I'm sorry the first thing that comes to mind is "DUCK!"

*hugs* HOA are stupid I agree, it reminds me like the Neighborhood board meetings they do once a month at work, I swear to god one of these day I'm really gonna give them somethnig to complain about.

FORE!!!!! i think is what you yell for people to Duck lol. Golf i find rather boring though i do like the Mini Putt type. I crashed a golf cart once into a pile of weeds it was Awesome! Foot slipped and i had it in reverse OOPS!

My 1 neighbour is in her 70s and she likes to bitch bitch bitch about sooo many things about my house, about my trees, everything. My other neighbour keeps to herself and the other 2 beside me are really keep to themselves type too thank god. If i ever buy a house i want to live in the damn country where my nearest neighbour is like 20 minutes down the road or something.

P.S you wont have to worry about the HOA people when you marry Vic in 2025 What kind of food do you want?

Sorry about the HOA stuff going on but I'm seriously struggling to get passed the image of the Marine teaching you to play golf! In my head it's the whole standing behind you scene, arms wrapped around you teaching you to swing your mighty club. I really am this pathetic all the time...sigh

clearly you've never seen desperate housewives.

James

Eh, Right many hoa's are shit, hoa in the neighborhood that I live in doesn't bitch about the neighbors and isn't strict, most that I heard of it's the older ones, that has nothing else better to do. And we never have to go to those meetings is it a requirement? There is some parts that are good about hoa's that aren't a pain, and should be able to approve most things, least in the experience that I have. I did have a friend though that got fined for leaving something out, that's ridiculous.

When I bought the current house, one of my requirements is that there not be an HOA. There are so many ways HOAs can go wrong (as you've listed - yes your experience is very common), and rarely have I heard anyone say 'we love our HOA'.

And yes, you must go for defensive purposes only. If you're there at the meeting, it's less likely that they talk about you behind your back or find reasons to fine you.

But don't say too much. otherwise you'll end up on a committee

Ah Dom, welcome to the joys of suburbia. And the deal is, the more expensive the neighborhood, the tighter the rules, or at least that's what I've found. I've been lucky here, as most of my neighbors are pretty cool. Still, there are some interesting rules:

1. Biggest issue: Fences. You can't have one unless it's surrounding a pool. An inground pool. Above ground pools are banned. One lady put a really nice fence up to set up an area for her poodle (a so not-our-neighborhood kind of dog), and it looked great, but they made her take it down.

2. Political Signs: You can only have them up one week before the election, and they have to come down right afterwards.

3. Statues. Presumably to ban the occasional Flamingo or the tasteless lions, this has become the latest bone of contention because a die-hard Catholic lady put up a statue of Mary (about two feet tall) in her front yard. She's claiming it's a religious freedom thing, but no one's buying it. We're at a standoff with her now. The informal agreement is that Mary can stay as long as she doesn't invite Joseph, Jesus, and/or the disciples over too.

But he

wow, HOA's sound horrible. I've read a little about them on my uni course, i think the book was called 'gated america' but only as practice reviewing methodology. they sound crazy anyway!!

don't really get that in the uk, at all. ok so we do have neighbourhood watch, but thats for crime and ive never ever known anyone go to one, or known that they meet at all infact. but yeah crazy, couldnt stand that idea.

and my experience of posh areas in the uk is that they deliberately let the roads get Really messed up, deters people from driving in the neighbourhood, or at least the street. neighbours do moan and bitch though, i know my dads had trouble with his, he just ignores them now, or does things deliberatly to annoy them when they do start whining, and they can't do anything about it

You guys don't know what a nightmare a HOA can be until you live in a condo or a co-op. We're on our third. OK, we've done the whole house thing and being in middle adulthood and all, the idea of yard work, shoveling snow and all that shit isn't all that appealing any more. When we were a young couple, I really got into the whole homeowner thing and I installed my own burglar alarm in both of our houses and completely rewired one of our houses. In fact, I've often thought I should have taken the damn exam and become a certified electrician - I could probably clear as much money as I do now and with a lot less hassles than as a physician (yes, I'm very serious).

So about a decade ago, we sold the house and moved into our first condo. Before we even moved in, the people above us hired an unlicensed contractor to redo their bathroom, and that contractor neglected to shut off their water, caused a flood that brought down the ceiling in ours. Lesson number one - the condo board's job is to protect their own liability. You can go to the board, you can go to the HOA meetings, but no one else gives a shit - what happens inside your own four walls and between your ceiling and floor is your own GD responsibility. We had a $1k deductible, so we had to pay the damages ourselves. It would have cost us more to sue the bastards above us than it was worth it to us and our insurance wasn't interested in going after their share.

Our second condo, which we still own BTW, 'cause it's in Detroit and nothing's selling in Detroit these days, is in a beautiful art deco building in the city. The developer dragged his feet at even letting the owners set up a HOA because the economic downturn hit and he couldn't sell many units. He ended up renting the unsold units out as dorm rooms to the adjacent universities - a major selling point for those of us wanting to move (note my sarcasm). Any way, our HOA meetings were nothing but gripe sessions and tirades against the developer - the elevators that should have been replaced, the inadequate job he'd done upgrading the plumbing etc. Some things are just so universal.

Finally, we come to the place we currently live, our co-op. Co-ops are a whole other ballgame because the home owners don't own their own apartments - they own shares in the corporation and then rent their apartments from the cooperative. It's a very strange arrangement that's pretty unique to the East. You actually have to interview with the board in order to buy an apartment and be approved before you buy it - and I can see why - HOA meetings are contentious enough as is! Before each meeting, mysterious anonymous fliers appear under our door in single-spaced, all caps type alleging all sorts of improprieties by the board. There are numerous conspiracy theories floating around. And there are so many rules - you can't do this and you can't do that, but no one seems to follow the rules, and yet no one enforces them, but boy do they always become the source of heated debate at all the meetings!

But every time I think about how ridiculous the whole thing is, I remember those long winters when I sometimes used to have to blow out our driveway twice a day for weeks on end, and then mow our lawn every week, and weed our garden every week after having spent some seventy or eighty hours that week at work. It's nice to be able to come home from work and truly be home, with someone else to take care of the yard work. And with the current place, we have a huge terrace with a west-southwest view that will be perfect for growing virtually anything we want - I'll definitely be giving tomatoes a try this year. All that and a view that's truly world-class. Yes, we can live with the hassles of the HOA.