So, I 'bought' a house...

"Eric @ opposite-lock.com" (theyrerolling) 04/11/2018 at 21:58 • Filed to: Houselopnik, HOALOPNIK

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... this house is in an HOA.

In honor of my newfound dictator status, here’s a vehicle fit for a dictator. Idi Amin, to be specific.

So we had this note stuck in our door about a month ago informing us of an HOA meeting in a few days. We had never heard anything from them before this aside from pulling teeth to get the CC&Rs and Bylaws, because the listing agent was a tool, the former owner never received a copy, and the Escrow company didn’t even get a copy for their documents. Ridiculous.

Anyhow, we go down to meet this shadowy group at the local library, where we encounter two couples we know and a lot of people we’ve never met. Not really surprising, most of us work for a living so we’re barely there. 8 properties are represented out of 30, which constitutes a quorum and therefore we were allowed to make votes that were binding. Bonus.

The first order of business was that the former president had moved and appointed a replacement, but the treasurer that had been in the remaining three positions on the board was tired of doing it (he’d been doing it since the developer handed off control to the association). So we had to either confirm the appointed president or choose another one. We chose to simply confirm her. We then found a new treasurer, a lady reluctantly accepted the post of secretary, and my wife ended up vice president.

Sweet.

So then we get into all kinds of stupid stuff going on. You see, aside from the treasurer quitting, the main cause for this meeting was an event that happened sometime after we purchased our house, but prior to moving in. We’ll call this event “the painting” or “for a second I thought this was East LA, until I noticed moss on everything”.

One day a homeowner decided that they needed to paint their house. Doesn’t exactly sound unreasonable, right? They even went to the appointed president to tell them that they planned to paint their house, but couldn’t find guidelines on what colors were permissible. The president chatted with them for a bit and the homeowner said, “I’m thinking a nice neutral earth tone”, and the president agreed with, “as long as it’s a similar color to the rest of the houses or the color it is now, I’m sure it’ll be fine”.

The homeowner hired a painter and selected a color.

After the painting , the house is now a bright light blue color with bright red shutters, dark grey accents, and white trim.

We discussed the painting at length and reviewed all the documents, but there was absolutely nothing we could do. You see, to stop this we would have needed a committee that didn’t exist and would consist of between one and 3 members that are not elected members of the board, but appointed by the board. 4 of the 11 people there were now board members...

So the president looked around and asked for volunteers. Nobody was interested. It went on for a bit and she threatened to assign it to someone, so I finally offered, “I’ll be on the Architectural Control Committee”. She asks for others and another guy offers to join, then a lady that has a grievance about the trees in the yard of the house behind her chimes in just before the Board agreed to appoint the first two of us, so there are three of us.

I really didn’t know exactly what I was signing up for. I assumed when I first read the documents that these people already existed and only really concerned myself with what they can/will do and what the board can/will do. As I re-read it today, it became clear that I’m one of the three faultless dictators of the neighborhood. We can basically make any decision we like and nobody can really do anything about it, short of deposing us. Not only that, but we’re not responsible for our decisions, good or bad. Basically, we have absolute power over any/all external changes to all houses, fences, landscaping, window coverings, the vegetation on all corner lots, exterior paint, any added structures, any external modifications, any ornamental items, etc.

I do look forward to keeping this neighborhood a little more unified than it is today, but the risk involved in giving people this much power over others is a little terrifying.

Rico > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 22:08

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Reason #997 I wouldn’t live in a HOA neighborhood. I’m sure some are great but many are not.

Hope the other 2 are as level headed as you, or at least one of them.

Tapas > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 22:10

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Well, start embezzling money into your track day fund. lol

I have not yet heard of a non-evil HOA on the internet. You have a lot to live up to.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Rico 04/11/2018 at 22:33

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Yeah, I was worried about this one just like every other. The upside to this one is that the fees are super low, so I figured they couldn’t be too crazy. The problem is that you basically can’t find a newer home (like mid 80s and beyond) that isn’t in an HOA unless it’s a totally unaffordable custom home.

My first one was amazing. They made life in that building so comfortable and effortless that I could never complain. The thing was that they were a very active HOA and had really carefully defined rules that ensured the population of the building remained extremely stable.

My second was pure torture. I hated them and hated their management company even more. In fact, only two months before I peaced out of that shithole, a group of resident owners planned a coup to elect me president (I was a renter, but had the second-longest full-time residency in the building) because I got so pissed off once that I said I’d fire the damned management company, among a lot of other things. Straight trash.

The upside for ours is that we’re all reasonable people and there are only 30 houses, so we know just about everyone. It’s still crazy how incredibly free we are to make decisions about what is and isn’t acceptable in the neighborhood.

OPPOsaurus WRX > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 22:36

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Ican be ur architectural consultant. Just ask wwfllwd or what would Frank Lloyd Wright do?

His Stigness > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 22:47

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WilliamsSW > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 23:05

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Step 1 - buy actual 600 Grosser and patrol the neighborhood with it, honking the (glorious) horn to draw attention to yourself

Step 2 - suspend by-laws and committees, appoint yourself President for Life (no one will protest this)

Step 3 - live lavishly on those monthly association fees

Step 4 -

E92M3 > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 23:10

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Why does every neighborhood have “that blue house”? You’d think most painters would have experienced poor choices before, and could steer them away from making such a mistake. It’s hard to pick a color from a small square, always google the color name or code to see finished examples.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Tapas 04/11/2018 at 23:29

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Nobody mentions the ones that aren’t shitty. I lived in a building with an amazing HOA and management company when I lived in San Diego. Currently a 50-50 chance it’ll be shitty, so we’ll see. Thus far, these people seem pretty sensible.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > WilliamsSW 04/11/2018 at 23:30

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You could barely pay a single month of my mortgage on an entire year worth of dues from the community. There would be no living large on that.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > E92M3 04/11/2018 at 23:41

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You have a great point here. It’s shocking that the painters weren’t like, “Are you sure you want to paint your house so it stands out like a sore thumb in your neighborhood?”.

I mean, let’s be real, the job of our ACC is to be this conscience and say, “Do you really want to paint your house an outrageous color and make it hard to sell your neighbor’s house?”. One of the things the next door neighbors were freaking out about at the meeting was their terror over when the blue house might do to replace the fence that is falling over between their two properties...

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > His Stigness 04/11/2018 at 23:46

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Hahaha. Yeah, I’ve never seen one even marginally this serious. Ours is ridiculous beyond belief because much of the group doesn’t even know how to hold a meeting properly.

WilliamsSW > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 23:46

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Clearly you need to raise dues in order to build an army to conquer more territory and collect dues from those homeowners too.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 23:56

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Blue house with red shutters? Maybe they’re Cubs fans

Nom De Plume > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/11/2018 at 23:57

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So begin a strategic and silent takeover of all HOA of note in the city, then the county. Once you have established a majority presence in multiple voting districts the graft comes from both sides.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero 04/12/2018 at 00:17

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In Western WA?

It’s not a dark blue like that, it’s an artificially-bright sky blue.

The funny thing is that if the rest of the neighborhood was up for a repainting, I’d be okay with changing the scheme to a modern vibrant color palette. The problem comes from the fact every other house in the neighborhood and adjacent neighborhoods is an earth tone type color.

Sampsonite24-Earth's Least Likeliest Hero > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 00:27

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I mean I drive past a legit Cincinnati bengals house in Chicago by my dad’s place so I wouldn’t put anything out of the question lol

His Stigness > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 00:29

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That sounds more frustrating than having a Frasier in the HOA.

I don’t think my HOA ever does anything except being dicks to certain renters, like myself. They sent a notice to the property owner one time saying that our dog which we didn’t have shit on other people’s lawns, but they never bothered to send us the notice.

But the people on the corner (who have dogs that always get out and.... shit on other people’s lawns!) can have their Christmas lights up for six months and not have a trash or recycle can.

I don’t mind the idea behind HOA’s, but either they’re lazy and stupid like mine and don’t enforce jack shit, or they run by a bunch of old, mean, and bored old people who nitpick over stupid shit like taking your trash can in by 6 pm on trash day.

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 00:32

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Do you have a personal opinion on “the painting,” other than they might have poor taste?

winterlegacy, here 'till the end > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 00:37

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Use your powers for good, not evil.

Make your HOA a not-sucky HOA.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > His Stigness 04/12/2018 at 01:06

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I kind of wish ours had some of those nit picky old people to make people take their cans in, because it is seriously a problem around here. About one in five houses or so leaves their cans out all week, which is about the laziest thing I could imagine. It isn’t even like our trash pickup is inconvenient, considering it’s Friday morning at 6A.

My first HOA was never a dick to anyone ever as far as I am aware. It had a sort of top-down personality that was pervasive in the building/complex. Everyone took pride in taking care of the building (even us renters carefully collected and installed the furniture pads every time we used the freight elevator because it was simply what you did), they had a tiny number of renters (including me; I believe it was capped at 2 or 3 units), we had regular social events (weekly coffee & donuts, monthly bingo, annual events, frequent dinners, etc). It was sort of like living in a retirement community, only better, except when people died. I never had a single complaint about the HOA, their management company, or any use of funds. Between your two, I feel they were the perfect middle road, with just the right amount of giving a shit about what mattered while they let the petty stuff slide. It was the best-run place I’ve ever lived.

The second one, on the other hand, was more like yours. Their management company was so shitty that the owners were going to elect me (a renter) president so I’d fire their worthless money-grubbing/wasting, petty fine issuing, towing, never-fixing-anything, jackasses. It also suffered from most units being used as vacation homes exclusively in the summer, so 9-10 months of the year it was just us renters (the only consistently-occupied units) and a handful of year-round owners. This meant nothing ever got done because nobody was around to vote and the management company didn’t give a crap as long as they were able to rush any serious fixes within the month or two before most of the owners arrived. We suffered half-assed construction for 9 straight months starting in Oct as they kept hiring low bidders that simply never did the work or never finished. The floor I was on had the hall destroyed and walls torn up/replaced due to a fire in a unit, while the floor below us was completely destroyed inside and outside the units. To add insult to injury, the building itself was constructed worse than average apartments and probably should have simply been apartments to begin with. It was just a terrible situation all around...

I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to hit that nicely balanced middle road of just active enough to keep things in order, yet generally mostly hands-off. Based on the ACC team and our emails, I believe we’ll just be acting as a check on people being too far out there, not the fine-happy totalitarian squad that we have permission to be based on the CC&Rs.

I’m also pretty sure the association has never issued a fine in their history. Nothing lists specific fines and we have yet to establish any, although we did agree to add interest to delinquent dues (which are tiny) and to explore fines to tack on to these at the next meeting. We have a bad problem with owners failing to update us with their addresses and some people that simply don’t pay their HOA dues (seems baffling when it’s a grand total of $140/year, which is about what every house pays for city water/sewer/drains and less than my recent power/gas bills (and we’re a low-consumption household)).

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 04/12/2018 at 01:35

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I don’t hate the colors, it’s cheery and not tasteless, but it is so different from the rest of the houses that it stands out too much for such a tight-packed neighborhood of drab earth tone houses. If the ACC had been in place, I’m fairly certain we would not have approved a color scheme that so radically clashes with the rest of the houses. On the other hand, it should be noted that they didn’t technically do anything wrong because the ACC didn’t exist (it isn’t required to exist) and the CC&Rs clearly state that most of the standards the documents set out are only enforceable by such a committee.

My house was repainted by the previous owners, but they kept the neutral earth tones for the main color, used a complementary accent color, and used a similar complementary shutter color. If I didn’t know they had done it due to historic pictures of the house, I would not have realized it was done.

If at least the whole block decided to shift to a more modern cheery color scheme and wanted to paint them all over a summer or two, I’d have no objections. Hell, I think it’d be a great change. I’d also have no problem with houses in close proximity to the blue house on the same street going with a similar modern color palette, but if/when the blue house decides to repaint, if the house doesn’t have like-color neighbors, I’d vote that they be required to paint it a color similar to adjacent houses...

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > His Stigness 04/12/2018 at 01:59

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Fuck HOAs.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Tapas 04/12/2018 at 02:06

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Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Rico 04/12/2018 at 02:06

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Fuck HOAs.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 02:10

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Dear Leader. Install a speaker in every house that only plays Skrillex with a volume control knob that doesn’t work.

HOAs are inherently evil.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 02:11

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It sounds like you bought the farm.

Chan - Mid-engine with cabin fever > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 07:39

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New rule, houses must be painted in one of two alternating colour tones!

Manwich - now Keto-Friendly > OPPOsaurus WRX 04/12/2018 at 08:44

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I would be a better consultant because I would ask what would Andy Warhol do!!!!

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 04/12/2018 at 09:46

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This is banned by the CC&Rs and I’m too lazy to write that many variances.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 04/12/2018 at 09:52

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How so?

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo 04/12/2018 at 09:56

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I take it you have a grievance with one. Please tell the class about it.

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo 04/12/2018 at 12:34

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For the record, if there is ever a lighting issue, I’ll definitely consult you, since you’re an expert on these things.

His Stigness > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 12:37

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Well there’s a difference between giving you a notice because your cans weren’t brought in by 7pm on trash day vs leaving them out for a week. I’m totally with you on leaving them out for a week. People do that do that on my street and it’s fucking annoying. But I think HOA’s should give more time to bring cans in, most people work until 5. It’s not reasonable to say you have to bring it in by 6:30 on trash day.

It sounds like your first HOA is that magical HOA that everyone actually wants: doesn’t nit pick, but they do enforce things that are annoying. I’d move to an HOA like that.

But, one thing I don’t like about HOA’s is not the management itself, it’s that every house looks the same. I find it annoying, especially because if someone does something outside the ordinary is stands out, like the people on my street who have a brick driveway when the rest of the neighborhood has asphalt driveways. Someone needs to explain that shit to me.

Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 12:38

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[walks into house]

Yep, that’s ugly.

[leaves]

Eric @ opposite-lock.com > His Stigness 04/12/2018 at 18:09

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I’m not even that bothered by them waiting another day if they really need to, but leaving it out there for a week or more is just crazy. With ours, it’s Friday morning, so you should be able to do it before you leave for work, but in the worst case, you have an entire weekend to do it...

They also proactively maintained the property. So unusual.

Well, it does make some sense in these newer developments. I grew up in a mass-produced post-war single-story suburban house that was ~650sq/ft and 16' from neighboring houses on a 1/8th acre lot (however, for reasons I don’t understand, they were further apart rear-to-rear than I would have expected at ~100'). Where I live now is a mass-produced two-story suburban house that is 2600sq/ft (not counting the garage, which bumps it over 3000) and 14' from the neighboring houses on a 1/8th acre lot (some in the development are a mere 6' apart and they’re a mere 70' from the house behind with 20' of that distance due to a drainage system that was necessary between the houses, which the HOA is responsible for maintaining). Where I grew up was a very densely packed suburb when it was built. My current house is not even as tight as a lot of modern developments because it’s “rural”. When your houses are as large/imposing as ours are and so tightly packed, the effect of changes to adjacent houses has a larger effect on your house. HOAs with control over design are more an effect of these ultra-dense high-profit developments...

For dramatic contrast, the close-in suburban house my parents live in is a mere 2000 sq/ft (dubious) on just over 1/4 acre of land and it is a whopping 50' from the nearest neighboring house. Most are at least 40' apart. Positively rural. Some of the older houses in their neighborhood that were built back when the zoning for that area was truly rural are at least 100' from the nearest neighboring house.

His Stigness > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 18:37

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I’d give you a day, but that’s as far as I go. Part of the problem with my street, though, is you can’t park on one side of the street (mine) because it’s narrow. So either people make the street more narrow, or they take up parking spots.

But really it’s just annoying because it’s so simple.

And on that note, there are neighbors who bring the bins up to the gate, but don’t put them away. This wouldn’t be so bad on big lots, but the street is 15-20' from out gate. If you’re going to bring your bin off the street why not just put it away???

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 23:18

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You wrote all of your narratives in this thread beautifully and I was compelled. The entire thing about some obsessive compulsive old couple driving around nit picking people is too grim to contemplate. And the documents you describe empower them to make me as miserable as they want. And I’m the guy who parked his tent trailer on his front lawn for nine years and has a project car in the driveway and a cherry picker. It makes me angry just thinking about an HOA having that kind of control over my home. But municipalities can have that kind of authority as well, like San Francisco and their parking enforcement for example. *shudders*

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Eric @ opposite-lock.com 04/12/2018 at 23:22

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I replied to your other post just now. I think HOAs would be okay if they all had dudes like you running them. But someday, you’d move out, and some old Nazi couple would take over and I’d be hating life.