Bought my first home...but it has a HOA...

So the thing about HOAs is that the power is concentrated in a few people, the ones who care enough to run for the board, get elected, and then show up to the meetings.  Most owners have no interest, never go to meetings, and as long as the dues don't go up too quickly will just vote the incumbents back into office every time.  Unfortunately, some of the time the people who care enough to run for the board are the ones who are petty fascists -- the ones who have nothing better to do with their spare time than decide what color their neighbors are allowed to paint things.  This is where the HOA horror stories come from.

So if you decide to live in an HOA neighborhood, one way to protect yourself is to get involved.  Run for the board and work to keep it reasonable to try to keep those other types in check.  If it's a new development they presumably don't have a board yet, so you might be well-positioned to get in at the start.

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

So the thing about HOAs is that the power is concentrated in a few people, the ones who care enough to run for the board, get elected, and then show up to the meetings.  Most owners have no interest, never go to meetings, and as long as the dues don't go up too quickly will just vote the incumbents back into office every time.  Unfortunately, some of the time the people who care enough to run for the board are the ones who are petty fascists -- the ones who have nothing better to do with their spare time than decide what color their neighbors are allowed to paint things.  This is where the HOA horror stories come from.

So if you decide to live in an HOA neighborhood, one way to protect yourself is to get involved.  Run for the board and work to keep it reasonable to try to keep those other types in check.  If it's a new development they presumably don't have a board yet, so you might be well-positioned to get in at the start.

 

What does being on the board entail and how much time commitment would come from my end? I honestly never even thought about joining the board, and never looked into anything related to it. I do know the "preliminary" board will be some of the developers' employees, who will then hand it off to the owners of the townhomes after construction of the neighborhood is complete.

Japanspec said:

What does being on the board entail and how much time commitment would come from my end? I honestly never even thought about joining the board, and never looked into anything related to it. I do know the "preliminary" board will be some of the developers' employees, who will then hand it off to the owners of the townhomes after construction of the neighborhood is complete.

I have only lived in one house with an HOA, and was never on the board so I can't say exactly.  I did go to meetings somewhat regularly, they were once a month and took an hour or two.  This was 20 years ago and they held the meetings using rented space in a church across the street from the development, but I expect most HOA meetings are online these days.  My impression was that the time commitment for the board members was enough to be noticeable, but nothing like a full-time job.  Say 5-10 hours/month?

The association I lived in hired a management company to do most of the actual work, stuff like common area landscaping and pool maintenance as well as providing accounting services and collecting payments.   The board was a decision-making body, they reviewed reports from the management company, approved budgets, fee increases, and made rules.  I'm told this sort of arrangement is common, but the management company needs to be independent, not owned by one of the board members or anything like that.

A big drawback of buying in an HOA when its new construction, is that the builder dictates the monthly payment for a period of 2 years or so. They then pass over that power to the owners and you realize they were subsidizing the payment and the new payment needed skyrockets. So, if your monthly payment is somewhat low now, get ready for when the builder is gone. 

In reply to Japanspec :

It depends on the bylaws of the HOA, get a copy of them and read them. We send a letter once a year, collect dues annually, respond to mortgage companies about any outstanding dues if a property sells and some small maintenance and management tasks. We probably spend about 4 hours a year related to HOA tasks.

Page 2 and we haven't uploaded the Petty/Earnhardt HOA burnout picture?

TJL (Forum Supporter) said:

RacetruckRon said:

I'm praying for you it's not a DR Horton house.

we have dr horton house farms down here.  I assume the quality is lacking, but my first issue with them is the lot size, 0.11 acre lots!  On the side with the ac unit, you cannot walk around the ac and stay on your property. 

The houses being built around me all have issues. Maronda is the builder. Stupid mistakes that should have been found. But at least we dont have an Hoa. 
 

get on the board for the hoa, its the only way to keep it reasonable. 

What's wrong with DR Horton houses? The one we have was built by Pulte but we are surrounded by DR Horton subdivisions. DR Horton's corporate headquarters used to be in the same building where I worked in Downtown Fort Worth but I think they are in Arlington now. They also have a huge office down the road from us in Rowlett. They look like every other suburban crackerbox out here. I have actually seen worse. Mega Homes for one.

Datsun310Guy said:

Page 2 and we haven't uploaded the Petty/Earnhardt HOA burnout picture?

Ah a relevant classic:

In reply to GameboyRMH :

Totally that.

When I was on the board, our biggest project was a repainting. As these were townhomes, all had to be painted at the same time and in the same color. So we had to find a vendor, deal with assessments, etc. 

Here's a link to Condo Smarts a newspaper column that is about Strata Corporations which are Apartments, Townhouses, and bare land stratas which are most similar to HOA's in BC. All laws referred to are British Columbia and YMMV. I followed the column over the years and it has helped form my perception of Strata Corps.

https://choa.bc.ca/resources/newspaper-columns/condo-smarts/

It's astonishing to me how many people DON'T READ their covenants, then complain about the HOA "abusing their power", even though they are enforcing the covenants each owner already agreed to.  I'll bet well over 90% of people never read the covenants and have no idea what the guidelines are. Yikes!

Japanspec, you'll be fine. You are clearly a respectful person who isn't going to try to be a jerk.  Keep it in check, be a good neighbor, and serve on the board if you are so inclined. 
 

Congratulations on becoming a homeowner!

David S. Wallens said:

We’ve lived with an HOA since moving to this neighborhood back in 1996.

When I moved here, our BMW 318ti race car lived in my care. I was also like 25 years old.

We actually had two HOAs: the “main” one for the entire neighborhood and then the local one for our little group of townhomes.

So I got on the board for the local one.

Turns out that most people think race cars are cool. It wasn’t loud, and I did my best to be a good neighbor. 

I think if most people stuck to the rule of "Don't be a dick" a lot of this stuff wouldn't even matter. Although I would be lying if I didn't want an HOA at my previous house. People with derelict cars, broken BBQ grills, etc, in the front yard. 

Don't really have to worry about an HOA at the current place here in OKC, code enforcement is on your A$$ before you realize. A few years my dad came down and needed to do some work on his van, I parked the 135i in the grass next to the driveways because I didn't want to park it in the street. 30 minutes later had someone from Code Enforcement to tell me it wasn't allowed to have a car in the grass. 

SV reX said:

It's astonishing to me how many people DON'T READ their covenants, then complain about the HOA "abusing their power", even though they are enforcing the covenants each owner already agreed to.  I'll bet we'll over 90% of people never read the covenants and have no idea what the guidelines are. Yikes!

Japanspec, you'll be fine. You are clearly a respectful person who isn't going to try to be a jerk.  Keep it in check, be a good neighbor, and serve on the board if you are so inclined. 
 

Congratulations on becoming a homeowner!

Yep. The same goes for people not reading their insurance policies. 

Like others have said, it's mostly who makes up the community and sets on the HOA board who sets the tone. 

My in-laws have a condo in Sarasota and it's 95% retirees even though it's not a 55+. I've never seen people try to control your life like they do.  As soon as we (a family of 5 with 3 kids) show up we get: "How long ya in town for???"  This is not friendly small talk.  They want to know when we are leaving so they can be aware of when the tortuous sound of children playing will be over.  Some more good ones. "Don't park like that, park like this."  "Where you going to dinner?" followed by "Oh god that's a terrible place to go."  Or instructions of what to/not to wash down the sink, how the trash pickup works - and doesn't work! The rules of the swimming pool.  It just goes on and on and on.

Another big rule is no non-immediate family can use the condo solo.  Ever.  So friends can't go there alone.  I really want to have someone ask me who I'm staying with there again, since this is already happened to me once before, so I can say I'm saying at the AirBnB just to see the look of horror on their face and walk away quickly. 

Sorry, long rant, but the moral of the story is to not move into an HOA that is full of old people who are retired.  

I lived in an HOA neighborhood at one point which had been built in 2 phases.  The old part of the neighborhood, and the new part (20 years later).  The old part was 2/3 of the houses (bigger, and worth more), and the new part was 1/3.  I lived in the new part.

There was a lovely little lake in the middle of the old part.  The covenants were identical except for the lot numbers.  Both covenants said they were in "Hidden Lakes", but the old covenant tied together lots 1-100, and the new part tied together lots 101-150.

At some point someone decided it would be a good idea to annex them together.  "Would it be nice to all be 1 neighborhood?".  The problem was the lake...

The lake was a place where a kid could drown, and insurance and maintenance of the dam was expensive. The old owners wanted to split the cost among 150 houses.

I showed up at the annexation meetings and said "No thanks. I don't want to own a lake, or have responsibility for it. It's nearly a mile from my house and it doesn't contribute to my property value at all".  I also didn't want our new part of the neighborhood to be out-voted 2:1 every time there was an issue we needed to decide. 
 

What a mess. They called me every name in the book.  They yelled at me.   They demonized me. But in doing so they also showed all my neighbors in the new neighborhood what they were made of. 
 

The annexation never happened.  

z31maniac said:

Yep. The same goes for people not reading their insurance policies. 

Keep in mind that you're not just signing up for the rules that exist when you buy the house, you're also agreeing to whatever rules the board decides to add later.  Sure, there's some kind of vote required to add rules, but most of the homeowners are so disintestered in the process that it only takes a couple people on the board to push things through.

In reply to mtn :

There are some HOAs that are reasonable.  I have lately been reading more and more about hinky goings on over sketchy book keeping.    I'm no so sure it wouldn't be a good thing to get elected to the HOA board to keep an eye on things.  I just wouldn't want to be financially responsible for their negligence.    

codrus (Forum Supporter) said:

z31maniac said:

Yep. The same goes for people not reading their insurance policies. 

Keep in mind that you're not just signing up for the rules that exist when you buy the house, you're also agreeing to whatever rules the board decides to add later.  Sure, there's some kind of vote required to add rules, but most of the homeowners are so disintestered in the process that it only takes a couple people on the board to push things through.

 

I understand that sometimes people get overly zealous about this, but the "rules" are actually deeded covenants, which rarely change.

Yes, the covenants include  the ability to be interpreted, but ultimately the guiding legal document is the covenants tied to the deed and properly recorded.  They aren't easy to change. 
 

Everyone should read their covenants. 

Yes, read the covenants and pay your dues.

Our house was repoed by the HOA many, many years ago because the owner stopped paying the dues. I have all the paperwork but haven’t had the time/desire to read it.

Now, the plus side of our HOA: It’s a pretty clean, cool, desirable place to live, and the values reflect that fact.  

Thanks guys for all your insight. I honestly am going to try my best to be a good neighbor, and I dont like to start disputes with people so I think as long as I keep things cordial, I should be okay. The car isnt earth shattering loud, but I mean you can definitely tell its not stock.

Also, I went to go check out my lot today because I was bored, and as I was standing there I hear the sound of a private jet taking off behind me, and let me tell you, my car has nothing on the sound coming from that jet!

In reply to Japanspec :

Don't worry.  All the other buyers of homes near an airport will complain enough to shut the airport down.

Stampie said:

In reply to Japanspec :

Don't worry.  All the other buyers of homes near an airport will complain enough to shut the airport down.

I sure hope not...that airport has been there for years, and I remember going there as a kid to watch the Cessnas, Beechcrafts, and Gulfstreams take off. :( I would actually hate for it to shut down.

I've lived with 3 HOA's and 2 of the 3 were fine. The one in the postage stamp zero-lot-line neighborhood were a bunch of tyrants. They complained about my car (quiet stock exhaust and stereo, but older with faded paint) constantly, and if it was in the same spot in the driveway for more than 48 hours without moving, I was almost certainly gonna have one of the neighborhood's shiny happy people stop by with an off duty cop so I'd have to prove that the car was running and driving so that I wasn't in violation of the covenants. (Non running vehicles could only be stored inside the garage with the door closed). They knew the car was running and driving, they just liked to harass me because it needed a paint job and they wanted me to buy a new car to stop pulling down their property values. I was renting, and I got out of there as fast as I could. They can all go berkley themselves with their ornamental cacti.

My current HOA I love, and gladly pay the dues, attend meetings, and keep up with the email chain. They're all cool and respectful and unless you're breaking a county ordnance, they don't worry about what you're doing. My wife was on the board for 4 years, and total time commitment was less than 1 hr/ month. We have 2 meetings a year, and dues pay for the food we eat at the meetings.

Snowdoggie (Forum Supporter) said:

TJL (Forum Supporter) said:

RacetruckRon said:

I'm praying for you it's not a DR Horton house.

we have dr horton house farms down here.  I assume the quality is lacking, but my first issue with them is the lot size, 0.11 acre lots!  On the side with the ac unit, you cannot walk around the ac and stay on your property. 

The houses being built around me all have issues. Maronda is the builder. Stupid mistakes that should have been found. But at least we dont have an Hoa. 
 

get on the board for the hoa, its the only way to keep it reasonable. 

What's wrong with DR Horton houses? The one we have was built by Pulte but we are surrounded by DR Horton subdivisions. DR Horton's corporate headquarters used to be in the same building where I worked in Downtown Fort Worth but I think they are in Arlington now. They also have a huge office down the road from us in Rowlett. They look like every other suburban crackerbox out here. I have actually seen worse. Mega Homes for one.

Lot size, rude sales people, cracked foundations, windows installed out of level, 1/4" gaps in door trim and crown molding, stained carpet, improperly installed electrical boxes, pop cans/soda bottles tossed inside the drywall. Just a few things I noticed on a couple walk throughs 2.5 years ago when we were first looking at houses in SC.

In reply to RacetruckRon :

It seems like the "inventory homes" that dont have a buyer yet are really thrown together. All the builders are cutting corners. If there is a buying checking up, maybe they try to do a better job(or just threaten the buying with trespassing and keep doing crummy work).  
 

there is a few inventory homes being built that the trusses sat out in the weather for probably 6 months or more. They were sitting in water, color washed out from the sun, black mold growing on them, etc. and they 100% threw those up and used em. 
 

the new thing here is buying/building the worst lots. The flooded ones that are genuine swamps. They have some loophole to re-asses the "wetlands".  They are taking literal swamps, i mean standing water most of the year, muddy, HUGE CYPRESS TREES!  They even burried a huge excavator a few streets over in a swamp.  it took weeks before they could extract it. They call it "de-mucking".  The houses will have standing water against the foundations come rainy season. And the septic tanks are supposed to work. Gonna be hard to get those to work when they are BELOW the water table.  
this is all stuff that i hope a prospective buyer might avoid, but they are not around during building so they wont know.