The private property owner who owned the land that was subdivided into the lots. Anyone opposed to HOAs is basically opposed to private property rights.
You are kidding right?
Your premise is completely false.
The developer applies rules to all the lots, each both burdened and benefited. He selects the rules based on what will enhance the value the most for the buyers (maximizing his profits. It might be limitations on outdoor pets, or basketball hoops, or setbacks, or color schemes. Or an agreement to pay to maintain a pool or clubhouse, or airstrip, or gun range. That is all his right as a private property owner.
Then, he sells to willing buyers, who agree to abide by the rules, while benefiting from neighbors’ following the rules.
It is the sovereign power of a person over his own property. Anyone who thinks that they’d be enslaved by such dictatorial tyranny is free to buy elsewhere.
Absolutely correct ~ you don’t like rules, go somewhere else. BTW, about 99% of the condos and HOAs around here involve clustering of the dwelling units on the buildable property and the consolidation of the less buildable property into a common property owned by the HOA, That way, theoretically, you get a woodland/park situation, with just a bit tighter residential section. The result is that just about everywhere you go in Fairfax County you have forests and clustered housing.
“The developer applies rules to all the lots, each both burdened and benefited. He selects the rules based on what will enhance the value the most for the buyers (maximizing his profits. It might be limitations on outdoor pets, or basketball hoops, or setbacks, or color schemes. Or an agreement to pay to maintain a pool or clubhouse, or airstrip, or gun range.
That is all his right as a private property owner.”
Well, maybe and maybe not. There’s a common law called the dead hand doctrine that can be applied to restrictive deeds. It originated in medieval times when churches owned all the property, and all property was passed down to heirs with ecclesiastical restrictions on how the property could be used. The dead hand doctrine came into being when people objected to how they could use property they paid for. Legislators passed laws that said that the dead hand cannot reach out from the grave and restrict a property owner’s legal enjoyment of that property as they saw fit.
There was a recent federal case where the dead hand doctrine overturned a restrictive property deed although I can’t think of it now.
It does make sense. Why should property owners be shackled on how they can use property that has restrictions on it written by someone who owned it 100 years ago? It has its uses.
I won’t even take a guess on how dead hand would fare against the right of association.