The percentage of people I know that like HOAs is absurdly small, including neighbors and acquaintances from the last HOA I was in. Almost everyone I know hates them but is forced to deal with them because almost every neighborhood has one. Towns require them for new zoning because it allows them to pass the buck on code enforcement and then a handful of people love them because it lets them power trip The vast majority are just stuck with them due to lack of options.
I've ran into a lot of people living in them who like em. Some people are just anal about wanting to only see trimmed uniform lawns and no trashcans or broken down vehicles anywhere near them.
I think it's dumb to let others have a say in what color I make my house or how long I can have a car sit as a driveway ornament.
We specifically only looked for houses without HOAs, then during closing it was revealed that there was one the realtor "missed" because it was basically defunct. Within weeks of moving in we got a letter saying how the HOA was stepping up its game to make up for the last few years and it became the bane of our existence. One of the board members was obsessed with issuing citations and fining people for backing cars into their driveways because "the CCRs say that you can't park a vehicle in an extreme state of disrepair for more than 48 hours so if you back it in I can't see if it has a current registration sticker on the license plate." The only people I've ever met that like them are control freak karens like that dude.
Fuck HOAs.
You should have bailed at closing and fired your realtor with prejudice. Most realtors are almost bigger pieces of scum than hoa's. Taking like 12 grand each for doing up a bit of paperwork. You can pay a lawyer $1500 and find your own place on zilliw or Facebook marketplace. I bought my house in 2010 with no realtors or lawyers at all (seller also didn't have one). Just met up at the bank I was getting the home loan through and filed some generic stuff. Done deal.
It wasn’t worth starting over again with the way the market was. It was Seattle area in 2017 where every sale was a bidding war. There are good realtors, that just wasn’t one.
Yeah? On a normal home purchase where the house is being looked at by the purchaser before deciding on it, what good is a realtor?
When moving to an unfamiliar area there’s tons of value to a good realtor. To know what the local market is like, which school districts matter to which people. Which roads can flood and what your morning commute is going to be like or how loud the planes are going to be over the house. I can spend weeks doing all the leg work myself but realistically, my time is worth more than that to me. A shitty realtor doesn’t give much value, a good one absolutely can. Also, working as an intermediary with shitty sellers or buyers to insulate you from other peoples unreasonableness is one of their main jobs.
The realtor we used to buy that HOA house saw us as a zero effort easy payday. The one that sold that house for us did an absolutely amazing job and the one we used to buy our current home got us a house we absolutely love for less than we were looking to spend.
That, or a developer buys a plot of land, makes a neighborhood with some amenities, and then it's damn near impossible to kill because of those amenities. My HOA is pretty lightweight - half our budget pays the trash bill. But we do have a few plots of land that belong to the association, don't even have any structures on them, and if the HOA were to dissolve someone would need to assume responsibility for those spots. I can only imagine what it would be like if we had a pool.
The percentage of people I know that like HOAs is absurdly small, including neighbors and acquaintances from the last HOA I was in. Almost everyone I know hates them but is forced to deal with them because almost every neighborhood has one. Towns require them for new zoning because it allows them to pass the buck on code enforcement and then a handful of people love them because it lets them power trip The vast majority are just stuck with them due to lack of options.
I've ran into a lot of people living in them who like em. Some people are just anal about wanting to only see trimmed uniform lawns and no trashcans or broken down vehicles anywhere near them.
I think it's dumb to let others have a say in what color I make my house or how long I can have a car sit as a driveway ornament.
We specifically only looked for houses without HOAs, then during closing it was revealed that there was one the realtor "missed" because it was basically defunct. Within weeks of moving in we got a letter saying how the HOA was stepping up its game to make up for the last few years and it became the bane of our existence. One of the board members was obsessed with issuing citations and fining people for backing cars into their driveways because "the CCRs say that you can't park a vehicle in an extreme state of disrepair for more than 48 hours so if you back it in I can't see if it has a current registration sticker on the license plate." The only people I've ever met that like them are control freak karens like that dude.
Fuck HOAs.
You should have bailed at closing and fired your realtor with prejudice. Most realtors are almost bigger pieces of scum than hoa's. Taking like 12 grand each for doing up a bit of paperwork. You can pay a lawyer $1500 and find your own place on zilliw or Facebook marketplace. I bought my house in 2010 with no realtors or lawyers at all (seller also didn't have one). Just met up at the bank I was getting the home loan through and filed some generic stuff. Done deal.
It wasn’t worth starting over again with the way the market was. It was Seattle area in 2017 where every sale was a bidding war. There are good realtors, that just wasn’t one.
Yeah? On a normal home purchase where the house is being looked at by the purchaser before deciding on it, what good is a realtor?
When moving to an unfamiliar area there’s tons of value to a good realtor. To know what the local market is like, which school districts matter to which people. Which roads can flood and what your morning commute is going to be like or how loud the planes are going to be over the house. I can spend weeks doing all the leg work myself but realistically, my time is worth more than that to me. A shitty realtor doesn’t give much value, a good one absolutely can. Also, working as an intermediary with shitty sellers or buyers to insulate you from other peoples unreasonableness is one of their main jobs.
The realtor we used to buy that HOA house saw us as a zero effort easy payday. The one that sold that house for us did an absolutely amazing job and the one we used to buy our current home got us a house we absolutely love for less than we were looking to spend.
That, or a developer buys a plot of land, makes a neighborhood with some amenities, and then it's damn near impossible to kill because of those amenities. My HOA is pretty lightweight - half our budget pays the trash bill. But we do have a few plots of land that belong to the association, don't even have any structures on them, and if the HOA were to dissolve someone would need to assume responsibility for those spots. I can only imagine what it would be like if we had a pool.