Comment by jghn
5 hours ago
I would never buy a house that was part of a HOA. For people that like them, more power to ya. But I don't understand the people who complain, just don't buy into an HOA then?
5 hours ago
I would never buy a house that was part of a HOA. For people that like them, more power to ya. But I don't understand the people who complain, just don't buy into an HOA then?
It’s extremely common for local governments to make an HOA a legal requirement for new developments. This lets them put things like road maintenance, park maintenance, and trash pickup in private hands so the local government doesn’t have to pay for them. (They’re still happy to collect property taxes from the new residents at full rate, of course.) The result is that it becomes harder and harder to find non-HOA homes.
I’d have no problem with their existence if it was a free market, but I have a big problem with them when they’re being legally mandated.
> It’s extremely common for local governments to make an HOA a legal requirement for new developments.
This is true, and I'd never choose to live in an area like that.
I mean, there's only so many hills you can die on before you become homeless.
1 reply →
The houses available in my area and price range all required an HOA. In general it’s not safe to assume all people have all options at all times.
It's still a choice being made. People choose to live where they live. They could choose to live elsewhere.
You should be allowed to complain about the choices available before you, even if you have an ordinal preference for one over the other
Because moving cities is free and frictionless, because everyone works remote, and their cushy corporate job will pay moving fees. Right?
Are you willing to share the general area? I’m curious.
Where I’ve bought houses, HOAs were rare. I’ve always heard about these places where HOAs are the only option but I fortunately haven’t run into one.
I just went to zillow and typed in my zip and tried two different filters for single family homes priced between $300K-$550K:
Listings:
No HOA fee: 32 up to $500/month: 62
I'm not going to bother because this is an HN comment but I think you can imagine what happens to the results when I specify newer than say 1993 (when my house was built).
I have an HOA, but it seems defunct. Everything we do to the house, if visible, can be interpreted to mean I must get unanimous agreements, in writing, from all my neighbors.
It turns out I managed to land right between two asshole neighbors (constant trespassing, dogs, etc)
Do all houses available require an HOA, even the ones that don’t look so nice or aren’t in great neighborhoods? I don’t usually like to go around questioning people’s experiences, but I think a lot of people go around with ideas of what an acceptable street looks like that simply aren’t achievable without an HOA or extreme price segregation.