Revenge

New developments are more likely to be HOAs, as city governments realized that they can't afford the money bomb that is car-based infrastructure to support single-family housing. So they foist those duties onto the HOAs, essentially making small municipal governments for every new housing development.

So.... you can avoid them for now, but only if you live in developed cities.

I can understand it for condos where you functionally own an apartment, that way it can pay for building/grounds maintenance, but if you've got a street where none of the houses are connected, then I dont see a point, there's no benefit beyond everyone's grass looking pretty uniform and no one having outlandish holiday decorations (which, where's the fun in that). Actually now that I think about, I'm setting up an HOA who's only rule is you can't put up Christmas decor before Thanksgiving.

There isn't choice in a lot of places. Every new development since at least the 90s has an hoa.

It's not an easy decision for a lot of people. I struggled to buy a house for 10 years, partly because HOAs are the name of the game in most areas in the US. One time we got all the way to due diligence when we found out that we couldn't even hang our clothes outside on a clothesline! So we said no. That was five years in to the search, and it was another five years before we finally found something.

But, that was ten wasted years of my life, and I can understand someone making a different decision than I did. Hell, I wish WE had made a different decision!

For the greater good.

Free to be assholes.

Just DDoS all their online crap

That’s because for every “instance” they charge an assload of ridiculous fees. It’s not Soviet at all. It’s just another form of capitalism.

If it was actually socialist and not just authoritarian it would be a housing coöp. HOAs are only aligned to the will of developers and people using housing as a form of investment.

The primary goal of most HOAs is house price. It should be livability and repair of public resources.

We call this "Pam Pong."

Boomers who have nothing besides their house which is now worth twice what they paid for it.

So you became the shitty HOA president that everyone complains about to what, show everyone that you're tough? I'm confused.

Are we supposed to be sympathetic to this comment? Add in AI bullshit if that wasn't already enough. Yikes.

Why would so many people upvote this comment? So odd.

Won't somebody think of the children?!

They can, and likely will, put a lien on your house which makes it harder to sell. Probably other avenues to fuck up your life too. Around me it's really hard to find a house without an HOA. It's probably like 90% of the market, or I triple my commute.

It's legally binding with the purchase of the house so there's no going around it.

Yes, the fines are legally enforceable because (generally) you have to agree to them in order to purchase the house - joining the HOA and being bound by its rules either literally or functionally becomes a permanent part of the deed to the property. There isn't a legally viable argument that you only signed that part under duress because you could have chosen to live somewhere else instead. You could technically get a like-minded group of neighbors to run for the HOA leadership roles and eliminate the petty rules, but the rider contract to the deed still exists.

They can be very powerful, certainly when hijacked by lawyers, John Oliver did a bit on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrizmAo17Os

It's incredible, and horrendous.