Ablolish HOA

I live in West Virginia and our HOA consist of 12 houses. Should all agree to abolish the HOA how would the liability and mowing of Sewer Water Pond, snow plow and maintence of our road be handled?

Also, the builder started the HOA then turned it over to residents. The By-laws state Board to consist of 3 members: President, Secretary, Treasurer and 2 of the Board members serve 2 years and one serve 1 year. It does not state who the one year is.

One more item - should we abolish HOA how is remaining money be handled?

Our HOA, if we were to abolish it, would have to be turned over to a Management company to run. That means the homeowner's lose their right to vote and no longer are in control of their community. The Management company would control the rate of dues, what services we used, and establish the rules.

Don't know how your property is setup to give advice to abolish or not. In our neighborhood our property is so interconnected that it can't possibly be done. One would only have a .10 of an acre if any land at all. Then how would you enforce mowing?

If you HOA is having issues with managing itself, then considere hiring a Management company to take some of the load off. The Board will still be the "go-to" for rules violations and such. The management company would fill the need for maybe organizing and keeping up with records/payments. Your HOA would still have the amenities it wants, but have more management from another source to help.

Sandy,
I am guessing you would have to turn the roads over to the county, along with all the common areas. The county will probably add something to your taxes for the maintenance. In Florida we have special tax assessments for neighborhoods with retention ponds and street lights.
You may be able to do this without abolishing the HOA. Your covenants could still be in force to maintain some architectural control but relieve the residents of all the common maintenance issues and costs. I am thinking this may be the reasoning behind abolishing the HOA?
Kevin

Sandy, the two and 1 year terms is just to set up a staggered board as PaulM explained. After you get going, presumably all terms are two years. I have always found the staggering extremely hard to maintain.

There was an HOA near me that did in fact dissolve itself. They definitely needed the help of an attorney to do this. The common area land in their case was small -- just a fence and the area outside of the fence. They got each of the homeowners to take responsibility for the fence that was on their property and the area outside of it. There were also some pipestems that had to be figured out as to maintenance. Their roads were county maintained so that was not a problem. BTW, just because you want to turn your street over to the county/state you might not be able to -- they have a good deal going to have you maintaining it. Anyhow, then the covenants etc. were withdrawn. Obviously they needed a huge supermajority of residents to do all this. In their case people bought into it specifically asking if there was an HOA, the builder said no, and there was in fact an HOA which was sprung on them after they were all settled in. In theory that can no longer happen in Va. -- who knows?

If no one wants to be on the board, are they willing to pay for a management company instead? That may resolve your issue until someone finally steps up to take control. It sounds like no one understands that if all the owner's get involved in their HOA, they are in control of what the HOA does. The owner's have stake in their community as a HOA.

As far as the roads being turned over to the County, that has to be voted on by the homeowners. That then may have to be documented in the CC&R's by changing them to say that the County has the control of the roads. The CC&R's are the deed restrictions so that is the document that would have to change. The HOA would also have to approach the county and request the roads be made public. If the county is okay with the idea, they will lead you the rest of the way in doing the full turn-over.

Our HOA used to have "private roads". However, once we changed our water system, it had to change to public. We used to have one water meter that controlled and paid for by the HOA. You didn't pay your dues, the water got turned off. Later, this was changed so that EACH owner had their own meter. That meant we had to assign the power over our roads to the city/county to install the water meters. We then had to document this change in our documentation. The city/county came in and changed our street signs and added stop/yield signs. They had to meet their codes. It was an overall benefit I think.

Yes, in VA it is very difficult to make the roads public. I would suspect it is true for many others also. They don't want to take over control of them. Why would they? They have a good deal going having the HOA have to maintain them. It is not only the way they are constructed (which of course the government had to sign off on, but what is good enough for an HOA to take care of is not good enough for them) but also the design, such as "no vertical on-street parking". That obviously is pretty major. They also object to such things as brick mailboxes on "their streets". I know of people on relatively simple street (not the on-street parking issue) that have spent years trying to get their roads taken over.

You might feel out the state on the subject of roads first. I would think it would be their department of transportation that you would call. Or call you local representative and ask them who to call.