To elaborate for the curious, basically a community sets up a committee that will handle these things. You would normally pay HOA fees to cover things like paying for the streetlights in a private community, the pool or fitness center, or whatever a long those lines. Basically for a private community it’s a way to say “Hey, we need some things done to keep things nice, everyone pay in so the flowers look good this year”. Normally, not a bad idea. There are usually two things that go wrong though. One, the money is mismanaged and/or people are heavily overcharged and the extra money disappears.
The other is that HOAs also have rules for the community to keep things orderly on their own property. No cars in your yard, no blaring music after 9pm, etc. But you hear about a lot of cases where this stuff gets out of hand and suddenly people are getting fined for having trash cans out too long or the wrong colored curtains.
Because of this, people have justifiably built up a lot of hate for HOAs. Imagine buying a house, your own property, then paying +$100 a month to keep the neighborhood nice, then some picky Karen comes by to tell you that you can’t hang up your sports team flag and if you don’t take it down they’ll fine you $50 a day.
It’s worse than the just Karens. If you don’t pay the fines they will put a lien on your property and eventually evict you. This has created a strong market pressure towards swindling people out of their places. Financial groups that manage HOAs wholesale are now the norm and they love encouraging Karens to generate nonsense rules and report offenders… They get a cut of either the fine or the home sale sand get to play the role faceless enforcer. There are no regulations on how high fines can go, nor how high LATE FEES on those fines can go, nor how soon “late” is.
We are way past the time when HOAs were harmless funny people hyperfocusing on lawns… It’s a predatory business now.
To elaborate for the curious, basically a community sets up a committee that will handle these things. You would normally pay HOA fees to cover things like paying for the streetlights in a private community, the pool or fitness center, or whatever a long those lines. Basically for a private community it’s a way to say “Hey, we need some things done to keep things nice, everyone pay in so the flowers look good this year”. Normally, not a bad idea. There are usually two things that go wrong though. One, the money is mismanaged and/or people are heavily overcharged and the extra money disappears. The other is that HOAs also have rules for the community to keep things orderly on their own property. No cars in your yard, no blaring music after 9pm, etc. But you hear about a lot of cases where this stuff gets out of hand and suddenly people are getting fined for having trash cans out too long or the wrong colored curtains.
Because of this, people have justifiably built up a lot of hate for HOAs. Imagine buying a house, your own property, then paying +$100 a month to keep the neighborhood nice, then some picky Karen comes by to tell you that you can’t hang up your sports team flag and if you don’t take it down they’ll fine you $50 a day.
It’s worse than the just Karens. If you don’t pay the fines they will put a lien on your property and eventually evict you. This has created a strong market pressure towards swindling people out of their places. Financial groups that manage HOAs wholesale are now the norm and they love encouraging Karens to generate nonsense rules and report offenders… They get a cut of either the fine or the home sale sand get to play the role faceless enforcer. There are no regulations on how high fines can go, nor how high LATE FEES on those fines can go, nor how soon “late” is.
We are way past the time when HOAs were harmless funny people hyperfocusing on lawns… It’s a predatory business now.