I don't think there is a way around HOAs for condos, though one did fine me $2k for my roommate moving out on an unapproved day.

A neighbor a few houses up got into it with a neighbor a few houses down over the way one of them parks a little bit diagonally into the street but has never caused an actual problem. One party, a corporate lawyer (or maybe his wife) in a ~$3.5M house, rage threw and broke a watermelon in the street in front of the ~$3.5M house of a retired exec with a rack of Ferraris in his garage. If there were an HOA these parties, especially the watermelon throwers (lawyers!) would be hell.

(Yes, I live in a rich area. No, I'm not rich.)

Pretty much this. I have had the HOA send me a letter for the most mundane of ****. The worst one is probably "wash your mailbox."

Our HOA has an unofficial Facebook page. The current controversy is that someone blocked the sidewalk with their car and they are on there complaining about getting a letter from the HOA. It's currently around 200 comments.

I pay a small sum to our HOA yearly for which they do...probably nothing. Actually they paved the road earlier this year and did a great job. Last few places I lived had HOAs that were terrible; one was the only community in town where you had to purchase your own trash can because they rejected the free ones provided by the city.

Eh. I'm on the board of my HOA - was president for a few years, now I'm treasurer. We mostly stay out of people's way. Unless you're doing something blatantly ****ty, we're not going to contact you.

I like the HOA. It keeps people from putting their cars on blocks in the driveway for 2 or 3 years. They're not for everybody, but they're the right thing for the neighborhood I'm in (lower to mid-middle class, homes were around $250k 4 years ago, now they're in the $320-$350k range).

One of the reasons why we need an HOA is because we have stormwater pond requirements by the county and city and some entity that isn't the city or county has to maintain it. That's what the majority of our budget goes to.

I can't imagine what it's like in those nice NYC high rises where the HOA fee is like $3k/month, those people must feel like Nero in his prime.

We'll be the judge of that. What have you contacted people for?

White Nationalist Kyle "Based Stickman" Chapman Arrested for Felony Assault with a Deadly Weapon

Moss growing on roofs, a basketball hoop left in the street for weeks, and not mowing lawns that is blatant. We have a homeowner that refuses to take care of his lawn. It's all weeds, and it was about 4 feet high until a neighbor got sick of it and mowed it down. We also contact somebody about having a busted up Fiat with a flat tire and a busted rear window in their driveway for 6 months. That's pretty much all of it. We'll write a letter if somebody's lawn gets really out of shape. We don't enforce them being green or anything like that, but when they get 6 inches or higher or are all weeds we'll make contact.

I think part of the reason why we're pretty lax is that it's a small community (only 52 homes), and they're all 4 and 5 bedroom houses with lots of kids. Nobody has time to care that much. The worst HOAs are the ones that have a lot of retired folks that have a lot of time on their hands to make complaints.

4' high weeds are a bit much, but other than that I'd say you have too much time on your hands to make complaints.

You have to actively choose to live somewhere with a HOA. I have less than zero sympathy for anybody with complaints about them.

Oh, you live in some lame subdivision or condo and it sucks? Wow, I feel so super bad for you!

I disagree. Moss on roofs is a big deal in Western Washington when a quarter of the homes get no sunlight because they're under 100' fir trees. And a busted up car abandoned in somebody's driveway is reasonable.

I'll take an HOA over having a neighbor like this:

Agreed, though to be fair - good luck buying a house in Vegas that isn't part of an HOA.

Surprisingly, our HOA is pretty good, not that it couldn't change overnight. I got tagged five years or so ago to "trim the bushes off the sidewalk fronting your house". I was pissed, stomped on up to the curb and it looked like ass. So I cleaned it up. We have some odd parking rules but my house is down a long driveway on a sunken lot with a bunch of trees blocking the view from the street, so I could pretty much be running a giant meth lab down here and it would be tough to tell. Bunch of retired people in the area, but only a few nits, AFAIK.

MM MD

Yeah, wtf is up with that fencing in their front yard?

I would love to have neighbors who fill their yards with elaborate rock sculptures.

I wanted to see a better picture of that house and I found it on Street View. There's a hole in the roof because it was gutted by a fire a couple months prior which killed the person who lived there.



For real, this is an awesome yard and you need to be some sort of seriously neurotic life nit if this gets you bent.

One of the deplorables I went to high school with is retired NYPD, and he posted about this HOA guy so that he and his friends could complain about how the guy is getting a raw deal from everyone for calling the police.

One of this retired cop's choice observations: "...we see a woman and child at the pool, you see a black woman."

And in the least surprising selfie pic ever:

remember when i said he was going to keep denying it, and more victims/athletes would come out publicly?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/power...=.3e4ce80d0667

NOTHING TO SEE HERE, JUST A BUNCH OF BOYS DOING THE LOCKER ROOM TALK

Yeah. I'm too lazy and pathologically non-descript irl to do anything weird like that, but I definitely approve and I think this is one of those "there are two kinds of people" things. It's hard to understand how some people (not neceasarily fatboy8) are so bothered by other people's stuff that I either like or often don't even notice.

I have an HOA and thought I’d hate it when I read the rules, but it came with access to an awesome community center with gym, pools and activities for a low price. We were told to paint our front fence and other than that nothing yet. They do require neighborhoods paint their houses on schedule from a select palate and you need to get permission from neighbors before landscaping your yard etc, no parking on the street and some other things but tbh it has been a non issue even for my authority hating ass. The houses all are well kept and nobody really breaks the rules much, and if they do I don’t complain. I think just having good neighbors is 90% of the formula. FWIW, most of my neighbors are families. Pretty diverse also, about 25-30% white with a good representation of everything else. Would HOA again.

would you be interested in serving a term as Pool Commissioner?

They hire teenagers for that. They spend most of the time telling kids the hot tub is too full and some of them have to get out, and then giving up when they don’t. It’s perfect.

It's not about hating authority for me, it's about being violently repulsed by sterile, plastic ticky-tacky. I don't want to live in a soulless environment curated to the god-awful standards of whoever builds subdivisions.

You built subdivisions right?