i dont know if that “construct” doesnt exist in europe or how that would be called in my country but i just cant comprehend the idea of my neighbour telling me what plants i can have in MY garden
(tagged economics because i didnt know what else would fit, sorry)
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A developer builds a neighborhood (usually of identical houses), people buy them, as part of their purchase contract they agree to form and/or abide by the rules of an association that governs how those homes are to be used. Owners then vote for the management of the HOA, etc. if you don’t want neighbors in your garden, don’t buy a house that is in a HOA.
You know how a country has rules, then within that country a state may also have rules too, then within that state a city may also have rules too?
Well, within that city, a single neighborhood may also have rules too. A HOA is a group of people in charge of making and enforcing those neighborhood rules.
So as with most things in America that don’t make sense elsewhere start with ‘but we don’t want the colored people’ as a baseline. HOA’s are quite literally restrictions by your ‘mini community’ on what you can or cannot do with your residence. You routinely hear about the silly things like ‘oh your door is the wrong shade of brown’.
Quite literally, the property that you buy is part of a contract to do certain things which may change seemingly at randomly. Oh the ‘mini community mayor’ and their gang (who are all geriatric patients on a power trip) decided that leaving the trash bins out before 7 am is a violation? (ignoring that many people go to work before 7) well guess whose getting a fine.
The short is a contact between home owners with agreements on what are required of the property.
Usually there’s clauses that you can only sell to buyers willing to continue the HOA, maintain the property, and shared space amenities and services.
They usually also include a governing body that can change the rules with a vote of the home owners.
The reason they usually go bad is most of the home owners don’t attend meetings and rules get passed that some don’t like.
It’s a group of home owners who sign a contract about how things will work in that neighborhood. Signing onto that contract becomes a condition of buying one of the homes, which allows them to continue.
HOAs vary drastically in their scope.
The ones you hear about online are mostly created by the developer who creates a neighborhood.
They buy a big plot of land, build a neighborhood and then set up an HOA for anyone who wants to buy into that neighborhood.
The land is often all private which means that the streets, the park, the rec center, it’s all run by the HOA rather than a city government. Sometimes they’re not even in a city to have that level of government.
Dues pay for those things among others.
They may have bylaws you’d expect from towns. Noise ordinances, parking rules, that kind of thing. A fair few have appearance standards designed to make sure the neighborhood stays pleasant and expensive looking to keep the prices high.
How strict they are varies, but the ones you get horror stories about are generally outliers on the strict end. There are also generally procedures built in for adding/modifying/removing rules so sometimes you get a few active busy bodies that add on a bunch of stuff. If the neighborhood doesn’t like it, they can pick other people to run the HOA and get changes made. Some do, some just live with it.
In addition to maintaining the shared spaces they often engage in collective bargaining. theyll have a preferred lawn care vendor who gives a cheap rate became they can do lawn after lawn in that one neighborhood instead of needing to travel. Maybe they have similar stuff with contractors, a lawyer on retainer, whatever.
Some are way less involved than that.
It’s a contract, so basically as long as it’s terms don’t violate an explicit law anything can be in it.
The low end of them is “Hey we’re going to get together and bargain with a yard guy and maybe make a rule your rotted out car has to be behind a fence or garage”. The high end is basically a local government for that development.
It is a governing group of residents that makes decision in a developed community. (Commonly subdivisions) The people are elected by the residents and they manage things from contracts with landscaping companies that mow the lawn for townhomes, maintenance on the community pool and approval/rejection of architectural requests. If you want to stain your deck, there are could be rules about using natural stain colors, no paint. You might not need permission for certain things, but other changes like adding a fence would require approval of your neighbors and the committee.
The rules can be challenged and changed /added if enough people ask. Some communities are more relaxed and don’t terrorize their residents because the grass was slightly too long, while others will nitpick and fine you for every little violation with hundreds of rules over the tiniest subject. “You must have one deciduous tree within the front yard of your property” so you have to comply of pay a fine, that will keep being fined until you comply.
This is all in the name of preserving property values because a neighbor painting their house hot pink and neon orange would be ugly and lower your value being next to it. I have seen communities with no HOA and the yards are full of trash and there was a 6ft tall blue LED Jesus cross on the side of the house.
It’s just a condominium on the scale of a neighborhood – instead of a group of owners having some shared portion of a building and arrangements for managing it, it’s bigger. Municipalities are happier not to pay for building or maintaining roads, utilities, etc., so that all happens collectively by the home owners and their designated management. But when you have a governance structure over a neighborhood, sometimes people go crazy.
It kind of exists in Europe.
I own an apartment and running of the building is handled by a property management company who take responsibility for taking care of finances, accounts, maintainace, rubbish collection and so on. They also handle disputes and issues with tenants that may arise if they fall outside the remit of the landlord.
They chair a meeting once or twice a year where all the owners meet up to make plans and raise issues which are generally then voted on and the management company implements as decided upon by the vote.
It is an organization that exists to maintain the property values of a neighborhood and often operate any neighborhood amenities like pools. They are typically created by the builder of the neighborhood and paying dues to it and following its rules is usually included in the requirements to own one of the properties in the neighborhood. It is written in the deed so you cannot choose not to. Often, they are a part of planned developments where a builder has bought a bunch of land and built like 100 houses on it. Part of the reason people buy houses in neighborhoods like that is because it is orderly and kept tidy, which maintains the property values, the HOA exists to do that by preventing individual owners from significantly altering their property or failing to maintain it.
Honestly, most HOAs are fairly reasonable. There are horror stories and those are what people remember, not stories about an HOA that only really punishes egregious violations. I think the majority are actually operated by companies which manage collecting dues, monitoring compliance, and maintenance of communal property in exchange for a percentageof dues collected. They usually don’t want to be too annoying because they don’t want the homeowners to make the HOA fire them and find a different company.
The internet abounds in stories of abusive HOAs and power-tripping HOA presidents. However, the VAST majority of HOAs just do their jobs and mind their business.
Essentially, an HOA is formed as a new neighborhood is constructed, and anyone buying a house in the neighborhood is required to be a member. This requirement usually “runs with the land” i.e. is part of your real estate title.
Most HOA functions are straightforward. Mine owns the land that comprises the entrance to the subdivision, and its landscaping; it also owns a handful of water retention ponds and is responsible for their maintenance. Since the HOA owns property it is required to carry liability insurance. A previous HOA I was in didn’t have retention ponds, but because it was limestone country, there were a handful of sinkholes (depressions in the ground) that needed maintenance. One of them was maintained as a park, with picnic tables, a grill, a trash can.
Most HOAs do enforce rules, most of which are common sense. There are rules pertaining to where you can put a fence and how high; rules pertaining to landscaping that interferes with traffic lines of sight; rules that you can’t park a semi trailer in your driveway, etc.
Lots of HOAs have rules that aren’t enforced, and if they go un-enforced for long enough, they become legally un-enforceable. My HOA forbids parking boats and RVs in your driveway, but I have lots of neighbors who have done exactly that for many years, and nobody cares.
A small minority of HOAs have really intrusive rules, such as what colors you can paint your house, or regulating how you landscape your property. The usual justification is the preservation of property values. If you value your freedom you will avoid such neighborhoods.
HOAs are democratic organizations; the owners of properties in the HOA have a vote in electing a board of directors, which in turn elects officers and otherwise make the rules. Both HOAs I’ve been a member of have seen the membership stage a coup: the first one had a President who was kind of an ass, and the membership voted him off the board. The second one (where I currently live) the board had made a sweetheart deal with a property management company that was siphoning off something like 80% of our dues in “management fees.” No surprise to learn that the management company was owned by a relative of the HOA president. An insurrection was planned, and the membership went to the next annual meeting and voted out the entire board of directors, installing a new one pledged to implement more transparent finances.
Every time you hear a HOA horror story (and the definitely do exist) you will see comments to the effect “Never buy a house with a HOA!!!” The problem with that is that in the U.S., the vast majority of desirable neighborhoods built since about 1980 will have a HOA, for good or for ill. The only way to avoid a HOA is to buy way out in the country, or in an older neighborhood. There are lots of older houses in inner city neighborhoods without HOAs but they are neighborhoods you probably don’t want to live in. Smaller towns sometimes have older non-HOA neighborhoods that are pretty nice.
Finally, don’t believe everything you see online about HOAs. There are a handful of YouTube channels now that are using AI to write and produce entirely fictional stories of HOAs misbehaving, and for some reason people lap that stuff up as if it were real. The dead giveaway is that the “video” content is just a few dozen stills of obviously AI-created images, some of which are comically absurd – I saw one that featured two purported law enforcement officers wearing caps that said “HOA COP.”
From a european perspective. Americans hate when “the government” decides things for them but in the end you still need some kind of organization that decides, organizes, pays for and enforces things to live in a good neighbourhood. Like streets, in some HOAs the upkeep of the streets isnt done/paid for by the local government but by the HOA, when in europe no one would agree thats something thats something that the local government is supposed to do. Same goes for how your building can look like or how high plants can be. In europe we do also have rules about this but its done by local governments and not by some people from your neighbourhood, so it is usually much more reasonable. Overall this system is more flexible than in europe but it can also lead to these extreme examples where some neighbours come together and decide they now will only allow white doors and your trash can only be on the street from 6-7 am on tuesdays, because there is practicly no one that can stop them.
If your local government did this they probably wouldnt get reelected and also they just have better stuff todo. In a neighbourhood most people just dont want to have anything to do with this stuff so in a lot of cases someone on that likes to have and abuse power takes it over and thats when things get stupid.
It’s probably important to note that a lot of the replies are describing HOAs for single family neighborhoods, mostly in suburban municipalities (which is a big WTF?!).
But HOAs also exist for multi-family housing like my building where there are 48 individual apartments (with 48 different owners). We need some way to organize and pay for maintenance of shared property (hallways, amenities, roofs, etc) and rules that help balance the desires of each individual unit owner against the needs of every other unit owner.
The two main methods for this in the US are HOAs and Cooperatives (aka co-ops). Co-ops used to the more common and you’ll still find pockets of them in older, larger cities (New York, Chicago, etc) but HOAs have been the norm for buildings like this for 60+ years now.
The same problem exists most everywhere and you’ll find similar legal structures under different names in other localities.
The only real dealings I’ve had with my HOA in 8 years is when I needed to replace the surface of my outdoor patio. They needed to approve the work to ensure it wasn’t being done in a way that would damage shared property. Mostly this was just “verify the materials aren’t super combustible and the installer has insurance in case they damage any shared property”
Think of a homeowners association as a ad-hoc “government” for a particular neighborhood.
Just as when you agree to follow the laws of your land, you agree to follow the “laws” of the HOA when you buy a house in a HOA. Just as with a real government, a HOA has a collection of “laws,” which is known as “Declaration of Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions.”
The CC&R also defines the form of the “government,” which is known as the HOA Board of Directors, and also defines what powers they have. Just as with a “government,” the HOA has certain powers vested in them when homeowners don’t follow the “laws” of the HOA, which include fines and potentially even foreclosure.
Just as with a real government, people in the HOA can participate in the government by attending board meetings, running for office, and once in office, passing new laws and repealing old ones.
My house is in an historic district of our town, so I have to get approval for a lot of changes in the same way an HOA is designed.
Your neighbor isn’t telling you what you can or can’t do. You and your neighbors (i.e. the HOA) have jointly agreed to abide by a certain set of rules for your individual homes.
From my understanding it’s essentially the American version of a parish/town council iirc but can be more isolated to certain districts or neighbourhoods.
Your neighbor doesn’t tell you what plants you can have. When you move into an HOA neighborhood, both you and your neighbors have agreed (as a condition of purchasing that property) to abide by a set of standards, which are collectively decided by the HOA to upkeep the neighborhood, thereby creating a nicer environment and higher property value. The HOA usually holds monthly meetings to make these decisions, which all neighbors are free to attend and express their thoughts or even run for a leadership position. You can also choose to live in a non-HOA neighborhood and do whatever you want (within the limits of the law), but so do your neighbors.
So imagine a town government…
But it’s not a town government, it’s a private organization that whoever built your house contractually obligated every future owner of that house to join, pay dues to, and to obey whatever rules this organization establishes. Also part of the ‘whatever rules’ includes having to pay fines if you break any of the rules.
Because it’s a private organization, very few of the legal protections that limit what actual governments can do to people exist.
Because of the contract, they can regulate pretty much anything they want to that members do to their property – appearance, lawn care, additions/modifications, what kind of vehicles you can own and keep on the property.
Finally, each of these organizations has a board as a governing body. The board is at-least supposed to be fairly elected by the members, but very often tends to attract the most obnoxious power-mad old-retired-people in the community as it’s members….
So now the grumpy old man who yells ‘get off my grass’ at passers-by has the power to issue fines to (And foreclose on if they do not pay) all of the neighbors who he has a beef with….