Nosy Neighbor Question

Just bought a house that has an HOA.

I attended the meeting to get a feel for things, here are few highlights;
We would have dissolved it years ago if not for the liability of maintaining a pond a the back of the neighborhood
dues are less than $300/year
Snow removal, mowing around the entrance to the property is pretty much it.
Writing a demand letter that one neighbor gets rid of the blasted rooster and stops storing 8 snowplows and commercial vehicles in the neighborhood.

They dont give a crap if I take out the aboveground pool and put in a firepit as long as I dont leave it a mudpit.

They also dont care if I store a trailer, as long as I put it behind my garage.

That was all that I gathered out of the meeting, and I actually agree about the rooster and running a landscaping business (including storing all the equipment) in a pretty nice neighborhood.

spitfirebill wrote:

mtn wrote: I grew up in a town with pretty strict zoning laws. No boats visible in the driveway/yard. No commercial vehicles (permits were available and not difficult to get). It was fine. There was no need for an HOA; the town already took care of it.

I don't think any town, city, village or whatever you call them has the right to make such rules. A HOA, yes, but not a governmental entity.

Sure they do. A quick google search of "zoning laws boats" lead me to this one for Miami Dade county--you'd think they'd be pretty liberal with it, no?

http://www.miamidade.gov/building/standards/residential-boats-rvs.asp

spitfirebill wrote:

mtn wrote: I grew up in a town with pretty strict zoning laws. No boats visible in the driveway/yard. No commercial vehicles (permits were available and not difficult to get). It was fine. There was no need for an HOA; the town already took care of it.

I don't think any town, city, village or whatever you call them has the right to make such rules. A HOA, yes, but not a governmental entity. Has the Bern already gotten elected?

???

Governmental entities have been regulating what we can and can't do with everything ever since they were formed. Why wouldn't they have "the right to make such rules?" What else is zoning and planning and building code for?

Property Maintenance laws are a strange lot.

Zoning Code usually covers the types of business or residential use standards of the property, as well as set backs and other things. That usually handled by the state supreme courts.

Building code is a safety thing, and thats a national law.

But saying that a person can't store an RV in their driveway doesn't fit under building code, and since they aren't buildings not are they "uses" I've always found it difficult to enforce property maintenance codes to cover such things. They usually fly because the general public (or elected officials) agree on them, so they are sorta/kinda Government based HOAes with administration.

Source: worked in township and county government in planning and zoning.

When thinking of HOA, don't think of a neighborhood of houses, think of a condo made up of separate units.

Having a 5 acre condo is easier to do than 5 acres of homes for a builder. It's one big property to get approved instead of 100 small ones.

When you picture it as a condo, then you can see how they can pass odd laws on what one can and can't do. It's little different than a high rise condo in that sense.

My parents pay more in condo fees every year they then do on their mortgage. It's crazy. They are on the first floor of a 3 story Silkmill built in 1910. Most of the fees go to landscaping/snow removal, window and roof maintenance.

They liked it at first, nearly 20 year ago, because my step-father was driving truck and my Mom hated having a huge house to maintain mostly by herself. Now they wish they had those condos fees to pay for someone to maintain their back yard with a patio or porch.

Im glad I dont have an HOA... My neighbors are pretty chill too.... I have an RV parked in my driveway, a tarp shed next to my garage, garbage cans viewable from the street, grass isn't all green, but its generally cut decently. I dont have cars on blacks, and try to keep my crap piles hidden behind the garage, but my neighbors rock.

I loved the NO HOA stuff in my old house in CT. Until the neighbor with the rotweillers and rooster moved in. Seriously dude.. You don't need a rooster to get the hens to lay. Also.. He decided to put in his own sprinkler system, cool.. Except he left his yard dug up for 11 months while he put in the system.

In reply to PHeller:

Things like derelict cars and un-mowed grass isn't "code", it's an "ordinance" passed by the city/township officials. My township does have ordinances against un-tagged cars, but enforcement seems rather lax. I've read about increasing enforcement in local newsletters a number of times over the years, but there are cars in my neighborhood that haven't moved since I moved in almost 25 years ago.

We have a HOA and have lived here for probably 20 years. I'm happy with it. There isn't too much BS and they keep things neat and tidy. And in response, it's a very quiet and desirable neighborhood.

You all realize that there is something worse than a HOA, don't you?

It's called a Historical District. I call it a "Hysterical District". In a Hysterical District when your old wood window are falling apart you cannot just replace them with something better. You have to have them rebuilt exactly as they were (none of this modern double pane stuff, etc). If your old wood shutters are all rotted you have to have them rebuilt. No modern materials and just doing away with them is a no-no also.

Fortunately, I love a couple blocks outside the Hysterical District and over the last 30 years I have worked on 3 campaigns to keep from expanding it.

Don't have to be in the district for hysterical, just be so lucky as you have your house designated historic or placed on the historic registry.

A reasonable HOA isn't as painful as an unreasonable one. But, that can change with a single election.

java230 wrote: Im glad I dont have an HOA... My neighbors are pretty chill too.... I have an RV parked in my driveway, a tarp shed next to my garage, garbage cans viewable from the street, grass isn't all green, but its generally cut decently. I dont have cars on blacks, and try to keep my crap piles hidden behind the garage, but my neighbors rock.

here in Northfield Nj, they are actually pretty chill about a few things I never expected. You can actually park a trailer in the street. The last couple of places, you could only do that if it was still attached to a vehicle.

I did have to register my boat though.. one of the neighbors complained about it

I'm the vice president of my HOA. It dates back to the 50's when our neighborhood was being built and it did regulate some things back then like minimum square footage for houses and requiring all garages to be integral and not stand alone. There's still some language the requires us to get the approval of other neighbors before building a shed and prohibiting any sort of birds like chickens, ducks or geese but nobody ever refuses sheds and nobody wants fowl either. We don't have any say in the colors of houses, landscaping, where your garbage can are kept, or other silliness.

In fact, I parked two parts cars in my driveway as soon as I closed on my house and moved in. They were kept under covers that I replaced every spring to keep things looking nice. Nobody said anything about them until two years later I uncovered one to part it out. Then most of my neighbors stopped by to watch me and my wife cutting it up with a sawzall and loading it up for a trip to the junkyard. One of our neighbors who's lived here for a very long time has a Karmann Ghia that's been kept under a cover for close to 20 years and nobody cares at all.

The main thing that the HOA exists for is to collect annual dues and maintain our pool, pool house and tennis court. In that respect, the HOA is a really good thing because the neighbors socialize together at the pool all summer long and we've become good friends.

My last house had no HOA but did have an overzealous code enforcement officer. He gave me so much unwarranted crap through certified letters about the height of my bushes that my blood nearly boiled. He also didn't like my parts cars (under covers), racecar, or trailer being parked in my large driveway so he sent certified letters about them too. This guy was such a weasel that he'd never just knock on my door to talk about his concerns, he hid behind official looking stuff sent in the mail. I started going down to his office during business hours whenever I got a letter in the mail to tell him berkeley off to his face. I finally put posted signs on my property to keep him from looking too close. The bastard even took pictures of when I parked my pickup on the grass for 30 minutes to unload mulch and then sent me a warning letter about it. After finally looking at a copy of the code book, I determined that I was in compliance on every one of his issues and he was just harassing me because I would not bend to his will. I got so fed up with his bullE36 M3 that I eventually went to the boro manager and council with a cease and desist letter from an attorney friend. After that, he never contacted me again. That was definitely worse than my current HOA-by far.

In reply to jimbob_racing:

You do know the BTK guy was a code enforcement guy, right?

Our HOA is voluntary and has not real teeth, but the neighborhood does have covenants which you get anytime you buy a house in the neighborhood. But there isn't really anybody to enforce them. Both developers are dead and they didn't give the HOA the authority to enforce anything. You would basically have to sue the person in civil court.

I would never live is a town that had such ridiculous rules as you are talking about. Our county does has some rules, mainly no untagged vehicles on your property unless they are surrounded on three sides by a fence or wall. I've had a dead Spitfire in my drive under a tarp for several years now, and no-one has complained and the county has not stopped by. Its almost impossible to get them to force someone to cut and a horribly overgrown lot or property. They have no resolve to go after owners of abandoned properties to clean the up.

I think the theme here is that the general level of problems has to do with people and relationships. I do not live in a HOA neighborhood, but I do live in a city with code enforcement.

Story time. There is chain link fence around my back yard and there is a couple yard wide strip of open space between the back of my garage and the fence. Not visible from the road, or anywhere except a couple of the adjacent back yards. The previous owner had put down a lot of plastic and some wood ships. It was all degraded and looked like crap and caused drainage problems. So, I raked up most of the remaining wood chips and pulled up what was left of the tattered plastic and tried planting a garden. Bad soil plus not enough hours of direct sunlight meant failure. The next year I decided to go with flowers so raked it up and spread some wildflower seed. It was coming in pretty nice with chicory and daises when I got the code enforcement letter about the tall and noxious weeds. So, I weed whacked it and applied roundup for the next few years. Nice dead, brown and compliant now. I hope the neighbor who complained likes the new look.

It is also worth noting that on this and a couple other occasions, I left messages and emails for the enforcement officer and have never received any response. I see both the good and the bad of these community rules. If reasonably enforced and people communicate, most people are happy. If you really do have a busybody neighbor or an overzealous enforcement officer (I think the two probably go hand in hand), nobody is going to be happy.

Sometimes, it seems like the root cause of HOA problems is that many of them take the form of a government with no checks and balances.

In reply to MadScientistMatt:

Not necessarily.

One way is to get involved.

An old friend used to have noise battles with his attached neighbor after we would have band practice in the basement, always shutting down at 10 pm. The neighbor would continue blasting their stereo.

My friend's father was president of the condo association. They were the HOA.

I could never live in an HOA.. living in a 20 year old housing development on the edge of my small home town is bad enough..

One of my friends lives in one, a fairly upscale development in a rural area just south of one of the bigger cities in central MN.. he built the biggest- and coolest- house in the whole thing on his 2 acre lot, then bought the lot next to it and put up a HUGE 2 story shed to store his growing collection of cool cars and stuff.. he and his wife pretended they were lawyers and built everything as big as they could given the rules of the area, and it's magnificent.. their kids have 4 acres to ride their 4 wheelers and dirt bikes and he has a bitchin place for his Hellcat Challenger and 68 GTX convertible to live in luxury..

But I can't afford to do it up like that, so I am looking for a decent farmhouse within a few miles of town to rent then buy where I can have a few unregistered cars laying around without bothering anyone.