For the most capitalist country in the world, its neighborhoods sure are suspiciously soviet.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2026
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I'm surprised she didn't drive her SUV. At least you're getting her some exercise.
Fire ants and ground hornets are allowed as pets right?
Fortunately, my HOA isn't bad at all. My money mostly goes to the landscapers, who do a pretty good job with everyone's front yard. Water is included. The main complaint happens in the spring when some people's grass turns green before other's and they complain that the HOA isn't watering the grass enough. A couple of weeks, every spring.
Also, people complain about things that the HOA has no control over, like cars on the street, or issues at the parks, or sidewalks and roads, or fence and wall height allowances/limits.
Mine apparently is abandoned. Dude who owned the road died 20-30 years ago and people just stopped bothering with it years before I got here. Cheapest dirt on the market and I doubt all the old people here are planning on selling anyway. So everyone just does whatever now.
No angry words, problems or disputes with anyone in 8 years.
It really isn't bad unless you have a militant one which I will never understand.
I don't own the place but the one I live in won't even let you put up a privacy fence. Only those shitty little metal rail fences. Can't go in the backyard without everyone on the block seeing into your business and all the dogs on the street bark at each other constantly. They also don't like pools for some reason but that doesn't really affect me.
I'll never understand why some people choose to live in minimum security prison.
Very, very basic people who are more concerned with their property values than having a hobby.
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.
How do countries do this without widespread HOA equivalents? In the UK we have similar arrangements for shared spaces but not anywhere near the comical level of control on private land as in the US
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.
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For the same reason people choose to pay 50 % of their income to their landlord.
“Small government” people want “freedom” so they eschew normal things like bylaws, but then the problems with that appear - whether it’s legitimate or Karen - and the control freaks in the neighborhood form up a HOA to deal with it, instead of offloading it to a (theoretically) uninvolved third party.
And now it’s the default way to enforce community standards.
For the greater good.
European here - what powers does a HOA actually have? Surely they can't make you leave or anything? Are their fines actually legally enforcable? What if you just dont pay them?
I'm pretty sure they can legally take your house away from you.
You mean the house you own?
Cause you don't own it in that case.
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.
We have hoa-equivalents in Europe, tho. In my country they're called something like 'owners community', and they can even take your home if your debt with them gets too big. But I don't think they can fine you directly, the have to sue you, and the rules aren't usually as insane as in the States, but they can ban you from installing the windows you want, putting up a flag, hang your clothes to dry on the front...
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.
But how can they have a legal right to put a lien on it? Do they have some kind of legal claim to the land or property? What's stopping any other organisation from doing this?
It's part of the paperwork you sign when you buy the house. It's essentially saying the can do that if you don't pay fines. Luckily my HOA is pretty lenient about things, but still sucks. I'd rather dissolve it and remove the restrictions.
Hm. How nasty. And I'm assuming there's some sort of provision that you have to sell on the house under the same terms?
Yep
They are part of the covenants, restrictions, and conditions that "run with the land." They are a more organized way of controlling the aesthetic of the neighborhood than traditional covenants. In practice they are used to harass people and were originally used to discriminate.
When house was built they were set up as HOA irrevocably. Or at some point the neighborhood wanted an HOA and current owners irrevocably joined HOA. So when you buy the house then the HOA sticks to it. That gives them legal right to issue you fines if you break their rules, and if those fines go unpaid they could place the lien
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.
HOAs are idiotic. I was president (forced, it was a rotation basis) in one. First thing I did was convene the assembly outside, at 13:00 in the summer, no chairs. The meeting went from the previous 2 1/2 h. to 15 minutes. I'm going to install 3 heat pump compressors on the side wall of the building, which 2 or 3 Sandra Karens make furious noise about. I'm preparing a legal nuke, created with A"I", detailing every single thing that protrudes from their wall, down to the milimiter. Probably wouldn't hold up in court, but if you ask a text generator to act as a vicious lawyer to draft a text for this with enough detail, they can whip up very scary texts. If they try to making me take them down, I'm going to hit them with notices to take down EVERYTHING that protrudes from the exterior, including planters, flags, and even fucking door knockers.
Fuck HOAs
Sounds like the HOA still couldn’t prevent bad neighbors
Any time I've sought to purchase a home, I've told my realtor that "no HOA" was a mandate.
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HOAs are bulllshit. It’s my fuckin house. If I want to ignore the fuckin lawn, that’s my perogative.
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SIX ENTIRE MINUTES OF FORCED TRASHCAN VIEWING!? You monster.
But also where else is it supposed to go? If you cant see it, neither can bin people.
Typically, you're allowed to bring it out to the curb after a certain hour the night before collection day and you need to get it back out of view by a certain hour after the garbagemen come through.
Is this my house or a hotel?
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Land of the free.
Ikr. I live in Australia and I can't imagine having to deal with some other jerk micromanaging your front yard.
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