesuninherhead · September 2010

Can someone clarify what HOA is? Council regulations or landlord regulations, or something similar?

thesuninherhead · September 2010

Or, what we call body corporate for villas and apartments that are in complexes?

katiewhompus · September 2010

Home Owners Association. Basically a board who make decisions about the community as a whole. This was the only house we looked at that had one, but the house is worth the little fees we have to pay.

tidetravel · September 2010

HOAs = home owners associations. In my experience, it's usually a group of asshats that think that they own your property. You pay dues, to contribute to the upkeep of the community. In return, they have a long list of stupid rules that you have to obey, or else you risk being issued massive fines. If you ignore the fines, they can put a lien on your house. A lot of times, residents use HOAs to hash out personel vendettas

Rules can include: regulations on height/type of fences, what color you can paint your house, how high your grass can get, the type of mailbox that you can have, etc.

Nebb · September 2010

In Response to <a href="http://forums.theknot.com/Sites/theknot/Pages/Main.aspx/wedding-boards_snarky-brides_tell-hoas?plckFindPostKey=Cat:Wedding%20BoardsForum:17Discussion:c19541ee-2fa4-4ed0-ba5a-a2b240a66a8bPost:0961ba7c-1d4f-4be2-bca6-d1982d666602">Re: Tell me about your HOA's</a>:
[QUOTE]If a house is in a HOA area, I will purposely look elsewhere.
Posted by tidetravel[/QUOTE]
Thats what im thinking - ive never heard of these other than with condo's and they sound like a pain in the ass. Why would you live in a place where you are limited to what you can do on/with your own property like that?

thesuninherhead · September 2010

Ahh, I understand what you mean. I don't think that H and I have that here (and certainly, no one pays any money unless they're living in a set of villas/apartments, in which case they a pay body corporate who generally maintains the grounds of the area) and functions in the way described by tide. I know that when my parents were building their house, their estate had rules around what type of driveways they could have (no plain concrete allowed) and what style fencing. As far as I'm aware, there's no such regulations where we live (aside from the council regulations, which are basically just about getting proper approvals for building and the like).

LesPaul · September 2010

$450 a month, CS? Holy crap. Ours is $20 a month, and they manage the greenway maintenance, snow removal, and lighting. (The greenway is the area behind my house - our back neighbor's fence is about 20 feet from ours - with walking paths, playgrounds, and common areas for the neighborhood). They can be a pain, since I'm supposed to go to them before I paint the house or make any improvements, and it is easy to go to them to complain about anything neighbors are doing.

smokyhills · September 2010

Nebb - think some of the Niagara Greenbelt legislations regarding land usage, severance, upkeep, etc, that have come in lately, only about 1,000 times worse. The consumerist posts about them fairly often.

vegasgroom · September 2010

HOA's f'ing suck. You all know about mine from the other thread where they're trying to make me get rid of my pickup. That one is about $100/month which covers mowing the grass in the common areas and the rest goes into savings for street repairs because in Tampa Florida, if you gate your community, the city considers your street private and no longer has to maintain it with tax money, so we have to save a ton of cash for the 10 or 15 year repaving of the roads through the community.

My previous house is about $150/month and not gated, but they include lawn care so you don't have to do anything yard-related yourself. My mom lives in that house now so I still have to deal with those a-holes even though I don't live there anymore. An example of that HOA; I replaced the airconditioning unit out back behind the house but left the old one there because I didn't have a chance to haul it to the city dump or a metal recycler. The unit was BEHIND the house and the house butts up against conservation, so there is no way for anyone to see this a/c unit unless they go behind the house. Well, I get a letter to remove it. I wrote back and said I'd like to know who was tresspassing on my property since unless the HOA was doing surveys by helicopter there would not be any way to know this 'violation' existed without tresspassing. They showed me, there is a clause in the bylaws that allow representatives of the HOA to come on your property to look for violations. So evidently some asshole busy body took it upon themselves to walk on my property and around the back of the house looking for violations; serious.

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