The board rules, by covenant.
They decide what will, and will not be enforced as they are the expression of the majority of the HOA.
The chances of recovery from a poorly run HOA are minimal. Expect to pay a lot of money hourly to an attorney to try and go after them and anticipate very little return.
Big mistake the last time I hired an atty. The Lawyer was worse than the party I was suing. Ran up a big fee then abandoned me!!
“LegalAid”
Talk to local realtors. Ones who know your subdivision. It could very well be that realtors know of those problems and are reluctant to send potential buyers there. Perhaps those Realtors also know of local real estate attorneys you might talk to.
I’m not an attorney but I suggest you mention the general area you live so attornies in the vicinity know.
Don’t hire any lawyer that doesn’t tell you up front that it’s going to cost you a fortune (perhaps more than your property is worth), that you will be helping pay the other side’s lawyer in addition to your own, and you will likely lose. If that sounds attractive to you, look for a lawyer that is an expert on the issues - perhaps at one of the better law schools in your state.
A better strategy is to try to get together a group to take over the board seats as elections are held. You have to beat them at their own game. Or find someone socially undesirable to sell to and take your losses.
You need an attorney that specializes in real estate litigation. If you are in North Carolina, I can recommend one to you. If not, ask the closing attorney that handled your purchase transaction of the name of the best real estate litigation attorney they know. That will be the one you want.
If I may ask, what are the conditions that are scaring away the buyers that the HOA is turning a blind eye to?
Also - what kind of HOA are we talking about here? Age-restricted development, condo/PUD, or something else?
(I work in a real estate related business that occasionally involves homes in various types of HOAs and I am genuinely curious).
Please put your state flag on your profile.
And let us know what city, state you are in.
Have you sold the house for less than assessed value? Do you have certified appraisals and a home sale for less than these values? If not, you have no loss to seek remedy over. You have potential losses.
And honestly, a very very long road with little chance of recovering the legal fees, much less recovering your loss. Turn your issue into a boon - you have a home subject to HOA that obviously doesn’t much care to enforce the rules, so new buyers won’t have to worry much about issues from the HOA.
Start breaking your HOA agreement in as blatant and as many ways as you can until you get their attention.
Then you’ll have their attention. Have a plan for that.
Four things:
The most important thing is to read your H OA agreement, in which case you may very well find that your single option to legally attack the HOA may very well be limited to arbitration, also known as binding arbitration, which means to say that that is your only option.
Second, I believe it would be very difficult to quantify your damages, which means to say that your possibilities of recovering said damages become rather weak.
Third, most HOAs are rather underfunded, and that means there is a fixed pot of money, and that means that if you actually do go to a lawyer the lawyer for the HOA will figure out a way to charge enough hours to take all the money out of the HOA fund to the extent that there will be essentially nothing left for you.
Lastly from the tone of your question I’m going to go ahead and make the assumption that you have not launched lawsuits against people or entities. What I’m going to say is, that there is almost nothing that you can do other than having open heart surgery, that is so expensive, so frustrating and will so consume your resources than such a lawsuit. I speak from personal experience. Courtrooms are for losers. Most cases settle because the parties to the lawsuit simply can no longer stand putting out so much money to continue the litigation. And any lawyer will tell you exactly the same thing. You might just as well sit down at a table take out a stack of $100 bills and set them on fire. On the other hand, returning to the topic of arbitration, I would instead consider Consulting with a professional arbitrator to see if he or she might be amenable to working with you. That might cost 2500 to $3,500. To get an actual lawyer interested in your case who is of any competence will cost you $20,000 just to start.
You need a lawyer versed in real estate law.
You need $400 per hour and the yellow pages. Go get’em tiger. Attorneys don’t take cases on altruism. They charge big bucks with no guaranty of outcome. You got the money, honey? They got the time. Good luck.
My take on attorneys in general.....they are similar to politicians.
Most lawyers are not as wetted to winning as they are to getting paid. Without seeing them in action, it’s a crapshoot. To best serve the client, they must have an emotional attachment to either the client or the lawsuit. And the intellect to win. Interview prospective lawyers instead of them interviewing you.
Trump wins because he believes in winning and America. Politicians only care about reelection. Big difference in results.......
The Facebook thing is a federal crime.
The HOAthing of enforcement has little chance of success, but you can sue to leave the HOA for breach and equitable estoppel.
my advice is to never seek legal (nor medical or psychological) advice on a an Internet message forum.
Threaten to rent your property out to the scummiest bunch of low lives you can find if you don’t get some remedy. Then do it!