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Make sure nobody puts one of these in your yard at night...

Please say you're referencing the X-Files

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Often you have a clause in your mortgage where the homeowners' association can foreclose on your home if you fail to abide by their rules or pay your dues.

This is becoming a more and more common thing in the US, and it's repugnant.

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Often you have a clause in your mortgage where the homeowners' association can foreclose on your home if you fail to abide by their rules or pay your dues.

This is becoming a more and more common thing in the US, and it's repugnant.

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Often you have a clause in your mortgage where the homeowners' association can foreclose on your home if you fail to abide by their rules or pay your dues.

This is becoming a more and more common thing in the US, and it's repugnant.

Yep, bad, bad stuff. I made sure that I found a neighborhood that had no HOA. I lived in a (rented) condo, and that was a nightmare. The condo commanders as they are known around here are impossible to deal with for the most part.

I would just paint the window side of the blinds white, if you can. Good luck with your battles! On a related note, the HOA cannot prevent you from putting up a OTA television antenna, if you are planning on that.

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I then envisioned different-colored blinds on every window, purple, blue, yellow, orange.

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Then again, you might end up with somebody like my neighbor who had two mini-palms in his yard - only color other than dirt.

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Then again, you might end up with somebody like my neighbor who had two mini-palms in his yard - only color other than dirt.

I would far rather see that than a row of twisty little houses, all alike.

Or should I have gone with the Edward Scissorhands reference?

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Often you have a clause in your mortgage where the homeowners' association can foreclose on your home if you fail to abide by their rules or pay your dues.

This is becoming a more and more common thing in the US, and it's repugnant.

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If I want to paint my house an emerald green with hot-pink trim, then I'll be damned if anyone other than my family will have a say in the matter.

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Well, I have a HOA, although I'm in a townhome (small terrace, for you Brits), where it sorta makes sense. Regardless, I pay a lot of money in order for them to do a lousy job keeping up our lawn and prevent me from personalizing my house. I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if the colors of the houses weren't all based on various shades of baby shit.

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Also, you said that you were restricted to what you could do inside a home? You must have a pretty damn strict HOA.

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Also, you said that you were restricted to what you could do inside a home? You must have a pretty damn strict HOA.

If your blinds are not inside your home, you're doing something wrong.

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I went out into the courtyard and noticed how odd our windows looked. I then envisioned different-colored blinds on every window, purple, blue, yellow, orange...

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Not only are you not allowed to do whatever you want, in/to a home you own, you get to pay for the "privilege" of artificially restricting your freedom.

In all honesty, I still have a problem with being able to do whever I want to the inside of my house. I grew up in the military, and never lived in a house that wasn't owned by the government until coming back from college the summer after my sophmore year. My roommate said it would be awesome to expand one of the doorways inside the house and add an arch to it... I was shocked. I didn't realize you could do something like that

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By the time I'm able to afford a $1M+ house, I'll likely be old enough to be interested in those kinds of rules.

By the time I'm able to afford a $1M+ house, I'll hopefully be able to invest it in a plot of land large enough that the nearest neighbours are a couple miles down the road.

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We have a HOA in a neighborhood close to me. The prices start at $500,000 for the bare lot.

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If I want to paint my house an emerald green with hot-pink trim, then I'll be damned if anyone other than my family will have a say in the matter.

And I would hope you'd tell me before you did, so I could sell my home before my property values went down.

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I understand your point of view as well, but I suppose I'm an orderly person at heart, and I'd prefer to have a standard to keep than complete disarray.

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Gabriel

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The next thing you know, people will want to think for themselves!

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tell you what kind of DOG you can keep.

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And without HOA and COA, you get jerks like me who often neglect to mow my lawn, pull/spray weeds only once a year, and still haven't replaced my ratty front door, though a new one is sitting there waiting. Sure, all these neglegances come with good reason, but a HOA would hang me.

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it looks like they've started dropping prices a bit.

Well then I guess now is the time for me to buy . Amazing how much they are getting for what used have a horse race track.

Stu

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Amazing how much they are getting for what used have a horse race track.

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I find these HOAs that govern free-standing homes to be pretty creepy

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I'll bet the owners of the first house wish that there were some kind of home owners' agreement in place.

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I don't see a problem with that second house. The first one looks wretched -- cookie cutter character, oversized garage, and barren landscape. But each to their own (property).


Cheers

Agreed! the second house looks a lot more interesting. I bet they have cool stuff in their back yard

If they’re worried so much about the neighbor’s houses then they should buy a lot of land around their place.

I live in the country and suburban sprawl is a real issue out here. When a $500k house pops up near an old farmer’s place the taxes instantly go up for the old farmer. Sometimes so much they must sell their farm because they can not make the taxes (happen to a friend of my dad’s). There have also been cases of the farmer being ordered to sell his livestock (chickens in the case I know of) because the new neighbors complained.

Lots of these people say “they want to move to the country” however they bring their suburbian attitudes with them.

I that white stuff really lowers the resale value IMO

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oversized garage

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oversized garage

That also appear to be unoccupied by their vehicles. This has always puzzled me, the amount of people who get large houses with plenty of garage space, and still park every vehicle outside.

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That also appear to be unoccupied by their vehicles. This has always puzzled me, the amount of people who get large houses with plenty of garage space, and still park every vehicle outside.

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Seems like house #2 is behind a fence, so that's something to add to the equation.

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I find it amusing that HOAs justify their rules on the basis of protecting resale value, when suburban real-estate doesn't tend to appreciate much, if at all. If there's always brand new construction around the corner, "used" houses fall in value just like used cars.

I have a summer house that I intentionally keep, I guess you would say "low profie" just so the value doesn't go up as much and I don't have to pay more taxes. I keep it in good repair but I intentionally leave old cloths on the cloths line and the like to keep it on the DL.

I don’t know if it has helped but we’ve become known as the “cloths-line people.”

I kind of like that.

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I have a summer house that I intentionally keep, I guess you would say "low profie" just so the value doesn't go up as much and I don't have to pay more taxes. I keep it in good repair but I intentionally leave old cloths on the cloths line and the like to keep it on the DL.

I don’t know if it has helped but we’ve become known as the “cloths-line people.”

I kind of like that.

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I find it amusing that HOAs justify their rules on the basis of protecting resale value, when suburban real-estate doesn't tend to appreciate much, if at all. If there's always brand new construction around the corner, "used" houses fall in value just like used cars.

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No one seems to have commented on the other aspect of HOAs: fees and assessments.

I'm currently a member of two HOAs (or HOA-like organizations), one for my townhome and another for the neighborhood, and I hate it. I pay huge amounts of money for no benefit, but at least I'm restricted in what I can do.

I did. At least in passing.

I'm in the middle of a house-hunt, now, and it's damn tough finding a place that fits our needs, that doesn't have an HOA attached to it. Some of them have fees on the order of $2-300/month!

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I have a really hard time coming to grips with paying somebody to tell me what I can and can't do.

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I have a really hard time coming to grips with paying somebody to tell me what I can and can't do.

We do it all the time. It's called government taxes and government regulations.

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Yeah, with townhomes, you're pretty much guaranteed an HOA, because there's not much other way to tell people that they need to fix their roof in order to prevent water from coming into your house. And other similar things that have to do with sharing the same building.

How do the British deal with this sort of thing in regards to, uh, terraces(?)?

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Then of course you have all the Party Wall regulations and act.

http://www.diydata.com/planning/party_wall_act/party_wall_act.php

Meh, I though this had to do with a party!

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The HOA recently dealt with some major roof repairs across all six units

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Current cost of re-shingling the roof once every 20 years: $3400.

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Am I right in assuming that the use of exterior building materials such as ash felt and wood are, by and large, for economic reasons? Even if the home-owner doesn't plan on staying in the property for 20+years, the resale price will take into account the condition of the degraded roof (or 'siding' for that matter). What is the reason for building with something so "short-term", concrete tiles would be a better bet, surely? Perhaps asking the structure to bear the additional weight is a cost factor here?

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House prices are generally based on (1) location, (2) location, and (3) location.

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That's kind of the point I was trying to make. The value of the "nice" house's location has decreased significantly since the "Clampetts" moved in next door. The owner has suffered a monetary loss due to actions of a third party, and he has no recourse under local laws (this is Alaska, after all, where independence sometimes runs amok) to obtain alleviation or compensation.

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The HOA recently dealt with some major roof repairs across all six units

HOA fees for two years: $150 * 12 * 2 = $3600.

Current cost of re-shingling the roof once every 20 years: $3400.

Mmm..

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There are, after all, probably still places in both the US and the UK where (sadly) house prices would go down if a black family moved in next door. Loss of house value alone cannot be a legally actionable event, chaos would ensue.

Well said, Peter. In my heart I'm sure you're wrong, but you state your case so elegantly that I am at a loss to refute it.

There must be a line somewhere that even you wouldn't cross. OK, a messy yard doesn't cross it. How about a situation where the Clampetts decide that it is too expensive to replace their septic system and let raw sewage stand in execrable pools on their property? Maybe they want to start up a metal stamping operation, keeping everybody awake in a quarter mile radius? No, these are weak examples, because in the first the health authorities would step in, and the second would run afoul of zoning regulations pertaining to businesses in a residential area, and not have anything to do with preserving the quality of the neighborhood.

I'm sure, however, that there must be some circumstance, even though confined physically to the "offenders' " property, that would merit preventative action on the part of some authority or other. Or, maybe not. Is this just a small expansion of the "...window blinds the wrong color" scenario that started this thread?

tanstaafl.

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Maybe they want to start up a metal stamping operation, keeping everybody awake in a quarter mile radius? No, these are weak examples, because ... [it] would run afoul of zoning regulations pertaining to businesses in a residential area, and not have anything to do with preserving the quality of the neighborhood.