UPDATE: My HOA Situation

I thought it would be nice to provide a little update as to what was going on in my neighborhood.

As you may or may not recall, I had an issue with a HOA of one subdivision that collected signatures of 51% of my subdivision granting them what they phrased as a "mandatory maintenance" association and insisted that even non-members were required to pay them any amount of money at the discretion of the board, among other things.

Well, it seems that after several years and one lengthy legal battle, the HOA has decided to shutter its doors. They ceased holding meetings, took down their websites, and have essentially disappeared. At the last meeting they held, the HOA was quickly running out of money but were reluctant to cut any services. They placed all their eggs in one basket. Despite the HOA closing doors, the legal troubles are not over for the neighborhood. Their actions have led to dozens of homeowners being sued and at risk of being on the hook for the plaintiff's legal fees.

I found this situation extremely interesting because the HOA basically screwed up a good thing. Before when the neighborhood accepted the HOA as a voluntary organization, homeowners had no problem volunteering and donating money. Once the HOA undertook ambitious goals such as amending documents to make "mandatory maintenance" assessments, the installation of water and power meters, building an expensive wall and speed bumps, the neighborhood rebelled. While many homeowners continued to pay they did so because the HOA's attorney threatened litigation at the drop of a hat. Once the court ruled the HOA lacked authority, payments dropped off completely.

Just thought for those who have been on this board for some time and who have helped me with this matter offering their advise and expertise, some closure was in order.

Thanks!

Melissa wrote:
"Who donates to their HOA anyways? That's against the rules...."

Melissa,

Your posts are worthless.

Do you not do any research before you comment on things you don't know for a FACT?
Do you post some type of info or link to verify your "inside information"?

Here's a Fl legal opinion which differs greatly form yours about the legality of making donations within a Fl HOA:

http://floridaassociationlawblog.com/tag/hoa/
Since you don't have time for fact checking I'll make it easy for you. The forst sentence of the second paragraph states:

"First, it should be known that there is no statute or regulation that precludes an association from accepting donations, but it is preferable that the donations be monetary."

To quote you from a previous post:
"You are a nutjob".

I have to wonder how one has shared water and power and with a voluntary HOA? You pay those bills voluntarily?

So, is the opposite then true? In other words, the Regular assessments are then tax deductible as a Tax? In a private community, the assessments are collected to fund the operations and maintenance of the properties. (these are de facto taxes of a sort (in a weird obscure way) We also pay property taxes to the local gov't entity that pays for road maintenance, city beautification and landscaping of the city owned common properties, lighting the street lights as well as fire and police. So should we all be able to deduct the HOA assessments since the HOA is also a pseudo gov't entity with the ability to take funds, levy fines and liens as confiscate property....

just saying.... it would be nice to deduct the assessments from my taxes.... lol

A HOA's dues are tax deductible only if it is on RENTAL property. It falls under property maintenace. A full time residence it does not.

A HOA is a Non profit corporation but NOT a charitable one. It is it's own psuedo government where it is funded by it's members for it's members. The members having one vote each and elects from it's general membership who represents them on daily operations.

You don't donate money to the government? Same with a HOA. If your HOA does have bake sales, garage sales, or other fundraising efforts, the money raise is sujected to taxes. That is why the HOA can raise money through special assessments which are equally distributed.

Just because you may not like the advice one gives gives no right to insult them.This is FREE advice and NOT directed toward you unless you ask for it. Otherwise your just interupting and rude. Thank you.

It wasn't directed toward you Fred...Sorry it came out that way. It was directed toward JayP from Florida who has done nothing but stuff about me NOT knowing anything and need to stop posting. Kind of rude considering the advice given is NOT directed toward him or about him. It is free advice on here and no need to insult people.

I understand the tax frustration issue...Drove me crazy until I used my property as rental...LOL!

Lets stop making this forum a place for personal attacks. It's a place for advice. Be it wrong or right. It is FREE advice. I would appreciate it if you don't like the advice then ignore it. Any poster on here should have the common sense of a billy goat to know to look things up before taking any action. They also should know no one here ia a lawyer and our advice is NOT legal advice. Plus when someone mentions "MOST STATES" it should put a a red flag that it may not apply to their state. They need to look that up.

We here base our advice here on experience and some education. Mostly because we have learned a lesson or two by being wrong ourselves. So either offer advice to the poster or back off the other posters in telling them to stop posting. It's NOT going to happen.

I hope you do fact check any free advice on this site. That's your right to do so. Not everyone is right and there's always lots to learn here. I've learned alot from listening from other posters on here who give advice. Although I don't need to jump up and down when and if I do any "fact checking". That's just additional advice one can be useful information to post and not call out people to distract away from the poster's concerns/questions.

To get back to the OP. I think there is some lacking of HOA information/education involved here. Their HOA is most likely NOT put to rest. There's still the matter of putting in the official paperwork of no longer being a corporation and removing the rules from the record books. The HOA just most likely just went dormant but will experience some additional issues because it wasn't shut down correctly. It is still NOT clear if this was a mandatory HOA operated by Volunteers as most are or that it was a Volunteer HOA altogether with no mandatory membership. That would need to be cleared up before giving the proper advice to the poster.

It sounds like this could have been a HOA that was mandatory run by volunteers as there are tied in meters and utilities. Which my HOA went through a few years ago. We had one water meter and the HOA paid the bill. We later changed to separate water meters and reduced the HOA dues. We had to have a special assessment AND rewrite our own CC&R's because we no longer supplied water. The special assessment was to cover the 20K installation bill by the city water department. Plus we had to turn over our streets to the city to allow them to install. All of which effected our rules as we had to eliminate the water meter and private street references. That took us an additional 2 years to get the 90% signatures to make these minor changes. It cost us an additional 3K for filing the paperwork and hiring the lawyer to do so. It was quite a mess. It also sounds like something this HOA is going through. Just didn't get their act together enough to properly do it.

Thanks Bruce. I may have not said the word "legal" in reference to this when it really is just dumb to do. You can donate to a HOA but don't expect a tax deduction for doing so. Plus the additional tax burden potential on the HOA isn't a pleasant side effect as all the owners will have to pay that. It's just wasting money. Much better if you want to "donate" money to your HOA, create a reason for them to fine you instead...LOL!

Technically, I belonged to no HOA. The HOA that tried converting my property was ina different subdivision (section). They felt they were the HOA in charge of every section of the neighborhood despite C&Rs for each section stating otherwise. They attempted to amend the various covenants over years to give them sole authority. Before the homeowners had the authority to enforce covenants, or establish a HOA but under strict guidelines.

The HOA acquired use agreements with the county for their right-of-ways and installed water meters. They also had power meters placed on the wall. They first told the neighborhood they were going to do solar power but the security officer on the board didn't like it and used HOA funds to have meters installed. According to the board, not having entrance lights shining on the name of the neighborhood was an invitation for criminals (despite the fact that we had county lamp posts throughout the neighborhood at fairly reasonable distances.

It was my opinion that they were creating expenses to warrant the conversion, which while they claimed was voluntary, had a clause that if you join or transfer ownership of property it will forever be a member.