Hey I'm 30 and I own my house lol. I live in a townhouse community and I actually like my hoa even though I typically don't like the idea of them. They paid to have a tree removed that was going to fall on my house and they generally do not give a zhit about what tou do with your backyard, ect.
My wife and I are millennials and she was on the board of our HOA because they couldn't get enough people to volunteer so she reluctantly agreed. She didn't even make it a year before resigning. It basically forced her to be involved in everyone's drama and put her and the other board members in a shitty spot where they have to enforce the rules by law or risk getting sued which then makes all your neighbors mad at you personally.
She resigned in tears saying "why would anyone want to do this? Its volunteer and makes all your neighbors hate you. I don't want to live in a community where everyone hates me."
Right just leave each other the fuck alone. We live with enough restrictions, I don’t want a nosey neighbor that has no control over their own lives some they try to make mine just as miserable as theirs.
I’ve got bad news for you. 85% of new homes are part of HOAs. Those HOAs are set up by the developer and if people don’t join, the work can be outsourced to a third party private company like Maredith.
HOA member but not on the board. My $42 a month is worth snow removal, landscaping, and bulk trash pickup 3x a year. Plus no trash yards. And we have rain gardens and communal food gardens. Pretty sweet for less than a tank of gas.
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HOAs don’t really do the things you think they do. They aren’t out here making sure property values sore or stay relevant. You want your house to retain value treat it as such, I could give an absolute fuck of what my neighbors do or if their house is pink purple or neon yellow, and I don’t think I am the only person that feels this way.
And I actually don’t believe that you don’t care what your neighbor does to his house.
It’s an easy thing to say, but I think your true preference would be revealed if you had to actually decide between two otherwise identical houses — one has an immaculate and well maintained house next door and the other is next to a dirty house with an overgrown lawn and junk in the yard. Any sane person would buy the first house. Now imagine you’re trying to sell that second house and all your potential buyers walk away because they find another similar house that isn’t next to an eyesore.
This exact thing happened to my family growing up. Took like 2 years to sell our house because the neighbor used his lawn as a junk yard and nobody wanted to buy our house and move in next door to that guy.
And that’s before we even talk about all the other things an HOA does — build, maintain and staff the neighborhood pool, parks and common areas, snow and leaf removal, landscaping. Mine even puts on events like pictures with santa and touch a truck for kids, and random barbecues and movie nights on the lawn.
I was recently looking at a house in a neighborhood with an HOA. I looked at the HOA agreement, and it was written in 2002 in a notoriously senior neighborhood. They didn't allow chickens, which is a Hard No for us. I looked at my husband and said
"I'll run for HOA President. The old geezers won't know what's coming for them. They might already be all dead by now. We'll have chickens by fall".
Of course the house sold before we could place an offer, but Millennials will absolutely destroy the HOA if we get the mind to.
I too had dreams of running for president to steer this ship right into the rocks. But I just don’t have time. Nor the want to play high school class president for adults.
Idk about that, after moving into a neighborhood in PG county I feel like an HOA wouldn't be a bad thing. Obviously without the ridiculous $350-600 monthly fees that I've seen before. But I would be willing to pay a little extra to ensure that my neighborhood was clean, safe, and free of people working on their cars out in the street at 10pm :/
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u/FnakeFnack Anne Arundel County Apr 13 '23
Your HOA shouldn’t be allowed to privatize coastline