I have no VPN, and I get the infinite loop fairly frequently on archive.is. It comes and goes despite no changes on my end in connection/browser config.
I used to sit on the board of the HOA in my previous condo building. Liens are Plan A generally.
Something is fishy with this HOA. I suspect they may have something against this guy specifically and want him gone from the neighborhood. That reason could be good (running a brothel out of his house or something crazy), or very bad (they don't want Latinos in the neighborhood).
Oh look, there's something later in the article about it:
> Patterson, who is now working with residents to reclaim their homes, says that most of the Green Valley Ranchers he’s met who have been foreclosed upon recently are working-class homeowners of color, many of whom speak English as a second language.
Oh and for good measure, thinking back on my time on the HOA board:
- Most of the board were immigrants of some stripe, particularly Latino, but also Eastern European and Indian.
- The one tenant we had which we considered foreclosure for was someone who was himself Latino. The issue was he refused to pay the HOA fees - ever - not one cent since he bought the home a few years before. He also had a huge number of people living there (which was by itself not a problem for anyone), but there was only 1 water meter so the water bill was divided among the building based on square footage and his unit made up around half the building's water bill (!) based on historical billing records.
- The foreclosure proceedings were intended as leverage to get him to start paying his overdue HOA fees. Nobody wanted to actually turn the guy out on the street. It worked, and he started paying, and even though his unit still (at the time I sold my unit) was using up more water than the rest and people were footing the bill for it, he was at least paying HOA fees and everyone was grudgingly fine with it.
- I don't think we ever progressed to filing the paperwork for the foreclosure.
> Patterson, who is now working with residents to reclaim their homes, says that most of the Green Valley Ranchers he’s met who have been foreclosed upon recently are working-class homeowners of color, many of whom speak English as a second language.
This is not surprising. Denver is 45% "of color" [1], and the recent arrivals likely more so. It is those recent arrivals that would be over-represented among new home buyers that get snared into whatever this new HOA type that steals houses is.
The HOA sold a home worth over $500k (almost paid off) for $85k at auction, to recover $6k of fines. Their response is that their "foreclosure rate represents less than 1% of their population". Too bad for those people. Unbelievable.
It absolutely is NOT. The issue is when you buy a home in an HOA, you sign a contract with that HOA (outlining these rules and regulations) that is enforced in courts (it’s a signed contract). They are no better than collection agencies, not government agencies. They may use the same methods as backwater sheriffs do to bolster their pay but they are not, in any way shape or form, affiliated with any government agency.
You don't just sign a contract with the HOA because most HOAs are not voluntary. There are some voluntary HOAs because they provide community amenities and you get access to those amenities when you join the HOA and possibly agree to some other restrictive covenants as well. Most HOAs you never even have to sign a contract it is written into the deed of your property that you are required to be a part of the HOA. In order to own the property you automatically are a member of the HOA and subject to all of it regulations.
The contract is part of closing. Like you said, it’s part of the deed. These cases the community was built by builders for the HOA to manage. In this case, the deed you sign for your house is the contract for HOA. This isn’t Fannie Mae, or Freddie Mac, or FHSA, or any government sponsored thing. It’s pure greed and privilege.
What does a government do? They make rules, enforce rules, collect money, organize some services, etc. All of this is done by the HOA too. You vote on leadership, just like citizens of a state. In essence, the HOA is an additional level of government.
Which ones are those? I'd imagine the HOAs have some "protections" written in. I'd guess they're reasonably close to the effectiveness of local government "protections".
Suing for first amendment rights, property rights, inability to tax without voter approval (in some states). Whereas HOAs are not covered by the bill or rights and can levy special fees by a simple board vote typically.
HOAs are covered by the bill of rights. See how race related deed restrictions have been removed. All it takes to raise taxes is a simple vote by your representatives.
Actually no... They're not covered by bill of rights and regularly infringe on speech. Race protections are due to federal housing laws, not the bill of rights.
Also, the bill of rights has nothing to do with race and doesn't make any mention of it.
My favorite part is this absolute sociopath towards the end:
> Bauman says since [the new law's] passage, HOAs have had to spend more on certified mail, postage and legal counsel associated with the notification process.
Imagine the entitlement that this person thinks postage stamps are an issue worth whining about when foreclosing on a home and removing the occupants.
> Imagine the entitlement that this person thinks postage stamps are an issue worth whining about when foreclosing on a home and removing the occupants.
You've not run into many HOA sorts, then. They have this sliver of POWER and they are going to use it as much as they possibly can. And if you're in their way, well, you shouldn't have been in their way! They're the HOA parking enforcement agent and, golly, it sure looks to them like you haven't moved your car often enough (I solved this at one point by parking worse and no longer trying to keep my vehicle far enough forward on the street that someone else could park behind me in a section).
I mean, the people they're notifying are basically violating human rights by having damaged local property values, per the HOA way of thinking.
Is an 80% discount typical for a foreclosure auction? I guess there must be immense risks involved, otherwise they would go for more money.
Either that, or I'd have to assume that the auction was not properly publicized, and the HOA is somehow profiting from the sale due to that fact. (eg, feeding info about the auction to people that bribe them, board members buying forclosed homes and selling them at a profit, etc).
Well you don't get to inspect the house, or even enter it, so you don't know the condition. You also must pay with cash-most people can only afford to buy a house with a mortgage.
I also assume most people who let their house go into foreclosure don't keep up with maintenance.
What would you replace it with? I'm in a condo and while the HOA has been a pain in the ass, I don't see who else is going to get shit done in a communal way. I guess you could say that condo's shouldn't exist, but this is the only way I could afford to live in the neighborhood that I do. We could keep going down the rabbit hole of affordable housing... but it seems like we should stick to a bit of reality here.
No, just regulated. The real-estate agent in the article had it right: real-estate is regulated way more than HOAs which have almost no regulation.
When viewed in a lens of their history (ie, as a means of segregation and exclusion) it would make sense why they were "off limits" to legislators.
However, I think it could be a popular thing to regulate them now - most homeowners hate their HOA random fees and correction requirements. And you have examples like the Revolt at the Villages [1] where HOAs take money from one group of residents to fund expansion elsewhere.
It amazes me that people don't know, and never gets taught, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. All of this is strongly embedded in historical racism and it has continued forward to this day although not strictly race-based but there are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races.
As with anything when it became impossible to enforce a race-based segregation they simply do it in other ways. HOAs should be abolished in my opinion or their power greatly curtailed and deed restrictions largely removed. Especially given that many HOAs or at least the ones we hear about a lot are quite abusive with the power that they have and they are selectively abusive in that power. Likable neighbors that have the same minor offenses never get fined for them but undesirable neighbors get harassed constantly. One thing to fix the abusive HOAs would be to have it so that if covenants are not enforced equally they cannot be enforced to anyone. Even in the situation where they rely on people reporting violations they can only accept the report if they do a complete audit of all properties to ensure the same violation does not exist elsewhere. If it does they must cite everyone equally even not citing one person means that all the citations are invalid. This would get rid of the buddy system that HOA is used to abuse undesirable people in their neighborhood.
For fifteen years, I lived in a development with an HOA. It was at least as diverse as where I lived before and since. And the HOA was the least of our problems: cheap and unsound construction was the main one.
I similarly despise HOAs. I've never actually been threatened by an HOA and most people I know that have an HOA have relatively benign ones, but the concept and the concentration of power outside of official government is frightening to say the least.
In contrast, my current neighborhood does not have an HOA but we do have a "neighborhood association" that's entirely voluntary and mostly exists to support a collection of streets with activities, clean up drives, etc.
>, the history of HOAs and restrictive covenants on deeds. Everyone acts as if it is for the betterment of the neighborhood, consistent looks upkeep of property and so forth. When you dig into this you'll find out it is about keeping out undesirables from your area. Originally those undesirables were of different races. [...] are still deeds that have unenforceable restrictive covenants that deny property to certain races.
That retelling of HOA history rooted in racism is common but it's not a persuasive explanation for the new HOAs created today. In other words, there can be _2_ independent motivations and they both end up with an "HOA":
- motivation #1 : roundabout way to keep black people out --> leads to HOA
- motivation #2 : maintain baseline property values --> leads to HOA
You have to look for the counterfactuals that eliminate reason #1. E.g. Places up North like Anchorage Alaska and Calgary Canada didn't have a massive "white flight" and yet the suburbs up there also have HOAs.
Those neighborhoods also have HOAs. Maybe it's for reason #2 -- protecting property values.
The immoral HOA motivations in the 1950s don't necessarily dictate the same motivations for creating an HOA today. Sometimes there's really no threat of "other races" and instead, people really do want to collectively protect their property values.
The removal of the undesirables from an area is still the motivation of an HOA. You can gloss over it by saying protect property values, but that's just code for, this group of people is undesirable and it locks people out of communities. So while race isn't the motivation it's been replaced with class. It's still immortal.
Is there no such thing as objectionable behavior that people might not want to live around? Is it wrong to want to do something about things like your next door neighbor turning a 1/3 acre property into a chicken-egg and honey farm? Or buying a second house to rent out for weekly parties that flood the street with cars, including sex parties? Should people just ignore those things? Cities don't want to deal with those things in my experience.
I had a house in the suburbs with my ex-wife, in a neighborhood with an unreasonable HOA. We had to replace a leaky roof, and we had to wait 2 weeks for the "architecture committee" to approve our replacing our roof with one of the exact same color and style (and we had to wait because starting without approval would have been a violation).
What amazed me was that the neighborhood was full of tea-party conservatives with "Don't tread on me" bumper-stickers, who were always complaining about government overreach. Yet they ceded the right to even begin repairs on their own house to a bunch of busybodies.
I vowed to avoid HOAs after that experience (except when they are unavoidable, like when owning a townhome).
The irony is that while the HOA was great at delaying needed repairs for cosmetic reasons, they were terrible at keeping out the "undesirables" my ex-neighbors constantly lived in fear of.
Somebody managed to open a half-way house for addiction recovery just down the street from me, and my neighbors were very upset. I think they finally used a regulation preventing more than a handful of unrelated people living together and managed to get the halfway house closed months later.
So instead of increased taxation and a municipal government with more powers (mine can fine for unkempt lawns etc), Americans say no, we want freedom and small government. Then you invent HOAs to remove those same freedoms, levy fees instead of taxes, provide services that really should be handled by the city, and are more oppressive? I just don't understand.
The reason people like them, I've heard, is they help keep the value of your property high. I prefer doing what I want with my property, so I won't buy a property in a HOA.
>Americans
That's quite a large and diverse demographic to make generalizations with.
>Then you invent HOAs to remove those same freedoms, levy fees instead of taxes, provide services that really should be handled by the city, and are more oppressive? I just don't understand.
I can live in that same city without an HOA. I can't live in that same city without the high taxation and oppressive government. It's about options, I suspect.
I don't completely buy the property value argument. Cities like them being high too because it means more tax revenue and they're not afraid of making bylaws to enforce it. So for example, when one gets a building permit to an exterior renovation, the city will calculate the square footage of siding vs brick before and after, with the requirement that the amount of brick doesn't decrease. Because any less lowers the property value.
Not all cities are like that. The one I'm in isn't. There are also laws in many cities where they can't reappraise the tax value of the home without a significant renovation. This is to keep elderly people in their homes who are on a fixed income. It's a lot more complicated than, "tax good," but yes, that's the gist.
I don't mind a city fining for unkempt lawns, and I think people who cannot abide by that should find a different city. The benefit of the municipality doing it is that they're more accountable in court and the polls. How does one contest an HOA fine?
What's the process to register a car? What's the process to challenge a service contract? How do I reserve a room at the municipal activity center? How do I challenge a water bill? It probably varies from places to place, doesn't it? You'd have to check the bylaws of a given HOA. There's probably some address you're supposed to write a letter to explaining the challenge, then it gets reviewed, etc. Eventually courts could get involved. But I doubt one could give a specific set of steps that applies to every HOA.
I bring up all those other things because there isn't a single "well you just do x dummy!" answer to any of those in the same way there's no single answer to how do you challenge an HOA fine. Maybe there's binding arbitration. Maybe there isnt. You'd have to look it up, you can't say that's the process every time. And hey, you can lobby your neighbors to change it, it's not set in stone. Just like if your city has some dumb ordinance nobody likes.
There wasn't any binding arbitration clause in any HOA bylaws for any house I was looking at buying, so suggesting that's some standard thing doesn't seem accurate to me.
I've got a super basic question. I'm sure you can give an exact answer to. What time does the restaurant close?
You are deliberately ignoring the point with extraneous details. I hope it makes you feel good, like you've won something? Congratulations.
Meanwhile, everyone else can clearly understand the point that government interactions have the court system to make challenges, writs to compel the government to act, and so on.
Meanwhile everyone else can clearly understand governments also have the ability to choose to not be sued and give themselves immunity from their actions. Go ask all the people who get kicked out of their homes and paid seemingly pennies on the dollar from imminent domain or people who have their homes taken with civil asset forfeiture how easy the process was to dispute these takings and how successful they were at resolving it.
> You are deliberately ignoring the point with extraneous details.
I'm just trying to showcase how nonsensical your question of "how do you challenge HOA fines?" is and how you never actually expected a real answer from it.
If your point was that some HOAs have binding arbitration clauses, and you think those are generally bad, you maybe should have just said that instead of asking a question one couldn't possibly answer completely or wholly accurately. I didn't even know that's what you were going after with your original question, as once again every HOA bylaws I considered didn't have it in there. If my answer was entirely based off the bylaws I have in my drawer, binding arbitration would have never even come up. If you didn't want someone to actually answer the question you probably shouldn't ask it. A better first reply to my comment would have been something like:
"But sometimes its difficult challenging HOAs due to binding arbitration clauses."
Which, sure, can be true. Then we'd be talking about binding arbitration and its pros/cons instead of talking about questions which practically can't have specific answers without more details.
Suggesting disputing HOA fees means binding arbitration is like saying it costs hundreds of dollars to register a car. Sure, maybe in some jurisdictions that's true. But it only cost me $75 to register a car here. You can't possibly answer the question "How much does it cost to register a car?" accurately without further details. If you're wanting to talk about how some jurisdictions have high fees, just say that instead. See my point?
>The reason people like them, I've heard, is they help keep the value of your property high.
I'm starting to feel like treating homes like a investment that will continue to accumulate value instead of a place to live that everyone requires is starting to backfire.
That's unfortunately not a choice that can be made either way. If something has demand, can be bought and sold, and has value, there is inherently an economic market for it.
The irony I see is that in order to keep property values high, you need people to want to buy them. Since pretty much everyone I've ever met and everyone on the comment thread hate HOAs, then people are buying these house despite they're being in an HOA and not because of it. It would seem non-HOA houses would be MORE valuable because they lack something most buyers hate.
The ideal would be if we could pick one billionaire to have absolute control over our lawncare fines, then the Invisible Hand will solve all the problems.
I've never once heard someone here in a America state that they sought out or preferred an HOA. But when shopping for a home, you have to make trade-offs and for many people, a house with an HOA is the perceived least-bad choice of the options available to them.
> I've never once heard someone here in a America state that they sought out or preferred an HOA.
I have. When I lived in the Seattle area, I would ask people about why they preferred HOAs.
The conversations always went the same way, and mostly ended the same way. They brought up the unthinkable horrors of someone working on a car in their driveway ("What if the car was up on blocks for months?"), or leaving a trash can out too long, and their trump card, oddly enough, was asking the question about the Lovecraftian horror of suburban owners: "But what if your neighbor painted their house purple?" - as though this were self evidently the most awfully awful thing someone could ever do (I wouldn't paint my house purple, but I know of a number of them, and they don't bother me in the slightest). The conversations usually ended, after a few more questions, with some variant of "Really, HOAs are designed to inhibit people like you." Because I didn't see anything wrong with working on a car in your driveway, and I'm as likely as not to wander over with a couple beers and go BS about cars. I've done a lot of automotive maintenance in apartment parking lots that forbid it, because I had no better options.
There's this set of people who really value outside appearances on houses and properties, and react with horror to people who don't see the same problems they do. They tend to like HOAs.
I currently live somewhere that very much has no HOA. I'm sure they'd be utterly horrified by my old tractor and stuff that wanders the property, but that's why I don't have an HOA. :)
Sounds like freedom (tm) actually takes on the meaning of "the freedom to stop other people from doing things you don't like".
I wonder also if some of this is pure herd perception. Like, what if nobody personally cares that someone paints their house purple or works on their car. What if they just want to stop it because they think OTHER people won't like it and therefore won't put a bid on their house if and when they sell it. But in reality those buyers don't care either. Nobody cares, but everyone pretends they do because they think that everyone else does.
I don't mind someone working on their car in their driveway, I do it myself quite often. I would mind if a neighbor started using their residential yard as a car junkyard. I would mind if they're effectively running an auto repair shop out of their residential garage. Both of those then create hazards and harms to their neighbors around them.
I don't live in an area with an HOA currently. I do agree HOAs can often go extreme on code enforcement. However I do think people should respect each other and not just say "its my property I'll do whatever I want with it!" Because, yeah, sure, its your property, but your actions affect other people. You might feel painting your house pink with purple polka dots doesn't hurt anyone, but it does affect other people. You're not an island, you live in a community.
Since you're not living in a community with a HOA, how often have those situations with "rogue garages" and the likes cropped up? Seems to me they're selling fear and ideology more than battling real issues.
In my neighborhood? There's one just down my street. For a house with a two car garage and an alley he's got up to 8 cars at a time around his lot and parked out front. He even parks them in the narrow set backs between the houses halfway on his neighbor's land. It's kind of a pain how he practically stores broken down cars on the street that never move, they impede the street making it more cramped and less safe for me to bike around. The cars that never move turn into rat colonies. It leaks all kinds of chemicals into the alley. It seems like he often doesn't dispose of his fluids properly, I've filed a few complaints when I see it but nothing seems to ever get done. More motor oil down the storm drains into the creek and pond my kids play with I guess. He'll also let the pool get super nasty and then pump it all out into the alley every now and then. Sure is a great neighbor to have.
And that's just my street. Another neighborhood down the road has someone with rusting cars with busted windows parked in their front yard. Not the drive way, the actual yard. It's one of the first houses you drive by when you enter the neighborhood.
I like the one I'm in but only because it's a condo. The HOA deals with the shared spaces, pipes, and outward doors. Unfortunately this is likely coming to an end. Recently the board president has decided that the two unit maximum ownership is a bad idea, removed that rule, and bought an additional 15 units.
HOA's have a place but that space is narrow and people like to push out of that space when they get an ounce of power.
It's not instead of anything. A township government can only enforce the code, even if you paid 200% property tax. And codes are pretty loose because to change it you need some kind of majority in the town government. And even if something has been made a code it doesn't mean the government can enforce it, for example my city is barred from enforcing the code on short term rentals by a law suit, which will take years to resolve.
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of something like this. I learned some disturbing things about HOAs while living in one. Some people think I’m strange or dramatic, but I refuse to ever live in one again. I realize not everyone has that luxury - the article mentioned the “sun belt” states, but it was exceedingly difficult to find a home outside of an HOA in the Midwest, too.
If you don’t pay my taxes or my mortgage, you get no say on what color I can paint my shudders. And the only ones who can kick me out are the bank (until I’m done paying) or Uncle Sam, not the bored authoritarian neighbor down the road who doesn’t like that I don’t have an immaculate yard or doesn’t approve of my mailbox.
So many of us Americans pretend to care about property and liberty until suddenly it possibly puts a small dent in own your property’s value.
I wouldn't think a person would struggle to find a HOA-free house in the midwest. If you were to pick a random house on the market in a random neighborhood in Detroit or Chicago, or Kansas City, odds are you wouldn't pick one in an HOA.
You might struggle if you're looking to buy a new house in a brand new subdivision.
Preowned homes are unaffordable at the moment (lack of supply, interest rates, buyers with low interest rate mortgages who don’t want to move), leaving new homes in HOAs the only option for all but the most well heeled buyer.
(have also had poor experiences with HOAs and refuse to live in one)
Because it's about power and control. Many associations will say it's to preserve the value and look of their communities, but when you get down to the actual people serving on these boards, conservative or liberal, they do it for the power.
Conservativism isn't anarchy. It's about pushing government down to local levels where the impacted have the best ability to change the policies if they aren't liked/wanted.
I'd say an HAO def fits that bill. I've been in both chill HOAs and draconian ones. If you don't like it, join the board and motivate all the other like minded folks and get things changed.
Sure.. I believe in breaking cities up to be smaller and more manageable. For example, my neighborhood in my city of Portland ought to be its own city because we have little in common with the politics of the rest of the city. That is why there is a political process we can follow to do that. Its called incorporation and has happened many times before all over the country. Cities are not fixed in stone. We don't need a new organization to do what cities used to.
Moreover, your analogy falls apart because HOAs are not governments and the people aren't protected from them the way they are a government. As much as I disagree with the city of Portland politically, I can post whatever messages I want outside my non HOA home and the city can do jack shit about it, because, as an American government they are unable to patrol my speech.
If HOAs were governments then I would have a different opinion (I would be somewhat in favor). However they are not.
As a final point of difference. A foundational principle of conservative governance is that governments are formed for and BY the people. However, HOAs are formed by development companies typically. Corporations are not people (and are not legally treated as such, despite widespread belief). Corporations have no right to form a government that the future residents cannot modify. HOAs are much harder to get rid of than a city. Thus, we have an example of an alleged American government that was never formed by a group of residents and cannot be modified or eliminated by them. That's problematic and un American
> “Our firm — most other firms that I'm aware of — they don't go straight to foreclosure,” he said. “It’s about recovering the funds that were expended, not trying to put an owner out of their house.”
Right... So they only care about money, not people. That says it all. Because this is absolutely all about putting someone out of their house.
HOAs are just pure evil. I don't understand how anybody would voluntarily subject themselves to being terrorized by them. I'm currently renting a house in one and I promised myself to never buy anything in one.
There may be more people living in HOAs who don't have issues with their HOA than you anticipate. Such a person might well view the statement "HOAs are just pure evil" as incorrect, even if they are aware that HOAs can be a problem.
By way of example, I watched an HOA, as a community, successfully resolve a complex and potentially expensive legal matter involving multiple residents in a way that was beneficial to all parties. Part of this resolution involved the community as a whole, under the bylaws, amending the bylaws to address a situation the original drafters should have anticipated but did not. One side effect of the amendment was to reduce the demands the HOA itself could make of homeowners, lowering what were already quite reasonable limits.
"HOAs can be evil" and "HOAs can have over-reaching clauses" are different statements than "HOAs are just pure evil".
The concept of HOA is pure evil, not every single instance of it. Even if yours is fine right now, this can change next year when other people move in and take the whole thing over in order to make your life miserable.
This logic essentially extends into any form of government structure though. Sure, your city council is fine right now, this can change next year when there's another election. Sure, your state is fine right now, this can change next election. Sure, your country is fine right now, this can change...
It does to some degree. There are limits on what cities can dictate you do with your own property though. HOAs seem to have fewer limits on what restrictions they can impose on you.
Probably because it is quite an overstatement. There are situations where it is clearly useful be in an HOA.
For example last time I was looking for a house I looked at one where the water supply for that house and three others came from a private well. It was the best house I'd seen so far, but I couldn't find any binding agreement on how well maintenance would be paid for so I passed.
An HOA for those four houses specifically to cover operation and maintenance of the well would have been a very good thing to have.
the outrage here is vigorous and all, but does anyone consider reading the contract that you sign? Unfair legal agreements are as old as written trade. Do all the HOA members have the same contract? can you verify that somehow? How about any history of past legal matters with that HOA, public record somewhere?
not at all defending abusive HOA here, not at all.. AND you sign something and you need to know what is in there, or do not sign until you do..
Ye it is strange. I am part of a HOA. Six houses, and all we do is maintain the fresh water pump, the gravel road, one lamp post, and we have one party a year. It would be absurd if we somehow agreed to let the HOA set rules for whatever.
Oh. Any change to the by-law need to be unanimous.
The "it wont happen to me" mentality is poisonous. Read the rules. If they are absurd, the HOA is run by insane people.
Stupid question I suppose: what's stopping the family from turning right back around and suing the HOA for the now presumably lost value of the home, to the tune of 100% of the mortgage payments made minus the supposedly owed fees?
Conversations about HOA always focus on the nit picky rule enforcement components of them (rightly because they are dumb).
But a bigger component of HOA financing is maintaining common infrastructure. The pool, party house, signage, etc. Those actually require upkeep. If the HOA doesn’t have a recourse to collect those obligations the cost of that upkeep falls unfairly on the people paying their bills.
I’m all for strict regulations on notification and making foreclosure difficult but if you sign up for an HOA it seems like you ought to understand and comply with your obligations and the HOA should have some teeth to collect.
My first house was in a neighborhood where the builder set up an HOA mainly to care for the clubhouse/pool. Before I moved in, the neighborhood voted to disband the HOA and sell the pool. I think it was sold to a private entity.. its been a while. We didn't have kids and never went to the pool, so I'm fuzzy on who owned it.
I loved that neighborhood. All of the neighbors became friends. It was the closest nit neighborhood I've ever lived in, aside from my college dorm. Property values did not suffer when the guy across the street and one over painted his house pink, nor did they suffer when my neighbor's parents visited in their RV and parked in front of his home for 2 weeks every summer.
As someone who would never want to use such shared infra. I would be pretty angry having to pay for it. Though I do suppose the saunas and washing room in place I live isn't fully covered by fees, they aren't that high anyway.
My current HOA is raising dues AND charging a special assessments because they need money so desparately (despite having nearly half a million bucks).
Despite that, the head tyrant in charge just pushed through an ultra-low priority parking lot painting project. Not like parking lot was bad, it just bothered him I guess.
More often than not (anecdotally of course) they're just Napoleonic power trips for the select few that are bored and no-life-having enough to devote their whole lives to it.
I have been on the flip side of this when I lived in a condo (the condo association was legally an HOA, and I was on the board for one year). Literally the only legal lever the HOA has over improper use of shared spaces is fines and, if the fines are not paid, the only way to recoup them is via a lien.
Meanwhile other members of the HOA are filing lawsuits against the HOA for not sufficiently enforcing the rules. I'm just glad I can afford to not live in an HOA (of course if you can afford that, you probably also can keep up on your payments and not have a lien taken out).
"Later [the putative current owner] offered to sell her the house back, [the putative former owner] said, for what he paid for it: around $25,000."
If the buyer paid $25K for a free-and-clear title (i.e., the bank took the auction proceeds in lieu of the loan balance), then the former owner should take that deal, because it means her mortgage is now gone!
(The article is unclear which kind of foreclosure this was -- did the buyer take title and assume outstanding debt? Or did the bank just wash its hands of the whole thing when it unloaded the property at auction? The low sales price suggests it's the former, rather than the latter. But stranger things have happened.)
Unfortunately, that is not the case. If you lose your home in foreclosure, you are still liable for the mortgage. They could buy the home back for $25,000, but they are still going to have to pay on that mortgage that they took out.
That actually depends on the jurisdiction and the specific loan terms! For example, in California, mortgages are generally non-recourse, which means that the lender can take back the collateral (the house) upon default, but can't go after the borrower's remaining assets or property to make up any remaining deficit after liquidating the house.
That said, in this case you're correct: the article's subjects live in Colorado, which does not allow non-recourse mortgages.
Summary of my proposals for HOA regulation for single family homes and townhomes:
1) Every 4 years HOAs must conduct a renewal vote. At least 40% of members must actively vote to extend the CC&Rs (meaning that at least 40% of homeowners must a cast a vote in favor of continuing the HOA. Not voting is effectively a no-vote). Upon a vote resulting in the dissolution of the HOA and/or CC&Rs, the HOA executive board shall conduct a second vote 6 months from that date to validate the result under the same conditions. If an entity owns or controls more than 1 property, they shall be restricted to a single vote (meaning that property developers or multi-property owners only get one vote.)
1a) If HOA vote fails, it will continue for one year and conduct another vote. If that fails, the HOA will be dissolved. If the HOA owns community property, it will convert into a property maintenance organization and be able to collect funds solely to fund the maintenance of community property. It will not be able to levy fines or restrict individual properties in anymore.
1b) PMOs may re-adopt a new set of CC&Rs. To do so, a petition must collect the signatures of 60% of property owners within a 6 month period. They PMO must then notify all property owners of an election. 75% of property owners must agree to reformation of CC&Rs.
2) HOAs and property maintenance organizations (PMO) may not begin foreclosure proceedings on a property until the amount owed is at least 1/5 of the value assessed by the county. HOAs must follow the same procedures as the county government for foreclosure, with additional requirements listed below.
3) HOAs and PMOs must collect phone and email information for property owners, unless the property owners opt out. The HOA must remind property owners annually to update their contact information.
4) Notices of delinquency must be sent to all available contacts.
5) If properties are in arrears by more than 3 months the HOA/PMO must post notice on the property physically (not just mail). After 1 more month, and only if necessary for the maintenance of community property, the HOA/PMO may seek and be granted a tax lien to borrow against on the delinquent accounts. Notices must continue to be sent to all available contact mechanisms and posted on the property monthly
6) The HOA/PMO shall have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of both the HOA/PMO and the individual delinquent member. In the case of a foreclosure, they must seek the highest price possible, not just enough to cover the delinquency.
113 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 263 ms ] threadTry this one: https://ghostarchive.org/archive/neBsg
More realistically I’d spend my last Penny on billboards saying houses can be stolen in this neighborhood.
Something is fishy with this HOA. I suspect they may have something against this guy specifically and want him gone from the neighborhood. That reason could be good (running a brothel out of his house or something crazy), or very bad (they don't want Latinos in the neighborhood).
Oh look, there's something later in the article about it:
> Patterson, who is now working with residents to reclaim their homes, says that most of the Green Valley Ranchers he’s met who have been foreclosed upon recently are working-class homeowners of color, many of whom speak English as a second language.
- Most of the board were immigrants of some stripe, particularly Latino, but also Eastern European and Indian.
- The one tenant we had which we considered foreclosure for was someone who was himself Latino. The issue was he refused to pay the HOA fees - ever - not one cent since he bought the home a few years before. He also had a huge number of people living there (which was by itself not a problem for anyone), but there was only 1 water meter so the water bill was divided among the building based on square footage and his unit made up around half the building's water bill (!) based on historical billing records.
- The foreclosure proceedings were intended as leverage to get him to start paying his overdue HOA fees. Nobody wanted to actually turn the guy out on the street. It worked, and he started paying, and even though his unit still (at the time I sold my unit) was using up more water than the rest and people were footing the bill for it, he was at least paying HOA fees and everyone was grudgingly fine with it.
- I don't think we ever progressed to filing the paperwork for the foreclosure.
This is not surprising. Denver is 45% "of color" [1], and the recent arrivals likely more so. It is those recent arrivals that would be over-represented among new home buyers that get snared into whatever this new HOA type that steals houses is.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver#Demographics
Also, the bill of rights has nothing to do with race and doesn't make any mention of it.
> Bauman says since [the new law's] passage, HOAs have had to spend more on certified mail, postage and legal counsel associated with the notification process.
Imagine the entitlement that this person thinks postage stamps are an issue worth whining about when foreclosing on a home and removing the occupants.
You've not run into many HOA sorts, then. They have this sliver of POWER and they are going to use it as much as they possibly can. And if you're in their way, well, you shouldn't have been in their way! They're the HOA parking enforcement agent and, golly, it sure looks to them like you haven't moved your car often enough (I solved this at one point by parking worse and no longer trying to keep my vehicle far enough forward on the street that someone else could park behind me in a section).
I mean, the people they're notifying are basically violating human rights by having damaged local property values, per the HOA way of thinking.
It's horrifying at all levels.
Either that, or I'd have to assume that the auction was not properly publicized, and the HOA is somehow profiting from the sale due to that fact. (eg, feeding info about the auction to people that bribe them, board members buying forclosed homes and selling them at a profit, etc).
I also assume most people who let their house go into foreclosure don't keep up with maintenance.
This alone smells as a fraudulent scam. Let me guess -- the person who bought the house is a friend of the HOA board and will flip the house shortly.
When viewed in a lens of their history (ie, as a means of segregation and exclusion) it would make sense why they were "off limits" to legislators.
However, I think it could be a popular thing to regulate them now - most homeowners hate their HOA random fees and correction requirements. And you have examples like the Revolt at the Villages [1] where HOAs take money from one group of residents to fund expansion elsewhere.
[1] https://theintercept.com/2023/02/05/ron-desantis-florida-vil...
As with anything when it became impossible to enforce a race-based segregation they simply do it in other ways. HOAs should be abolished in my opinion or their power greatly curtailed and deed restrictions largely removed. Especially given that many HOAs or at least the ones we hear about a lot are quite abusive with the power that they have and they are selectively abusive in that power. Likable neighbors that have the same minor offenses never get fined for them but undesirable neighbors get harassed constantly. One thing to fix the abusive HOAs would be to have it so that if covenants are not enforced equally they cannot be enforced to anyone. Even in the situation where they rely on people reporting violations they can only accept the report if they do a complete audit of all properties to ensure the same violation does not exist elsewhere. If it does they must cite everyone equally even not citing one person means that all the citations are invalid. This would get rid of the buddy system that HOA is used to abuse undesirable people in their neighborhood.
In contrast, my current neighborhood does not have an HOA but we do have a "neighborhood association" that's entirely voluntary and mostly exists to support a collection of streets with activities, clean up drives, etc.
That retelling of HOA history rooted in racism is common but it's not a persuasive explanation for the new HOAs created today. In other words, there can be _2_ independent motivations and they both end up with an "HOA":
- motivation #1 : roundabout way to keep black people out --> leads to HOA
- motivation #2 : maintain baseline property values --> leads to HOA
You have to look for the counterfactuals that eliminate reason #1. E.g. Places up North like Anchorage Alaska and Calgary Canada didn't have a massive "white flight" and yet the suburbs up there also have HOAs.
Another counterfactual is this list of majority black wealthy neighborhoods: https://spotcovery.com/the-best-affluent-black-neighborhoods...
Those neighborhoods also have HOAs. Maybe it's for reason #2 -- protecting property values.
The immoral HOA motivations in the 1950s don't necessarily dictate the same motivations for creating an HOA today. Sometimes there's really no threat of "other races" and instead, people really do want to collectively protect their property values.
What amazed me was that the neighborhood was full of tea-party conservatives with "Don't tread on me" bumper-stickers, who were always complaining about government overreach. Yet they ceded the right to even begin repairs on their own house to a bunch of busybodies.
I vowed to avoid HOAs after that experience (except when they are unavoidable, like when owning a townhome).
Somebody managed to open a half-way house for addiction recovery just down the street from me, and my neighbors were very upset. I think they finally used a regulation preventing more than a handful of unrelated people living together and managed to get the halfway house closed months later.
the level of yankee spite i have on this particular thing is really quite enormous.
>Americans
That's quite a large and diverse demographic to make generalizations with.
>Then you invent HOAs to remove those same freedoms, levy fees instead of taxes, provide services that really should be handled by the city, and are more oppressive? I just don't understand.
I can live in that same city without an HOA. I can't live in that same city without the high taxation and oppressive government. It's about options, I suspect.
The people running the HOA almost always are accountable by polls, even more local polls than municipal elections.
The HOA is a contract which may include binding arbitration. You might not be able to bring it to court or appeal.
There wasn't any binding arbitration clause in any HOA bylaws for any house I was looking at buying, so suggesting that's some standard thing doesn't seem accurate to me.
I've got a super basic question. I'm sure you can give an exact answer to. What time does the restaurant close?
Meanwhile, everyone else can clearly understand the point that government interactions have the court system to make challenges, writs to compel the government to act, and so on.
Have a good rest of your day.
> You are deliberately ignoring the point with extraneous details.
I'm just trying to showcase how nonsensical your question of "how do you challenge HOA fines?" is and how you never actually expected a real answer from it.
If your point was that some HOAs have binding arbitration clauses, and you think those are generally bad, you maybe should have just said that instead of asking a question one couldn't possibly answer completely or wholly accurately. I didn't even know that's what you were going after with your original question, as once again every HOA bylaws I considered didn't have it in there. If my answer was entirely based off the bylaws I have in my drawer, binding arbitration would have never even come up. If you didn't want someone to actually answer the question you probably shouldn't ask it. A better first reply to my comment would have been something like:
"But sometimes its difficult challenging HOAs due to binding arbitration clauses."
Which, sure, can be true. Then we'd be talking about binding arbitration and its pros/cons instead of talking about questions which practically can't have specific answers without more details.
Suggesting disputing HOA fees means binding arbitration is like saying it costs hundreds of dollars to register a car. Sure, maybe in some jurisdictions that's true. But it only cost me $75 to register a car here. You can't possibly answer the question "How much does it cost to register a car?" accurately without further details. If you're wanting to talk about how some jurisdictions have high fees, just say that instead. See my point?
I'm starting to feel like treating homes like a investment that will continue to accumulate value instead of a place to live that everyone requires is starting to backfire.
I have. When I lived in the Seattle area, I would ask people about why they preferred HOAs.
The conversations always went the same way, and mostly ended the same way. They brought up the unthinkable horrors of someone working on a car in their driveway ("What if the car was up on blocks for months?"), or leaving a trash can out too long, and their trump card, oddly enough, was asking the question about the Lovecraftian horror of suburban owners: "But what if your neighbor painted their house purple?" - as though this were self evidently the most awfully awful thing someone could ever do (I wouldn't paint my house purple, but I know of a number of them, and they don't bother me in the slightest). The conversations usually ended, after a few more questions, with some variant of "Really, HOAs are designed to inhibit people like you." Because I didn't see anything wrong with working on a car in your driveway, and I'm as likely as not to wander over with a couple beers and go BS about cars. I've done a lot of automotive maintenance in apartment parking lots that forbid it, because I had no better options.
There's this set of people who really value outside appearances on houses and properties, and react with horror to people who don't see the same problems they do. They tend to like HOAs.
I currently live somewhere that very much has no HOA. I'm sure they'd be utterly horrified by my old tractor and stuff that wanders the property, but that's why I don't have an HOA. :)
I wonder also if some of this is pure herd perception. Like, what if nobody personally cares that someone paints their house purple or works on their car. What if they just want to stop it because they think OTHER people won't like it and therefore won't put a bid on their house if and when they sell it. But in reality those buyers don't care either. Nobody cares, but everyone pretends they do because they think that everyone else does.
I don't live in an area with an HOA currently. I do agree HOAs can often go extreme on code enforcement. However I do think people should respect each other and not just say "its my property I'll do whatever I want with it!" Because, yeah, sure, its your property, but your actions affect other people. You might feel painting your house pink with purple polka dots doesn't hurt anyone, but it does affect other people. You're not an island, you live in a community.
And that's just my street. Another neighborhood down the road has someone with rusting cars with busted windows parked in their front yard. Not the drive way, the actual yard. It's one of the first houses you drive by when you enter the neighborhood.
HOA's have a place but that space is narrow and people like to push out of that space when they get an ounce of power.
If you don’t pay my taxes or my mortgage, you get no say on what color I can paint my shudders. And the only ones who can kick me out are the bank (until I’m done paying) or Uncle Sam, not the bored authoritarian neighbor down the road who doesn’t like that I don’t have an immaculate yard or doesn’t approve of my mailbox.
So many of us Americans pretend to care about property and liberty until suddenly it possibly puts a small dent in own your property’s value.
You might struggle if you're looking to buy a new house in a brand new subdivision.
(have also had poor experiences with HOAs and refuse to live in one)
I'd say an HAO def fits that bill. I've been in both chill HOAs and draconian ones. If you don't like it, join the board and motivate all the other like minded folks and get things changed.
Moreover, your analogy falls apart because HOAs are not governments and the people aren't protected from them the way they are a government. As much as I disagree with the city of Portland politically, I can post whatever messages I want outside my non HOA home and the city can do jack shit about it, because, as an American government they are unable to patrol my speech.
If HOAs were governments then I would have a different opinion (I would be somewhat in favor). However they are not.
As a final point of difference. A foundational principle of conservative governance is that governments are formed for and BY the people. However, HOAs are formed by development companies typically. Corporations are not people (and are not legally treated as such, despite widespread belief). Corporations have no right to form a government that the future residents cannot modify. HOAs are much harder to get rid of than a city. Thus, we have an example of an alleged American government that was never formed by a group of residents and cannot be modified or eliminated by them. That's problematic and un American
Right... So they only care about money, not people. That says it all. Because this is absolutely all about putting someone out of their house.
> Care to elaborate why this gets downvoted?
There may be more people living in HOAs who don't have issues with their HOA than you anticipate. Such a person might well view the statement "HOAs are just pure evil" as incorrect, even if they are aware that HOAs can be a problem.
By way of example, I watched an HOA, as a community, successfully resolve a complex and potentially expensive legal matter involving multiple residents in a way that was beneficial to all parties. Part of this resolution involved the community as a whole, under the bylaws, amending the bylaws to address a situation the original drafters should have anticipated but did not. One side effect of the amendment was to reduce the demands the HOA itself could make of homeowners, lowering what were already quite reasonable limits.
"HOAs can be evil" and "HOAs can have over-reaching clauses" are different statements than "HOAs are just pure evil".
For example last time I was looking for a house I looked at one where the water supply for that house and three others came from a private well. It was the best house I'd seen so far, but I couldn't find any binding agreement on how well maintenance would be paid for so I passed.
An HOA for those four houses specifically to cover operation and maintenance of the well would have been a very good thing to have.
not at all defending abusive HOA here, not at all.. AND you sign something and you need to know what is in there, or do not sign until you do..
Oh. Any change to the by-law need to be unanimous.
The "it wont happen to me" mentality is poisonous. Read the rules. If they are absurd, the HOA is run by insane people.
But a bigger component of HOA financing is maintaining common infrastructure. The pool, party house, signage, etc. Those actually require upkeep. If the HOA doesn’t have a recourse to collect those obligations the cost of that upkeep falls unfairly on the people paying their bills.
I’m all for strict regulations on notification and making foreclosure difficult but if you sign up for an HOA it seems like you ought to understand and comply with your obligations and the HOA should have some teeth to collect.
I loved that neighborhood. All of the neighbors became friends. It was the closest nit neighborhood I've ever lived in, aside from my college dorm. Property values did not suffer when the guy across the street and one over painted his house pink, nor did they suffer when my neighbor's parents visited in their RV and parked in front of his home for 2 weeks every summer.
Despite that, the head tyrant in charge just pushed through an ultra-low priority parking lot painting project. Not like parking lot was bad, it just bothered him I guess.
More often than not (anecdotally of course) they're just Napoleonic power trips for the select few that are bored and no-life-having enough to devote their whole lives to it.
Meanwhile other members of the HOA are filing lawsuits against the HOA for not sufficiently enforcing the rules. I'm just glad I can afford to not live in an HOA (of course if you can afford that, you probably also can keep up on your payments and not have a lien taken out).
If the buyer paid $25K for a free-and-clear title (i.e., the bank took the auction proceeds in lieu of the loan balance), then the former owner should take that deal, because it means her mortgage is now gone!
(The article is unclear which kind of foreclosure this was -- did the buyer take title and assume outstanding debt? Or did the bank just wash its hands of the whole thing when it unloaded the property at auction? The low sales price suggests it's the former, rather than the latter. But stranger things have happened.)
That said, in this case you're correct: the article's subjects live in Colorado, which does not allow non-recourse mortgages.
1) Every 4 years HOAs must conduct a renewal vote. At least 40% of members must actively vote to extend the CC&Rs (meaning that at least 40% of homeowners must a cast a vote in favor of continuing the HOA. Not voting is effectively a no-vote). Upon a vote resulting in the dissolution of the HOA and/or CC&Rs, the HOA executive board shall conduct a second vote 6 months from that date to validate the result under the same conditions. If an entity owns or controls more than 1 property, they shall be restricted to a single vote (meaning that property developers or multi-property owners only get one vote.)
1a) If HOA vote fails, it will continue for one year and conduct another vote. If that fails, the HOA will be dissolved. If the HOA owns community property, it will convert into a property maintenance organization and be able to collect funds solely to fund the maintenance of community property. It will not be able to levy fines or restrict individual properties in anymore.
1b) PMOs may re-adopt a new set of CC&Rs. To do so, a petition must collect the signatures of 60% of property owners within a 6 month period. They PMO must then notify all property owners of an election. 75% of property owners must agree to reformation of CC&Rs.
2) HOAs and property maintenance organizations (PMO) may not begin foreclosure proceedings on a property until the amount owed is at least 1/5 of the value assessed by the county. HOAs must follow the same procedures as the county government for foreclosure, with additional requirements listed below.
3) HOAs and PMOs must collect phone and email information for property owners, unless the property owners opt out. The HOA must remind property owners annually to update their contact information.
4) Notices of delinquency must be sent to all available contacts.
5) If properties are in arrears by more than 3 months the HOA/PMO must post notice on the property physically (not just mail). After 1 more month, and only if necessary for the maintenance of community property, the HOA/PMO may seek and be granted a tax lien to borrow against on the delinquent accounts. Notices must continue to be sent to all available contact mechanisms and posted on the property monthly
6) The HOA/PMO shall have a fiduciary duty to act in the best interest of both the HOA/PMO and the individual delinquent member. In the case of a foreclosure, they must seek the highest price possible, not just enough to cover the delinquency.