Posted on 02/11/2013 12:50:46 PM PST by OKRA2012
A confrontation over a political sign and a community's Home Owners Association has occupied four years and nearly half a million dollars in legal fees.
(Excerpt) Read more at global.christianpost.com ...
Not a fan of HOA’s. That’s why I don’t live in a subdivision. :)
Did someone force you to move into a neighborhood with an HOA?
You sign a contract when you buy a house.
It is that contract, and what is in the deed for the house you are buying, that puts you in an HOA relationship. It isn’t the “government”.
And if you can be foreclosed on, it is because of the terms of that contract.
On the other hand, there is probably a local government where the house is, and when you buy the house, you also end up in a relationship with that local government, which could have the power to foreclose on your house if you don’t pay property taxes.
And it’s not really possible to not end up living where there is government. I guess you could buy your own island, although most islands are also considered within the boundaries of some country which will have a government. It’s not easy to own your own country.
I know we don’t have the power, and I’m not sure any HOA has the power, to actually “confiscate” property. I guess if you file a lien for unpaid obligations, and the homeowner can’t make good on the liens, that at some point a court might order a sale of the property to cover the debt. But that’s what happens when you get in debt — if you incur debt due to a contract, and refuse to pay, you could eventually lose something.
I don’t know — maybe you think that if a car dealer sells you a car with a car loan, and you stop paying the loan, that they shouldn’t be allowed to take your car from you. Or if a worker fixes your roof, and you don’t pay, they shouldn’t be allowed to attach a lien to your property (that is actually the norm for HOAs, you file a lien and when the house eventually sells, you get paid from the proceeds).
Anyway, I don’t know what your beef is with private contractual obligations. Or how you think a neighborhood with something like a common pool is supposed to manage that pool without dues or a way to set rules and regulations for the use of the pool for everybody’s benefit. There were people who thought communes would just work, that people would get along and everything would be just hunky dory. But it never works out — people need rules and order in order to share common responsibility.
And if you are the kind of person who doesn’t play well with others, I think it’s great that we live in a country where you can choose not to enter contracts that would obligate you to pay dues or give up control over things.
There are HOAs that abuse their power, just like there are governments that abuse their power. It seems silly to argue that the concept of an HOA is itself to be avoided, any more than it would make sense to argue that we’d be better off without a government.
I hope you aren’t one of those who argue we would be better off without a government.
Actually, developers put them in. These are covenants which run with the land who people who buy the house are forced to be in the HOA. It's similar to closed shop unions in away, hardly in favor of private property rights.
We regularly have rain here and i could last for years holed up in Fairfax County with ease.
The only reason I can see for a current owner to vote themselves INTO an HOA would be to control what the OTHER owners do with their property. The current owner already has title to and control over THEIR property.
Assuming that you meant that you agreed to convert your own ownership, what is it that you wanted to do or prevent being done to your neighbor's property? Further, did you not see the possible ramifications of granting some control of your property to others? It seems to me that you would be careful to preserve what you considered important in your present title.
If your CC&Rs consisted of only half a page, then that would probably yield to the association, through its Board, almost unfettered control over anything that had become "common areas".
The Declaration and Bylaws for the condo I bought into was about 60 typed pages, with references to the recorded maps.
When researching the condo I bought several years ago, I found that the property had been encumbered by many restrictions as a result of an "urban renewal" process.
If the buildings burned down in our development, it was not clear that the local government was at all obligated to permit us to rebuild what had burned down.
I also recall seeing that we were required to maintain at least six parking spaces on the property. The development consisted of eight units, so that doesn't seem like much of a burden. But if, for example, the city would only allow us to replace the destroyed units with two single-family dwellings, then the covenants with the city might force us to have more than one parking space per dwelling.
All in all, it was quite a learning experience, but not one I would want to repeat.
The CC&Rs allowed for the formation of an HOA. That was known when I bought the property. I did NOT have a choice about joining once the HOA formed. The older section the same developer built, with the same CC&Rs, never formed an HOA.
There is property less than a quarter mile from me, where the homes were built several years ago. If the remaining homes in that section are ever built, the CC&Rs will also allow for the forming of an HOA, and the current owners will have no choice then, either. They could, however, ask the builder to release their lots from the section, if it is ever built. However, he doesn’t have to grant them their request.
Since no HOA existed, I could only base my impression on how the HOA would run on the CC&Rs. And the guy who wrote them agreed that the HOA that formed took off in a direction he never imagined nor wanted when he wrote the CC&Rs.
And again, we had no common areas. Since there were no common areas, dissolving was made much easier.
The owner should sue the Board personally. I very much doubt that the entire Home Owners Assn. membership actually voted to pursue the asinine legal action.
So, the HOA concerned itself solely with what people did with their own individually owned property? Was that intended just to enforce uniformity of appearance?
The unit I owned was one of four in one building. Without the HOA there would be no agreed upon way to replace the roof when the time came for replacement. Similarly, the pavement in the parking area was maintained by the HOA.
hehe...
I’m not going to be able to get away with plagiarizing his ideas here, am I?
Consider it “evangelism”, not “plagiarism”... :)
“Because some people prefer it that way.”
Lol. Are you stuck in 2006 like many realtors? Perhaps you are a realtor? In Pinellas County (W-central FL) foreclosures are clustered in 2 groups, the sub-60k <1200 SF ghettos and the nice, underwater, HOA ghettos. Nice houses outside HOAs are snapped up within days at large premiums above similar HOA houses.
HOAs don’t work in a bad economy. How good is that HOA at preventing foreclosures? Homeowners outside HOAs aren’t expected to pay for their foreclosed neighbor’s lawn and pool maintenance.
The counties already have quality neighborhood ordinances so HOAs are a red flag for property control and re-distribution schemes.
“I can’t imagine what the board was thinking to bankrupt itself over something so trivial and was essentially settled.”
Most likely they were thinking about not paying the lawyer(s) that promised them their lawsuit was a sure thing.
Well stated. HOAs are also adding huge leins to foreclosures for “maintenance”, in some cases its an extra $1200 and others its $20,000. Which has to be paid before a buyer will sign.
Resulting in homes which cant be sold.
Actually, developers put them in.
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