Sorry, I guess I should say I have read on what officially HOA are about. I am wondering on what people understand personally what HOA to be and their personal take on it.
I don't really know much about it but I do know that your house and yard have to appear a certain way. It really doesn't have anything to do with politics since it's a private organization, like a business.
But the idea of HOA is people in neighborhood all pay a certain fee and that fee goes into a certain level of maintenance. On top of that everyone in that neighborhood must maintain their homes a certain way or face fines. Seems rather authoritarian and communal sameness to me. Rather like Communism.
Also HOA are non-profit so it isn't a private enterprise with capitalistic undertones.
It sucks, anything you could do yourself is hired out. If you want to do it yourself you still pay the same dues. There is nothing good about it unless you have lots of money and no will to mow your own lawn.
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HOA's can be a good thing, but it really depends on who is running them and how much power they have.
I have had them in the past, but do not now. I prefer not having them as some of the ones in the past had people who took their job WAY too seriously. If someone's yard or house is really bad, you can always report them to the city as there are certain standards (i.e. tall grass).
HOA's suck. After they built my parents neighborhood they tried to start one up, thankfully for them the overwhelming majority of people voted the idea down. If like the idea of a HOA you should just buy a condo.
Yeah...so it's what I thought it to be. It seems so authoritarian. Forcing people to all be a like. And using a communal pool of money to impose the likeness across everyone. Like I said, I think it seems very Socialist. Intriguing how people can complain about something else being Socialist but also agree to live in an area with an HOA.
If dictatorship style government is your thing, HOA's are right for you. All of the HOA's I've visited are ridiculous. You can't even fly an American flag in your front yard, your drapes/curtains have to be a certain color, you can only choose several colors to paint your house and they can't match an adjacent house, you can't park in the driveway, you can't work on your car in the driveway, you can't bbq in a visible area to your neighbors, you can't do anything above a normal talking voice in your backyard (besides mowing the lawn, which also has to be done at certain designated times), no fireworks allowed on the 4th of July, etc. Why anyone would move into one of those prison cells is beyond me.
Last edited by wiretap; June 13th, 2010 at 11:01 AM.
For example: You can't have a recreational vehicle or trailer parked in the driveway for more than a certain amount of time, if you have a basketball goal with a net that looks older than they want you have to replace it, they will send letters if the edging on your yard is not how they like, have to get approvals to build even a shed in your backyard if it is in view of people from the street in front of your house.
HOA's can be a good thing, but it really depends on who is running them and how much power they have....
One of the most fun (at work) evenings I had was going along to the first HOA meeting for a new development, where 47.8% of the new build properties had been purchased, and all these shiny new owners were sat around a table voting on the changes they wanted to the rules (some wanted to change the 'no pets' rule, some wanted to change the parking arrangements, some wanting to change where the bins were kept, etc, etc) Sitting there listening to all the silly, naive, petty arguments from people who, just weeks before, had read and or had had lawyers and estate agents read all these rules etc. to them, and then paid more than $1m each was hilarious... I was the developers representative, and still had 52.2% of the voting rights. What I wanted I got, and they just couldn't get their heads around the fact that they'd chosen to be part of this system
Quote:
Originally Posted by IOWA
HOA's are an evil thing...
Would you call gay marriage evil IOWA? It is similar in that in some you have restrictions on what you can and can't do; it's also similar in that you choose to live by those restrictions.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DrScrubs
...Forcing people to all be a like...
As you say yourself, people choose to live in these developments, nobody is forced. (at least not any I've ever been involved with)
Quote:
Originally Posted by wiretap
If dictatorship style government is your thing, HOA's are right for you...
Every HOA I've been involved with is a democracy, with each plot/apartment having a vote; nothing like a dictatorship.
As somebody already said, the most important thing in any association is good management. Get a good manager and have regular meetings (and as long as most people within the association are reasonable) and they can work well to benefit everyone.
Every HOA I've been involved with is a democracy, with each plot/apartment having a vote; nothing like a dictatorship.
As somebody already said, the most important thing in any association is good management. Get a good manager and have regular meetings (and as long as most people within the association are reasonable) and they can work well to benefit everyone.
Or your can just live anywhere else and do whatever you want with your house. A democracy is tyranny. It's two wolves and a sheep voting what's for dinner.
Home Owner Association
