How to Disband Your HOA

According to some posters HOA's are evil incarnate, run by megalomaniac Board Members who want to fine you into poverty and then foreclose and take your property. So why not disband your HOA? Most CC&R's have a mechanism by which they can be dissolved, follow it, cross all of the t's and dot all of the i's and voila, no more HOA. All you have to do (in most cases, check your CC&R's and State laws) is get your fellow homeowners to agree to disband and vote on it, which usually but not always requires 100% affirmative votes.

Next you need to dispose of any common areas such as the plots the entrance marker and storm water retention pond(s) inhabit. If you ask your local taxing authority, I'm sure they would be happy to take over the maintenance for them but they may make your home part of a "Special Taxing District" to pay for it. For HOA's that have pools and other amenities, perhaps you could sell them to someone who would open them up to the public.

After you get over that hurdle, you will need to distribute any HOA funds, after all the bills are paid and dissolve the HOA corporation with the state. Of course you would still have the deed restrictions which your neighbors could take you to court to enforce so you'll probably want to dissolve them too. You can do a simple internet search to find out how.

Oh I almost forgot, you probably will need the approval of your mortgage holder too, when they wrote the mortgage it was with the understanding that certain conditions would be met, which if the HOA were dissolved, would no longer exist, so you would be modifying the contract.

I am not an attorney nor do I work in the legal field, this is simply my lay understanding on how easy it is to dissolve an HOA, shouldn't take more than a decade or two. The above advice does not apply to condo's, townhomes or co-op's.

In one of my neighborhoods the covenants and restrictions were pretty clear - the homeowners had the option to form a HOA. Each year those homeowners had to essentially re-certify the HOA with a written document. If a certain threshold of homeowners was not met the HOA would then lose any enforcement capabilities.

I had thought this mechanism was pretty great but I would much prefer if this was more of a law then a provision in a set of covenants and restrictions. It did little to prevent the board of directors to continue to assert control even though they never had anything in writing per the covenant. They had even admitted in court that they had never had a roll sheet that would have granted them enforcement authority.

In my other neighborhood there really was no mention of disbandment but then again the way the neighborhood was established was a little strange. The covenants were drafted before any HOA was created. There is no mention of a HOA anywhere. Developers changed and then another property unrelated to the original covenants was established and that eventually became a clubhouse that then insisted it was the HOA over the properties. Still no disbandment provisions but then again we are talking about 30+ years ago.

I actually find Florida's Marketable Record Title Act to be a quite useful tool. The covenants expired and I was freed.

BUT, as with both neighborhoods the BoD have ignored either the C&Rs or the law (MRTA) which goes to solidify my belief that it really doesn't matter what your covenants or laws say - if you have someone who is unwilling to recognize or unaware of the things that govern their association then abuse will occur. I have seen some neighborhoods that have thrived with a HOA and an effective BoD and I have seen some crumble. This is where I would agree with Mike - checks and balances should be desired. I do not think that leaving it for the average homeowner is enough because frankly, I believe most homeowners just simply do not understand these issues, and considering the pool for the BoD comes from this same body of people, then it is only a matter of time before some idiot gets elected to the board.

To me this sounds like an article with titles like " why you should be scared of losing your valuable HOA" or "it is impossible to disband your HOA so get over it". Your just another defender of HOAs who like to keep the status quo.

This was an article so full of scare tactics. The title is definitely misleading. When somebody looks at the title, the tendency is to be discouraged and forget about disbanding their (very possibly corrupt HOA with its mostly arrogant and answerable to no one Board of directors). The more you read, with its tone of "see how bad it could get if you disband them" , you get a feeling that the author is trying to discourage them to disband their HOAs not to teach them how to as the title suggests.I was hoping this website to be a site to help us how to fight this arrogance and corruption. It should help help us organize letter writing campaign to our representatives to enact new laws. It should try to do what Florida is doing which is registering HOAs. What I see here from the author of this article and many others is to discourage such activities and instead accept the total malarkey that HOAs are a necessary evil.No, I don't beleive evils are ever necessary. Evil should be rooted out and get rid of. They hope by saying this long enough people will believe it , status quo is preserved and people will leave HOAs alone.

Amin,

I do understand what you are saying.

As Jon was pointing out, this site isn't pro or con Associations. It certainly may seem more pro than con because of the advice offered, and I understand that. What we try to do is provide advice and opinions to better run their Associations.

Often, members will ask advice on their specific issue. I believe that we have been very honest about what can and can not be done (at least seen from the posters perspective) or what options are available. The poster may not always like the advice (or perhaps just the way the advice was presented).

In your other thread I've offered the realistic options as I see them to you. You may or may not have liked the advice but I hope it helped.

As for organizing, that is typically what I try to promote. Often, I encourage organizing within your Association to toss the bums who are causing the issues out of office. Since I don't know the issues within your Association as well as you do, you are the best one to know how to organize and gather support in your Association. I think a letter writing campaign is great. That's basically how I gathered support within my Association and made changes.

If someone wants to take the letter writing campaign to a State or National level, go for it. There are certainly enough varied discussions within this forum that, if someone took the time, could put together some great proposed laws. Of course, if you don't want to try the State or National level, those same topics should provide some great options for amendments to your governing documents (I used them when I wrote our grandfather clause to protect members).

I am sorry that this site wasn't what you expected. It wasn't what I expected when I first started posting here. I went through the same thing others go through - tough questions about various issues and some tough love from various members. Once I realized what they were doing (gathering background in order to provide better advice and explaining that the same rules that seem to work against me could work for me) I was glad I found the site and for the advice I received. I stayed hoping I could help others the same way I was helped.

Of course, everyone is free to use all, some or none of the advice offered.