Comment by FireBeyond
7 hours ago
There was a fairly crazy case in Georgia recently where a lady stopped paying her annual dues over a billing dispute. The amount worked out to be less than $3,000.
The HOA hired a law firm, forced a foreclosure, held a foreclosure auction where the HOA itself bought her house for THREE DOLLARS, and continued to charge her HOA dues (even though the HOA owned the home now) before evicting her later.
The HOA then sold the home to an employee involved in the foreclosure, whose partner was on the HOA board that had voted to foreclose, and voted to accept the three dollar ($3.24, to be precise) bid, though they hid this behind an LLC that didn't actually exist when they did it. The employee then reactivated her real estate license and sold the home to another family several months later.
There are fewer greater lunacies than HOAs, and the type of people drawn to run them.
This is one of those cases where suing would have had a better outcome and the 3k+legal fees garnished from her income would have been better.
I can't imagine that a good judge would accept that settlement to scam someone out of a house far below value and leave them with the debt.
> The HOA then sold the home to an employee involved in the foreclosure, whose partner was on the HOA board that had voted to foreclose, and voted to accept the three dollar ($3.24, to be precise) bid
And when I say they sold it to an employee involved after buying it themselves at auction for that $3.24, they sold it to the employee for one dollar. So this woman was out hundreds of thousands of dollars of equity because a self-dealing HOA and its law firm (tied by marriage to one of the HOA board) voted to foreclose on her home and accept a purchase price that couldn't buy you a drink at Starbucks.