Comment by VWWHFSfQ
7 days ago
> One thing that an HOA might actually be good for
I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs. Basic stuff like funding for landscapers to keep up the shared grassy areas along the streets, to plowing the access roads in winter time. But the main benefit has always been that it provides a legal mechanism to force everyone to maintain their yards and property. No need to drop passive-aggressive notes in a mailbox about people parking their cars on their lawns.
10/10 highly recommend
edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
> people parking their cars on their lawns.
Indeed, God forbid people would like to park their cars on their property!
Some people like living in communities that look nice. It seems fair that you can opt-in to those rules by buying in an HOA, and if you do want to park on your lawn, buy elsewhere.
(And I am not a fan of HOAs personally, so I do in fact live elsewhere, but my neighbors house is also an eyesore)
I live in a beautiful neighborhood. No HOAs.
Yes indeed! One of the reasons I'm personally happy to live in an HOA after having lived in an area where lawn junkyards were common.
Over maintained yards are a leading reason for having no biodiversity around your home. First you lose the bugs, then the birds and over time this extends to everything.
A 3" cut once a month during peak growing season is hardly "over maintained". Every HOA community I've lived in has been perfectly reasonable.
Without knowing where you are exactly, I can only give a vague and general response such as "in much of the USA, the mere existence of a lawn is 'over maintained'", see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xeriscaping
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> I've gotten nothing but benefits from living in neighborhoods with HOAs.
I'm happy somebody has. Except for you, I have never heard anything but nightmares from the people I know who suffer under HOAs.
No one is going to rant about how their HOA is pretty OK.
My building has an HOA, and the worst I can say about is that's it's pretty boring.
There's a vast difference between the HOA for a building, and one for a suburban neighborhood.
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I question the motivation of people choosing to live in a place where they are constantly at odds with the agreed-upon standards of the community. They should leave if it is really that stressful and onerous.
The problem is that those standards can change based on who's elected or chosen to run the HOA.
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It's not a question of being at odds with the agreed-upon standards. They aren't.
> They should leave if it is really that stressful and onerous.
Easier said than done. A few people I know found that it was difficult to sell their home because the existence of an HOA scares off buyers.
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> place where they are constantly at odds with the agreed-upon standards of the community.
I didn't write those standards, so why would I agree with them? Should I be homeless now?
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The thing that really makes me wonder are some of the horror stories where new homeowners were surprised by the HOA existence, or at least some of the enforcement actions. It also seems like an easy thing to fake for the clicks, who knows.
And this is how we get Redlining
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I think the next house I move to, I will look for an HOA that prohibits combustion-powered yard tools, and hires an all-electric crew for common maintenance, cost be damned.
Death to combustion powered yard tools!!!
So frickin noisy!!!!
Even worse is, say you have 20 neighbors on the block each scheduling yard maintenance separately, then it's like the balls in bins problem, and you pretty much end up with these abominations making noise at least once a day (and weekends included because that's when Dad has time to do the weekend warrior thing and it takes him 3x as long as a professional crew). Sigh.
From what I can tell, HOA experiences - like politics - are highly dependent on the folks who would make good decision-makers actually being interested in, and attaining, the level of power in the association to make those decisions.
I've seen both - folks who are good stewards of the community's money and add to its energy, and folks who can't manage money and exhaust the community's energy on trivialities.
"Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump."
The single highest priority in life. Completely reasonable to give up everything else to get that.
> Basic stuff
You like paying extra for stuff that is normally included in your property taxes? I'm dumbfounded.
Property taxes basically never pay for privately owned things, be that landscaping in common spaces, maintenance of private neighborhood roads, etc.
The alternative is public space and public roads.
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HOAs can be good. Like many things, HOAs are not inherently bad or good. It’s the people who run them.
I lived in a four unit condo buildings before and the HOA was fine, because all residents were on the board.
I now live in a more typical suburban HOA development and the HOA is very unobtrusive and only comes down on the actual problem properties (overgrown, uninhabited houses) and doesn’t do much other than handle common area upkeep. Dues are only $150 per year.
> edit: apparently you guys don't like HOAs haha. Well I love them. Keeps the neighborhood from looking like a dump.
This is so good, it can be used as a textbook definition of a strawman.
A neighbor had a bus under renovation in their driveway for a few years. That really bothered one guy, the rest of us just rolled our eyes.
HOA is another layer of local government, I think it's great that moving is a chance to choose the government (or anarchy) that you prefer.
I have a friend whose parents built a 48' sailboat in their yard over about a dozen years. "built" as in cast the lead keel, laid the fiberglass hull, etc. etc. This was in a traditional suburban neighborhood, but no HOA. So they had to be pretty good friends with their neighbors.
To each their own. I much prefer to live in the neighbourhood where each neighbour does what they feel like with their property, within reason. It ought not be any business of yours what I do with my yard, front or back, as long as it doesn't adversely affect your enjoyment of your own property - and this last part is key - as a reasonable person would interpret it. In other words, smells and health hazards - sure. Unexplainable hatred for wildflowers, uncut grass and the laughter of children - go ahead and send a passive aggressive note straight to /dev/null for all I care.
The issue is that it's hard to agree on where the line is and (without a HOA) impossible to enforce.
Wildflowers? Generally good.
Tall grass that allows rats to thrive and spread into adjacent yards? Bad.
Most people don't want to have to go to court to battle pedantic neighbors who confuse the two.
If it comes to it, cops, 311 and probably other means are available. It's possible to enforce and court is not needed.
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>"within reason".
Key word there. HOA rules exist for the sole purpose of defining a common, enforceable, agreed upon definition of "within reason".
> and the laughter of children
This I will take a nuanced position on. If your kids are playing in the backyard, and it doesn't impact me at all ... perfect please enjoy life.
But I can often hear people outside, especially children screeching and yelling, over my television with all of my doors and windows shut and the air conditioner on full blast.
In those scenarios, the laughter IS adversely affecting the ability of other people to enjoy their own property.
Sometimes I hear dogs barking and loud cars on the street. Or just the constant drone of weed whackers and leaf blowers from about april to october. I have triple glazed windows and eight inch thick walls so I don't hear any of it when I go inside.
children screeching and yelling, provided that it isn't going on for hours at a time or in the middle of night, is just a normal consequence of living in a community.
I do feel for people who move in next to schools or public pools/playgrounds but considering how much time kids spend indoors these days I'd guess that people today have it much easier than people did in the past.
I'd much rather have to occasionally be reminded that kids are somewhere playing and having a good time than deal with a lot of the other noises that can disrupt a person's day like loud cars/motorcycles, drunk people fighting, landscapers or sirens.
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HOAs are like any government. Some are run well and have good laws, others not ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, how I’ve never wanted downvote power more.
Submit interesting unique links and post more substantive comments (maybe add a paragraph or two your previous comment) and you will be able to downvote soon enough. But I don't understand the appeal, when I do it is usually accidental (really easy to do on a tablet)...
I usually downvote comments that are derailing the thread or are so lazy as to feel like a waste of my time to have read.
I'll often upvote comments with opinions that are counter to my own, especially if they are presented in a clear, coherent, or novel way that causes me to think a bit.
Downvoting is a gated power on this site?
You just need 500 karma to downvote.
It helps prevent brigading and ensures that users have a moment to adjust to the community and its general expectations before being able to participate in community moderation.
If a user cannot reach that low bar after a while, they probably aren't a particularly active or positive member of the community.