You’re free to not buy into an HOA. That’s what I did.
Of course, being able to implement such a construct feels very free to me. You’re allowed to get a group of people together for a binding contract in regards to how you should act as a neighbor. To me, the only flaw is that the HOA is tied to the house. It definitely feels dumb to decide you don’t want a house because you can’t agree to their stupid rules.
Most HOAs aren’t created by neighbors, but by developers.
Basically, most developers doing greenfield development (most new housing built in the US) build a pretty large tract of land as a development. Constructing all the houses in the development takes years. The developer is selling a particular image of a neighborhood to their buyers, not just a house - the same house can get radically different prices if the neighborhood it is in has good curb appeal. So the developer makes an HOA. When you buy a house in the development early on, the HOA is making sure that you keep everything looking picture perfect so they developer can maximize home sale prices on the houses they are still building. Hence, arcane rules about what colors you can paint your house, what kind of grass you can have in your yard, etc. As well as the stipulation that an absurd majority of the HOA’s board must approve any changes to the rules (the developer controls some number of board seats while development is ongoing).
The crazy thing is that you can put your will in regards to property into a covenant on a property title and that will then carries on indefinitely.
If you own a piece of land you should own it, and apart from the laws governing the use of the land you should be able to do with it whatever you want.
It’s kinda crazy that you can put whatever you want into a covenant and thus “poison” that piece of land in perpetuity. HOAs are part of that.
It’s also an issue that’s getting bigger with time. In the 50s most areas were freshly built up from the ground. You don’t like the rules in one neighbourhood? No problem, just buy some of the empty land around it and do what you want.
By now about every piece of somewhat sensible land is owned. There’s not that much completely fresh development in areas where people actually want to live voluntarily anymore.
So most people buy “pre-owned” land. Land with covenants on it. And with covenants often being perpetual, that means more and more land will get poisoned by them.
You’re free to not buy into an HOA. That’s what I did.
A huge percentage of new subdivisions are HOA. You can’t deny that avoiding them severely limits your options, especially if you’re the kind of person who’s intimidated by old houses.
(I live in an ~80-year-old house without an HOA, so yes, I’m well aware it can be done. But that doesn’t mean everybody, or even the majority of people, can do it because most of the housing stock is not like this.)
The nice thing is tho, if a neighborhood is built without one, it’s almost impossible to start one. So if we had a way to focus on the shitty developers who want to attract white flight by making racist HOAs, we could see progress. But we can’t do things like that, those developers are in charge.
You’re free to not buy into an HOA. That’s what I did.
Of course, being able to implement such a construct feels very free to me. You’re allowed to get a group of people together for a binding contract in regards to how you should act as a neighbor. To me, the only flaw is that the HOA is tied to the house. It definitely feels dumb to decide you don’t want a house because you can’t agree to their stupid rules.
Most HOAs aren’t created by neighbors, but by developers.
Basically, most developers doing greenfield development (most new housing built in the US) build a pretty large tract of land as a development. Constructing all the houses in the development takes years. The developer is selling a particular image of a neighborhood to their buyers, not just a house - the same house can get radically different prices if the neighborhood it is in has good curb appeal. So the developer makes an HOA. When you buy a house in the development early on, the HOA is making sure that you keep everything looking picture perfect so they developer can maximize home sale prices on the houses they are still building. Hence, arcane rules about what colors you can paint your house, what kind of grass you can have in your yard, etc. As well as the stipulation that an absurd majority of the HOA’s board must approve any changes to the rules (the developer controls some number of board seats while development is ongoing).
The crazy thing is that you can put your will in regards to property into a covenant on a property title and that will then carries on indefinitely.
If you own a piece of land you should own it, and apart from the laws governing the use of the land you should be able to do with it whatever you want.
It’s kinda crazy that you can put whatever you want into a covenant and thus “poison” that piece of land in perpetuity. HOAs are part of that.
Definitely.
It takes a special kind of megalomania to believe that just because you paid for a plot of land, that you’re entitled to bind it to your will forever…
It’s also an issue that’s getting bigger with time. In the 50s most areas were freshly built up from the ground. You don’t like the rules in one neighbourhood? No problem, just buy some of the empty land around it and do what you want.
By now about every piece of somewhat sensible land is owned. There’s not that much completely fresh development in areas where people actually want to live voluntarily anymore.
So most people buy “pre-owned” land. Land with covenants on it. And with covenants often being perpetual, that means more and more land will get poisoned by them.
A huge percentage of new subdivisions are HOA. You can’t deny that avoiding them severely limits your options, especially if you’re the kind of person who’s intimidated by old houses.
(I live in an ~80-year-old house without an HOA, so yes, I’m well aware it can be done. But that doesn’t mean everybody, or even the majority of people, can do it because most of the housing stock is not like this.)
The nice thing is tho, if a neighborhood is built without one, it’s almost impossible to start one. So if we had a way to focus on the shitty developers who want to attract white flight by making racist HOAs, we could see progress. But we can’t do things like that, those developers are in charge.
A big part of the problem is that local governments often encourage HOAs so that they can shirk their duty to provide infrastructure.