Home owner’s association. Neighborhoods have common needs such as landscaping and other infrastructure that doesn’t fall in someone’s property. In theory these make sense, you have a group of people who set guidelines to keep the neighborhood nice. However, what often ends up happening is the group pushes their own agendas and it is no longer for the common good.
To elaborate for the curious, basically a community sets up a committee that will handle these things. You would normally pay HOA fees to cover things like paying for the streetlights in a private community, the pool or fitness center, or whatever a long those lines. Basically for a private community it’s a way to say “Hey, we need some things done to keep things nice, everyone pay in so the flowers look good this year”. Normally, not a bad idea. There are usually two things that go wrong though. One, the money is mismanaged and/or people are heavily overcharged and the extra money disappears.
The other is that HOAs also have rules for the community to keep things orderly on their own property. No cars in your yard, no blaring music after 9pm, etc. But you hear about a lot of cases where this stuff gets out of hand and suddenly people are getting fined for having trash cans out too long or the wrong colored curtains.
Because of this, people have justifiably built up a lot of hate for HOAs. Imagine buying a house, your own property, then paying +$100 a month to keep the neighborhood nice, then some picky Karen comes by to tell you that you can’t hang up your sports team flag and if you don’t take it down they’ll fine you $50 a day.
It’s worse than the just Karens. If you don’t pay the fines they will put a lien on your property and eventually evict you. This has created a strong market pressure towards swindling people out of their places. Financial groups that manage HOAs wholesale are now the norm and they love encouraging Karens to generate nonsense rules and report offenders… They get a cut of either the fine or the home sale sand get to play the role faceless enforcer. There are no regulations on how high fines can go, nor how high LATE FEES on those fines can go, nor how soon “late” is.
We are way past the time when HOAs were harmless funny people hyperfocusing on lawns… It’s a predatory business now.
My wife was telling me a story about her friends friend, who lives in an HOA neighborhood and had a big tree that was rotting in their yard and was causing concern about it falling over. Apparently they went to the hoa for approval to cut it down and they said no for one reason or another, then started fining them for it. Then a while after they collected a good deal of money off the fines said they could cut it down but they had to use a specific company who happened to be owned by a relative of the head of the hoa and charged them a lot more than they should have.
This story was passed down the lane and I don’t even know the couple, but it doesn’t sound far fetched.
Additionally, they set rules about really nitpicky things like house paint color, mail box standardization, how often you mow and water your lawn, what kind of holiday decorations you can have and when they can be up, whether you store your trash cans in a way that is visible from the street when it’s not collection day, guests parking on the street too often, that kind of thing. They can fine or even kick you out of your house for violations.
Sorry, but for the non-americans, what is HOA?
Home owner’s association. Neighborhoods have common needs such as landscaping and other infrastructure that doesn’t fall in someone’s property. In theory these make sense, you have a group of people who set guidelines to keep the neighborhood nice. However, what often ends up happening is the group pushes their own agendas and it is no longer for the common good.
To elaborate for the curious, basically a community sets up a committee that will handle these things. You would normally pay HOA fees to cover things like paying for the streetlights in a private community, the pool or fitness center, or whatever a long those lines. Basically for a private community it’s a way to say “Hey, we need some things done to keep things nice, everyone pay in so the flowers look good this year”. Normally, not a bad idea. There are usually two things that go wrong though. One, the money is mismanaged and/or people are heavily overcharged and the extra money disappears. The other is that HOAs also have rules for the community to keep things orderly on their own property. No cars in your yard, no blaring music after 9pm, etc. But you hear about a lot of cases where this stuff gets out of hand and suddenly people are getting fined for having trash cans out too long or the wrong colored curtains.
Because of this, people have justifiably built up a lot of hate for HOAs. Imagine buying a house, your own property, then paying +$100 a month to keep the neighborhood nice, then some picky Karen comes by to tell you that you can’t hang up your sports team flag and if you don’t take it down they’ll fine you $50 a day.
It’s worse than the just Karens. If you don’t pay the fines they will put a lien on your property and eventually evict you. This has created a strong market pressure towards swindling people out of their places. Financial groups that manage HOAs wholesale are now the norm and they love encouraging Karens to generate nonsense rules and report offenders… They get a cut of either the fine or the home sale sand get to play the role faceless enforcer. There are no regulations on how high fines can go, nor how high LATE FEES on those fines can go, nor how soon “late” is.
We are way past the time when HOAs were harmless funny people hyperfocusing on lawns… It’s a predatory business now.
My wife was telling me a story about her friends friend, who lives in an HOA neighborhood and had a big tree that was rotting in their yard and was causing concern about it falling over. Apparently they went to the hoa for approval to cut it down and they said no for one reason or another, then started fining them for it. Then a while after they collected a good deal of money off the fines said they could cut it down but they had to use a specific company who happened to be owned by a relative of the head of the hoa and charged them a lot more than they should have.
This story was passed down the lane and I don’t even know the couple, but it doesn’t sound far fetched.
Additionally, they set rules about really nitpicky things like house paint color, mail box standardization, how often you mow and water your lawn, what kind of holiday decorations you can have and when they can be up, whether you store your trash cans in a way that is visible from the street when it’s not collection day, guests parking on the street too often, that kind of thing. They can fine or even kick you out of your house for violations.
What is a group of Karens called?
A homeowners association.
Home Owners Association