Ever thought about living in an HOA community? Welp, think again. These HOA residents share how much of a nightmare it truly is. Content has been edited for clarity.
“Don’t Ever Tell My Wife What Color Flowers She Can Have”
“It was on day 1 at my new home when I received a $150 fine for the moving truck being parked on street and not in the driveway while they unloaded.
A few days later, I received yet another $150 fine for backing into my driveway as opposed to pulling straight in.
A couple of weeks later, my wife planted flowers in pots and placed the pots on the front steps. The pots were okay but the color of the plants she chose was not approved for ‘this year’ and they were not purchased from company XYZ. We were ordered to have them removed immediately. And can’t forget another $150 fine.
Two months later, I was having problems with my irrigation system. It was a break in the line someplace. I hired a company to come in and repair it. Almost immediately, I received a notification of a $400 fine for not using the approved company which happened to be company XYZ.
The list goes on and on. All these silly rules pointed to residents being forced to deal with XYZ company. I had enough.
Finally, I had time to go to an HOA meeting. I complained about their regulations. I told them I felt they were restrictive and arbitrary. I even said, ‘I am refusing to pay any of the fines.’
Since that moment, they started threatening me about evicting me and taking me to court. I took them to court instead. I filed a separate case for each complaint. In total, I had 14 lawsuits going. All being looked after by my brother who was a litigation lawyer.
As it turned out, 5 of 5 members of the HOA were either owners or had interests in company XYZ. They offered to drop the fines if I dropped the lawsuits. I told them to piss off. Then they offered to allow me onto the HOA board.
I countered that they all had to quit and that new members be elected and a new charter written. They were all to be excluded from the election perpetually. They refused. Oh well, see you in court.
Fast forward one year, and I defeated them in 9 out of 14 cases. I lost one case and four were dropped. The court removed the HOA members. The court froze the HOA assets as we had requested an accounting and there were major irregularities. 1.) Contracts assigned without resident approval. 2.) Changes made to HOA charter without approval from residents. 3.) ‘Honorariums’ paid out to HOA members in the thousands of dollars.
Our HOA was assigned to the government housing body to assign a new HOA with 3 residents as members and 2 members to be assigned as unbiased and outside of the community. The members of the HOA were made personally and financially responsible for all court costs. They had created a situation that benefited them financially. Basically fraud. I ended up paying a total of $700 to cover my legal expenses.
Don’t ever tell my wife what color flowers she can have. Just don’t do it.”
HOA Moron
“My first house backed up to a park that was in the center of our pretty big neighborhood. Backed up, as in literally over the fence was the park. The neighborhood had two sets of house styles from two different builders, and the park divided the house styles to the north and south.
So one Saturday morning I woke up, and the entire backyard was flooded, with about two feet of water. I went for a walk and saw how a pipe was busted in the park. At my house and three other homes, our entire yards were flooded. We each called the HOA, leaving voicemail after voicemail.
We finally got a hold of someone, who nonchalantly said, ‘Ok, we’ll send someone out Monday or Tuesday.’
Keep in mind, at this point water was just about to pour into my door, my fire pit was literally sinking into the ground, and the water was completely pouring out. Fortunately, my neighbor whose house was also in danger of flooding knew what to do, and was able to shut off the water.
That neighbor ended up getting in trouble with the HOA for touching their pipes.
Anyways, over the next year, this happened four more times. It was always right around the beginning of a school holiday (summer break, winter break, etc.) and kids were obviously doing it. Each time I proceeded to lose my cool with the HOA.
I wrote letters and made calls. Most went unanswered, and the rest all said things like, ‘Ok, we’ll have someone take a look at it in a few days.’
I started to lose my cool over this and proceeded to call the news, the BBB, the water district, etc.
Finally, I made it onto their radar apparently. I got a call one day from the Property Management Company’s owner. First, she started laying into me about how impatient I had been over these problems and how I should have contacted them in person or gone to a meeting to voice my complaints. Keep in mind, all of the meetings were on Wednesdays, every other month, at 3 pm, and their office was only open from 9 to 5 Monday through Friday, all on the other side of town. I have a 9-5 desk job.
I cut her off because I was sick of her bs, and mentioned the words ‘lawyer’, ‘liability’, and ‘foundation to my home’, which I guess she took notice of.
Anyways, this was when I realized I was talking to an absolute idiot. And yes, I’ll reiterate, this was the owner of the company.
She said, ‘Sir, I don’t understand why you’re even concerned about the park. It’s not even in your community.’
I paused for a moment when she said that.
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
Apparently, the two styles of house in my neighborhood were actually different HOA communities. I was in XYZ community and the other houses were in ABC community. Apparently, the park was managed by ABC community’s HOA. Even though those other houses literally started 30 feet from my front door, we all shared the same street, and the park, this was all part of a different HOA.
She said, ‘You will need to go to one of those HOA meetings to get the problem fixed.’
I lose my cool again and said, ‘I’m not going to any meeting, my home is literally about to sink into the ground.’
She happened to have called during another flood day. I demanded she gives me the contact number for someone at that HOA. She did, and I wrote it down.
So I called the number she gave me.
It was the same property management company! It was her company’s number she gave me! This company managed both HOAs, which were both in the same neighborhood and shared the same park that literally flooded people’s homes, and this idiot couldn’t help me out because 1) the complaints had been filed under my HOA’s community name, 2) because the park that was flooding my house was part of a different HOA, and 3) because the phone call had to be logged to the HOA that was in violation.
Some people pray for world peace. Some people pray for an end to world hunger. On a regular basis, I pray that a comet comes crashing through the earth’s atmosphere and hits the owner of that property management company right in the head!”
Excuse Me?
“I bought a foreclosed house in a nice neighborhood. I closed on the house on a Friday, and I had a cruise scheduled that left on the following Monday. So for the first week of owning the house, I was out of contact and out of the country. I had left the key to the house with a friend because he was going to oversee the house repairs being done while I was away.
When I got home from my cruise, I had 57 missed calls from a single phone number that I didn’t know. Somehow the HOA got my cell phone number within 2 days of me closing on the house. They called me 57 times and left dozens of increasingly angry voicemails to tell me the house had mandatory repairs to be made within 30 days or face fines. They even left a few messages in horribly broken Spanish but I applauded their attempt to be accommodating.
So I called the number and an elderly lady said, ‘Hello.’
I responded with, “Hi, I just bought a house in the neighborhood and I see where this number has called me a bunch. What can I do for you?’
This lady launched into a tirade about me and my people bringing down her property value and that they would not allow me to move multiple families into a single home in their neighborhood. I was so confused by that conversation but she asked me to meet with her and the president to try and appeal the fine I had. It was fine from when the contractor parked on the front lawn during his time working. So I agreed to come.
I felt like a kid going to detention. I showed up at the president’s house and knocked on the door.
He seemed polite and said he was happy I was there. Then came the woman I talked to earlier on the phone. She had a fake smile on.
We had a long and very weird conversation about they judged me too quickly without knowing how I looked and explained how there were certain people they were trying to keep out of their neighborhood. I swear I thought it was a hidden camera show my friend set me up for.”
Leave Her Dog Alone
“For the past few years, my mother had been renting a home in a neighborhood with an HOA. It was an older neighborhood, but it was very nice, and the people there were somewhat wealthy.
Well, my sister and I were visiting for the weekend last year for some sort of event (like Thanksgiving or something) and my sister brought her dog. There were no rules against pets, but there were rules against excessive noise like constant barking.
My sister’s dog was EXTREMELY mild-mannered (a lab) and hardly ever made a peep unless something happened like someone was at the door and knocked or rang the doorbell.
Well, someone at the HOA with no life decided to knock on every door and ring every doorbell in the neighborhood, and if they heard a dog bark they would write up a $100 fine for ‘excessive pet noise’ or something like that.
They would THEN cross-reference the neighborhood list and see which of those houses had an approved registered pet. Of course, my sister’s dog wasn’t registered at my mom’s house because she’s only there like 5 days out of the year. Regardless, my mom then got the second fine for about another $100 or so. She tried to fight it but lost.
Oh, and the person who was checking up on the dogs in the houses? They had 3 dogs that barked ALL day long and they NEVER shut up. My father even called the city to complain about the incessant barking and the police visited her house to tell her she needed to keep her dogs either inside or train them. Screw HOAs and the people who run them.”
How Could Anyone See Over The Fence?
“One time, I got a letter saying I had weeds in my flower beds. My front yard didn’t have any flower beds, so I emailed them and asked which ones they were referring to. They of course came back and said it was the flower bed in my backyard.
My backyard had an 8-foot privacy fence around it that was impossible to see through. When asked how they knew about it, they said a neighbor reported it. Not a single neighbor had been in my backyard in the 6 years I’ve owned the house.
I replied back and called them on their bs and told them any further trespassing was unacceptable.
I specifically didn’t do anything about the weeds and put up a couple of my game cameras (used for hunting) watching the gate. That was when I caught the culprit three different times opening the gate and walking into my backyard. He did it every other Monday.
I took the next Monday off and sat in my backyard with a camera recording. When it happened again, I called the cops and had him arrested for trespassing. City police were very helpful and a lawyer buddy wrote up a nice fancy letter that said that any further contact from the HOA had to go through him.”
Grandma’s Plants
“My grandfather lived in a ‘senior friendly’ HOA, he and my grandmother lived there for about 15 years. The entire time my grandma was an avid gardener, and her favorite plants were her hydrangea bushes. The HOA allowed her garden in the back of the house, and the bushes in the front for the entire time they have lived there.
A year or two after she passed away, the HOA board had a huge turnover and the HOA informed my grandpa the bushes had to go, even threatening to ‘forcibly remove’ the bushes.
Well, my grandpa was a retired federal appellate judge, so he had lots of free time and he LOVED to argue. He told my uncle and I on multiple occasions that after my grandma died he really found no joy in anything, but now he was only alive to spite the HOA and loved every minute of it.
A year ago, he spent about 6 months drafting response letters for every single violation in the HOA that they could try to fine him on and had them all ready to go.
My uncle told me my grandpa had quite literally set aside 10s of thousands of dollars per year, for 30 years, to pay for legal filings, research, and fines.”
