They are far from ubiquitous here. You’ll typically find HOAs in new housing developments.
Most (single family) homes in the US leave the owner beholden only to governments. Some places are “unincorporated” and don’t even have a municipal government at all.
HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.
My best friend just bought an HOA home against my advice, but he’s terrified of doing anything with tools despite my offers to teach him. Of the dozen or so friends and family members I know who bought a home in the past decade he is the only one who was not actively repulsed by the idea of buying a home with an HOA.
I own a home in an unincorporated area that also has an HOA, but ours is only for 3 things:
Yearly fire inspections (California)
Negotiating with the local trash company for service cost
Negotiating with the local propane company for lower cost
My super anti-government neighbors are still working to dissolve it, but it doesn’t even have any rules that aren’t “see county laws and fire code”, they just don’t like the $50/year fee
They’re basically just groups that are supposed to help prevent one person tanking everyone’s property value by letting their home go to shit.
The problem is that typically the only people who get involved in them are retired busy bodies who want to assert what little power they have. Good ones too exist, though.
We don’t have them in Australia that I’m aware of, but they do sound atrocious. What happened to that land of the free?
We do have them in the Czech Republic but only in blocks of flats, not neighborhoods.
They are far from ubiquitous here. You’ll typically find HOAs in new housing developments.
Most (single family) homes in the US leave the owner beholden only to governments. Some places are “unincorporated” and don’t even have a municipal government at all.
HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.
My best friend just bought an HOA home against my advice, but he’s terrified of doing anything with tools despite my offers to teach him. Of the dozen or so friends and family members I know who bought a home in the past decade he is the only one who was not actively repulsed by the idea of buying a home with an HOA.
I own a home in an unincorporated area that also has an HOA, but ours is only for 3 things:
Yearly fire inspections (California)
Negotiating with the local trash company for service cost
Negotiating with the local propane company for lower cost
My super anti-government neighbors are still working to dissolve it, but it doesn’t even have any rules that aren’t “see county laws and fire code”, they just don’t like the $50/year fee
I’m aware my experience isn’t the norm, though
They’re basically just groups that are supposed to help prevent one person tanking everyone’s property value by letting their home go to shit.
The problem is that typically the only people who get involved in them are retired busy bodies who want to assert what little power they have. Good ones too exist, though.
By being black. Or otherwise a minority.
We have these things called laws which do that
Turns out the rights of private property supersede the quaint concept of “freedom”.