Posted on 11/28/2022 7:20:39 AM PST by george76
I own a second home in Pagosa Springs, CO. A couple years ago the HOA for Pagosa Lakes went full dictator and declared war on short term rentals in Pagosa Lakes. We home owners were not able to vote on this; they simply declared it with minimal input from the owners. When I sent a scathing letter that included the “damn” word I was informed of another policy they enacted without input. If they don’t like your correspondence you are subject to a $500 fine for the first offense, $10,000 for the second and $20,000 for the third. Gee, what kind of message is that sending?
You can still offer up your home in Pagosa Lakes for a short term rental, but first you must buy a special expensive permit from the HOA and the county assessor will reassess your home at TRIPLE the market value and you will be taxed accordingly. Mission accomplished: most owners opted out of short term rentals.
When I bought my place five years ago approximately 70% percent of the homes in Pagosa Lakes were second homes for people living elsewhere (mostly Texas, according to our real estate agent), and I doubt that has changed much. This is what is called a resort community. Many of us purchased homes here because we wanted the option of short term rental income. The Board of Directors for the HOA laughably tried to rationalize their decision. The real reason is pure NIMBY; they and their friends can’t stand Texas riff-raff in Pagosa.
The Board says local workers cannot find affordable housing due to the homes being used for AirBNB. Sorry Board, not my problem. You are my HOA, not a social outreach program that I sponsor with my dues. I drove an hour each way to my job for most of my life and I had roommates until I was forty years old. You want to live in a resort community or other desirable place you got to suck it up.
Does the Board REALLY think those AirBNB homes will convert to long term rentals? Of course not! Those idiots know we want to visit our second home frequently and don’t want someone living there full time (whoops, give me a minute while I whip out a check for 500 clams, or am I up to ten grand?).
So how has this played out? No post-Covid recovery for Pagosa. The short term renters used to come in and spend like drunken sailors. It being a vacation they would bring extra money. They’d load up at the pot shops and the liquor stores because you can’t get pot in Texas, and because beer, wine, and liquor costs 30% more in The Lone Star State. They would ski at the nearby resort, because, you know, skiing sucks in Texas and they would enjoy the famous Pagosa hot springs. Imagine the rage this causes the Board. Texans in our hot springs! Gross!
Now the small businesses still surviving are largely up for sale. On top of that, 70% of the homes and businesses going dark in Pagosa attracted the tweakers from Durango, Sante Fe and Taos. Our home was recently broken into by a pair of meth heads from Taos, one of whom is currently in jail there. They lived in our shed for a week or two getting high on hand sanitizer and leaving a pile of cigarette butts and beer cans and broken glass on two doors. The responding sheriff’s deputies said this problem spiked shortly after the Board’s decision to eliminate short term rentals and is a continuing problem throughout Pagosa Lakes.
...
So the geniuses solved the worker rental housing crisis by eliminating many of the jobs. I picture the Board members sitting blissfully on their deck in the pines, wearing their masks, relieved at not having to hear rednecks or local workers living it up next door.
I offered this story to two “newspapers” in Pagosa Springs and received no replies. It probably radiated like nuclear waste from their screens, a veritable Cleveland Steamer. You see, advertising (i.e., survival) for these corndog wrappers comes mostly from the huge number of real estate firms in town. God forbid word gets out to potential buyers that the local HOA is fascist as Hell and does whatever they want with YOUR home and your home is not safe from tweakers.
It distresses me that I cannot ask these town newspapers to pursue important stories that affect their community. Their interests lie elsewhere.
Our rural neighborhood has CCRs but no HOA so there is no enforcement. The county codes are enforced on the good old boy system. Basically everyone just does what they want.
Parcels are RU4 meaning they aren’t less than 4 acres. Very easy to not look at everyone else’s trash. And there is a lot of it. Our house is situated so that we can’t see it from our porch.
Had the house appraised a few years ago and the appraiser dropped $20000 off because of the garbage around us. I am very much a private property rights person but when someone’s rights start affecting mine and my pocket book, I have a problem. Plus with that much acreage, it would be easy to put stuff behind your house instead of up against the property line. We decided we would just wait them out. One property the couple got a divorce and the spouse that remained cleaned everything up. The other neighbor is being foreclosed on so the bank will clean it up. If we weren’t able to wait it out though, we would have lost quite a bit. We were there long before either of those properties had people living on them. People just have no self respect anymore.
We do have a road maintenance agreement but after 30 years of work or paying someone, we are done helping because there is no way to enforce it. People just won’t pay their share. Or they drive like maniacs and tear it up on atvs or dirt bikes doing donuts. Most of our vehicles are 4x4 so we just laugh at the city people that move out here and tear up their vehicles in 6 months.
In our neighborhood back in 2020, we had a newly retired Navy guy and his family move into the neighborhood, they were a black family which is no big deal but in this case, it became a big deal.
The neighbor across from this new resident was a huge Trump Supporter, they kept their Trump/Pence yard sign up until late into 2021.
The New black family across the street must not have been a Trump fan because they put up a Black nationalist flag, all the markings of the American Flag, except the colors were Red, Black, and Green.
Then on Juneteenth, the black family erected this huge yard sign celebrating Juneteenth and the end of slavery.
Shortly after Juneteenth, the white Trump family started flying a “Bonnie Blue” Confederate Flag, most people wouldn’t recognize it, a solid blue flag with one big white star in the middle, I knew immediately what it was and told my wife, now that’s how to escalate things.
Finally the Board got involved and told both sides to take their flags down and stop acting like children in a game of tit for tat, so far the truce is holding.
If you don’t pay a contractor who works on your home, he can get a mechanic’s lien on your property. That doesn’t mean he owns your home — does it?
I don’t live in an HOA community anymore. I am not closed to option doing so after retirement (if I decide to move). But I know a lot that before considering a home, the HOA documents and financial position need to be read and understood first.
Common area maintenance, enforcement of the architectural standards, covenants, hiring property manager, getting money worth from property manager, collection of assessments is the basic function.
Pool clubs, golf, tennis, brings a whole other list of issues, but if done right with the right people and management, can be rewarding for people. Like you, I would avoid amenities add-ons today as something I would not want in my neighborhood. But they require budgeted contributions to capital reserves. Too many HOAs under fund or don’t fund them b/c neighbors driving $60,000 lease vehicles don’t like “high assessments”.
IOW, they hope to get out before the repair and replacement is needed. Some actually told me since they aren’t going to be living there when the roof is projected to be replaced, they shouldn’t be forced to contribute today for tomorrow leaving a large amount of money behind.(!) I asked them if they were going to put that in their real estate ad ... that the HOA capital reserve was underfunded, and new owner might need to pay for the “new roof”? (PS - an HOA should not overfund its capital reserves either.)
That’s some story SR.
Of course, in this case the HOA seems to be helping to resolve it. This could have happened anywhere, in a non-HOA neighborhood.
I also had a few talks with HOA neighbors that it was time to grow up and be adults. They were acting worse than children.
It was the CA invasion that caused HOAs and the skyrocketing 10% yearly property tax hike in TX.
. My favorite is the broken lawn mower in the front yard that they mow around,
= = =
Love it.
By the way, that is “Yard Art”
I remember living with a friend of mine in Gaithersburg, Maryland, in a tightly controlled, HOA-run community. The community was a nice place, full of townhouses and apartments (we lived in a townhouse).
One evening, my friend, the homeowner, wanted to attend an HOA meeting with board elections, but couldn’t, due to other commitments, so he sent me over there as a proxy to vote (perfectly legal by their by-laws). He said I could vote for any candidate that I wanted (I could vote for several), except for this one woman.
Each home, you see, had two parking spaces assigned to it, with corresponding permits for the vehicles while parked. If a home had more than 2 vehicles, the remaining vehicles would park on the street, but if you parked in a space, sometimes, you had to get a permit from another vehicle to avoid being towed. So at an earlier HOA meeting, my friend asked why they couldn’t issue a permit for each vehicle in the household.
This silly woman answered that they would then have to assign or create more than 2 parking spaces for the home, which was BS, since you could issue any number of permits while leaving the same number of spaces, first come, first serve. So I went over there, did not vote for this dingbat, and fortunately, she did not win re-election.
PS. Before we bought our property we lived in military housing. The Army is worse than any HOA.
2 family members have HOA experience.
Daughter lives in a community where there is a pool and common areas. She knew there was an HOA but didn’t know how restrictive it was on paper. After living there a few months, she realized that nobody really follows the rules except for the ones that everyone can see. Excess weeds in front, trash cans not left on street, etc. Everyone pretty much ignores what goes on in the backyard as long as it doesn’t affect them. New comers are usually more focused on the rules but are more interested in following them than reporting anyone else. Common sense neighbors so far.
Brother lived in an HOA community in Georgia. He got sent overseas TDY while his wife was pregnant. She was about 8 months along when she got a notice her grass was too long. She was supposed to be on newly prescribed bed rest. She asked for an extension until my brother got back. After finding out, the neighborly thing would have been for someone to mow for her. Instead they sent another notice denying the extension and giving her a final date. On a tight budget, she took a chance and did it herself. The grass was not too bad, maybe an inch over the specified length. Brother had mowed before he left and was due back before the baby was due. My brother got really mad at the HOA. Hadn’t really paid attention to the HOA because it hadn’t been an issue before. Hadn’t made any complaints or received any. He started going to every meeting he could and made their lives a living hell. Started reporting every little thing on the so called neighbors. Eventually he was elected to the board and started reigning in the HOA’s nonsense. It became a better neighborhood after that.
The same can be said for homes subject to property taxes. Even if the mortgage is paid off; don’t pay your taxes and the local government suddenly owns it. And they’ll send men with guns to make sure you cooperate.
We bought in an HOA thinking that it would stay as nice as it was when we moved in.
The HOA, the management company, the developer, and a builder are in a quadruple incestuous relationship. The entities have different names, but they’re all the same people.
In 2021, to take advantage of the good housing market, the developer sold lots to the builder. The builder built scuzzy little identitcal houses at warp speed, with little area between. They’re smaller than the minimum in the Covenants, and so many weirdos have moved into them.
A row of about 10 are directly across the street from us. We were certain one house was involved in drug dealing the way cars would come and go at 24/7. Cars would back in in the middle of the night with someone sitting in them, occasionally flashing headlights.
Now we think the place is used as Airbnb or similar. Short-term rentals are forbidden.
So we’re in a ghetto. We WISH the HOA would take action, but they’re the people causing the problems.
I miss our 3-acre rural property.
My wife thinks they are in-bred. They burn everything in their wood stove. They dump it in the yard and there was a pile of burned wire.
My wife found a house that was cheap enough but had really high HOA fees. It turns out it was the only house in the Association.
Never ever! When my Dad built the first house in one of these communities they tried to do a HOA, just pay your $50 and join and will take care of the commons area and your kids can use the pool as well. His reply, not interested ever and its not in the contracts or deeds that I have to join, don’t ask again. It died rather quickly.
In all my experience the only agency that attracts more petty tyrants then an upscale HOA is the California Coastal Commission. Once ‘Karen’ feels that first hit of intoxication from power over someone she is instantly hooked and wants more and more.
The difference is your taxes are part of a government entity, not whoever is the biggest busybody with the most time on their hands.
You HAVE to live within the confines of your government. You choose to give up your liberties to the HOA
🤣🤣🤣
How could a home have high HOA fees if it’s the only one in the Association? Wouldn’t the owner of that home have 100% of the voting power for the HOA board?
My guess is it’s either an idiot or a lawyer.
HOA Nazi here.
Actually, I am an UBER HOA Nazi as I am the President of my HOA and Chairman of the PID my HOA is a small part of.
I didn’t set out to have these positions. I was more or less voluntold.
Joined my HOA board because they seemed to be making stupid decisions and I wanted that to stop. I got an education. The rules HOAs operate under are set by the developer and are virtually impossible to change. In the 17 years our HOA has been in existence we have changed exactly one...and got sued for doing it. We won.
Your story resonated with me because we just recently had to send notice to our residents that our covenants do not allow them to AirBnB their homes. It isn’t that we don’t want to let them...we are legally obligated to enforce the regulations as written and they are pretty specific in forbidding short term rentals. If we were to selectively enforce the rules we would find ourselves open to legal liability from residents for whom we did enforce the rules.
The real villains in all of this are the developers. You need to read the R and Rs VERY carefully before you buy into a planned community. They put all sorts of crap in there that you may not be able to live with.
HOAs that are created AFTER the neighborhood is built are a different animal. Those rules are usually more subject to change.
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