Why not reduce the number of HOAs?

Great question. I thought the reason they got popular was as a way to push costs from local government to homeowners. Like when cities made developers install stuff that had to be maintained after the developers were done and moved on. I would like to know the history of HOAs.

There's a Wikipedia article on the history of HOAs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homeowner_association

As for why they exist today, it's due to - money (everything in the US usually comes down to money). As Sam said, making the streets, sidewalks, etc., the responsibility of homeowners through HOAs helps reduce the city or county's expense in maintaining all this stuff. Not to mention trees, pools, tennis courts, utility lines, etc. The Wikipedia article also talks about racial discrimination in HOAs and although all that went away legally, some communities still want to maintain it. That's one reason why people go ballistic over rentals, section 8 and so on.

I think high rise condos and townhouse communities do need HOAs to ensure maintenance is done because the owners share common walls. If they didn't have them, we'd see situations where one person's section of the roof is ok, but the others don't do anything about theirs, and that winds up with EVERYONE's section of the roof going bad. Then they scream about the costs.

As for single-family homes, I personally don't like cookie-cutter communities, but if people really want to paint their houses hot pink, maybe it's best to let them. If you're the one living next door to or across the secret from it and don't like looking at that every time you come home, you'll just have to suck it up and get used to it. When it comes to issues like junk cars, and Cujo-like critters in the neighbor's back yard, the health department could get involved, but remember, that will require more money to hire people to investigate and prosecute all that. Which then means taxes will go up - a lot.

As for "peer pressure," there's a lot of "I'll do whatever I want and no HOA or whatever's gonna tell me what to do" attitudes in people. Just take a look at how some people are reacting to COVID-19 - they refuse to stay home or at least practice social distancing so they don't put other people at risk. I said in another conversation this pandemic is showing all of us who we really are. On one hand, you have a tremendous amount of generosity among people, while others run around hoarding medicine that lupus patients depend on or buy a ton of hand sanitizer to turn around and sell to make a profit.

Finally, people don't seem to want to try and work things out with their neighbors, but would rather let someone else deal with the problem. I always stress trying to talk to people first, but I'm well aware that there are folks with hair-trigger tempers who do.not.care how their behavior affects others. Instead, one risks getting cussed out, being ignored or worse.

At this point, if you don't want HOAs, you'll have to have a serious conversation with your legislators - and come up with a way to address the money issues. Good luck with that - I know in THIS state, I don't have much confidence in the current bunch dealing with anything.

People are messy and anytime you have a group, you will always deal with various personalities and drama. That's life and it doesn't matter if it's a HOA, PTA, church or anything else. Homeownership isn't a spectator sport, no matter where you live and you have to decide how you're going to address issues with your neighbors. That means if you do have an HOA, you simply have no choice but to keep an eye on what's happening.

A HOA is simply a sales tool created by developers to sell their property while able to keep it looking good. People buy into that concept and thus how HOA's are formed. It's NOT an "industry" or a "business". They are Each and every one a separate entity from each other. They are singularly their own corporation so they can be able to collect monies for it's operations.

You don't want one? Do not buy into a home that has one or work hard to disband the one you have. Stop asking the government to do your work for you home.

I find it interesting that FHA lenders consider the number of rentals (in, say, a condominium) in deciding whether to make a loan to an individual. Renters are disproportionately folks of color. It's one way that FHA lenders could be argued to be discriminating against folks of color. Does the FHA say that statistics show that renters take less better care of their homes? From where I am sitting, renters are harder to regulate in condos than owner-residents. Yada yada. It's a COVID-19 year.

Paul, great post. I agree with your points and all the other posts above as well. In my area, the main (primary) driver of the growth in SFH HOA's is one thing: storm water management. That is my opinion of course.

When developers buy 3 to 5 acres to build single family homes, they clear the land which results in rainwater run off and unless it is managed, it can cause flooding and other problems for existing homes and infrastructure. Hence the need for storm-water facilities which vary in type and complexity from ponds & basins to underwater pipes and filter systems which can be quite elaborate. And expensive over time. Especially when they need overhaul.

Most municipal governments have realized that they can attract the increase in tax revenue from new homes without added infrastructure costs by ensuring that an HOA takes over perpetual maintenance of those facilities. In the past, cities and counties might have prohibited new homes if the resultant rain water run off would exceed the local government's storm water maintenance bandwidth (budget and manpower). Now by using HOA's to manage the rain water run off they can just divert the costs to homeowners and still get the tax revenue.

Of course, the initial new home HOA assessment is set quite low so as to attract buyers. Unfortunately the true long term cost of that facility is unknown but may exceed the reserve fund's capacity down the road if it is not appropriately managed by all the future boards.

I also think that the builders add all the other boiler plate HOA stuff like rules and regulations and standard covenants and extra common areas to help disguise the true transactional nature of the HOA's existence (deflecting construction costs onto home buyers). Face it, if buyers really knew they were going to pay $150 a month forever just so they can be on the hook for storm-water management, they might look at the home purchase a bit differently and question why they are buying there or perhaps look into the long term costs of the maintenance more closely.

IMO, the long term effect of all this is that one day, HOAs will no longer be seen by all courts as purely contractual arrangements but increasingly as a mandatory, almost quasi-governmental entity that may lose some of its teeth over time.

IMO, builders do not want to pay extra legal fees to have the post-declarant phase board's powers watered down to better match the true mission of the HOA (i.e. focus on the rain water pond) as they can use the same boiler plate documents for every community with minor eidts. That is why so many HOAs in our area have very similar HOA documents.

And so in the meantime, I endeavor to make sure my HOAs are governed the best I can.... until such time that buyers put their foot down and demand the home builder industry change the trend.

The most attractive feature single home HOA's offer is shared amenities that owners could not afford on their own such as pools, tennis courts, clubhouse, etc.

In associations that require necessary and shared amenities such as elevators, lobby, halls, parking garages, etc. an association is very much needed to share the cost of such.

I have lived in 5 HOA's. My first was 4 units per building, two upper and two lower units and about 20 buildings, with city streets and tennis and pool.

The 2nd was 4 townhouses per building (3 story, side by side units) with city streets and tennis and pool. About 80 owners.Adjacent to a golf course.

The 3rd was 3-4 townhouses per building (3 story, side by side units) with private streets. 175 owners. We owned a private golf club. Not all owners were golfing members and we had non owner golfing members. All owners were social embrs of the golf club and used their amenities such as pool, tennis, dining, etc. Private streets, private sewage. A very expensive and complex operation.

My 4th was 750 private homes (2500 to 3500sq ft) with public streets. Also pool, tennis, ball fields, walking trails, kiddie playground, etc.

My 5th and present is standalone, small patio homes (1000 to 1400sq ft) with 112 owners. No amenities. HOA does all outside maintenance including landscaping and home exterior shell. Public streets but a dead end neighborhood so no thru traffic. We strive for and maintain a common look. With the exception of a small, fenced in (6ft privacy fence) backyard) one can not make any changes to their landscaping nor the exterior of their home. Carefree living at its best.

The main reason I like HOA's is the control they offer over neighbors. I want my neighborhood looking good and staying that way. If you do not like it nor want to abide, do not buy here. You will not be missed

Sure, Carl,

Can live in tents out in da woods ...

Sheesh ... what a bunch of nonsense.

Short answer, that would require membership participation to amend the Declaration of Covenants. Typically 75% to 100% approval from members.


Typically, a private pool can't always support itself and will need to open up to the public to meet expenses. These facilities often don't have the parking availability that a public pool would need, which causes more problems.

Oh yea, membership participation would be needed to amend the covenants.


Again, the need to amend the covenants.
Also the argument of why do we need an entrance sign.


My TN association is like this.
The Associations has zero common area.
The membership wanted to change the landscaping around the entrance signs.
The owner of the property said no.
Upset a few owners.

Personally, I don't see the need for entrance monuments.
Others do.


Ahh, but the times, they are a changing.

Today, it's hard to find individuals who are willing to have a discussion with a neighbor.
They want someone else to do it for them.

They will complain to the HOA about a noise complaint the following day but refuse to contact the police when it's happening.

They will complain to the HOA about a neighbors dog but refuse to contact animal control who actually has the authority to do anything.

They will complain to the HOA about someone taking up an unassigned parking place but not put a note on the car.

They will ask everyone to do something about an issue, demand someone do something about an issue but refuse to become involved to fix the issue themselves.

They definitely won't talk to their neighbor about anything but pleasantries (if they talk at all)

While Carl is sounding negative, he is correct in that the less amenities, the easier it is to run the association. The more complex the association, the more chance of mistakes there will be especially from a BOD whose only qualifications were getting elected. One reason I chose my present HOA is we have no amenities. Our owners basically want to be left alone and not get involved in anything. We run on autopilot.

I've noticed the HOAs that have gone up around my area in recent years don't have much in the way of amenities - maybe a clubhouse and that's it. It's probably just as well. As John and Carl have indicated, the more amenities, the more expense in maintaining them, not to mention the time and drama in figuring out who can and can't use them because of delinquencies, building accommodations for disabled people (it's easier to focus on adapting the clubhouse restrooms and building ramps instead of stairs), people throwing crap in the pool (or just crapping in it, and I'm not just talking about toddlers), and so on.

hat's why we got rid of our pool and eventually, a decision may have to be made about the playground equipment. It was replaced when I was on the board (over 10 years ago) and I'm sure no one's taken a close look at it to see what needs to be fixed. It's also getting almost as much use as the pool did (not very much), although we have more kids living in the community.

That is what I was pointing out,less amenities can help mitigate number of things a given HOA will take action against the homeowners on. This was certainly a criteria in my home search a few years ago.

Sure. Members of the HOA would vote to reduce the scope of their HOAs, or to eliminate their HOAs.

I wouldn't want government limiting the rights of private persons who have freely decided to join a HOA.

Perhaps if the change were phrased to owners as:

"Pay Less and Live Freely

This HOA has decided to limit its power over you, and the fees that you pay.

The sole common amenity in the community is a pool. If you'd like to use the pool, you can join the Pool Club for $X per user. If you don't, there is no obligation to pay anything, but you won't be allowed to use the pool. In connection with this, the HOA is transitioning into a "Pool Club". All that it will do is oversee the pool.

As numerous residential communities do not have HOAs, since there will be no mandatory shared amenities, we think it appropriate to do the same in this community.

To support this change, vote YES at the upcoming annual meeting."

Fair (and great) points, everyone. Thank you for the informative discussion.

Another thing I thought about if you wanted to change from an HOA to a pool club: who owns the pool if the HOA no longer exists? If it is simply a group of homeowners outside of an HOA, they would still need to form an LLC or something to protect their personal assets in the event someone sues them.

They may also have to hire someone at least part time to manage the pool club - this would include making sure that it's properly maintained and insured, that the water is tested periodically, seeing to it that the pool is closed during any emergencies, hiring and managing life guards as needed, sorting out complaints and other issues, and on and on. In short, this person would have to perform the functions currently handling by the HOA's property manager.

If the owners simply let the pool sit there, they'll quickly have themselves an unsafe eyesore.

I do that now and don't get to pay less for the pleasure. OK so it's not a semi, but it's a big jacked-up pickup that the owner purposely put a LOUD exhaust system on. It's like a 737 warming up across the street and the owner leaves it idling in the driveway for 10 or 20 minutes at a time, day and night. Our Rules & Regulations forbid that in several ways but the board won't do anything about it, not even a friendly phone call, because they "don't want to offend anybody." I've spoken to the guy nicely several times in the last couple of years but he refuses to play nice.


I'm with you 100% there. A "rules committee" I was on several years ago spent months re-writing our Rules & Regulations. We recognized that we weren't revising them because of anything currently going on that needed to be addressed, but rather to get out ahead of what the future might bring with the inevitable turnover of aging homeowners and anticipate what might be coming. Turns out we were right. With 32 new homeowners (out of 100) since the start of 2017, most rule violations we see are from the newer homeowners.

Our new Rules & Regulations, a product of many hours of work by a committee of 4 or 5 people, are almost worthless because the board refuses to enforce anything. It's extremely frustrating and there's a clear sense that we wasted our time with that committee.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this country was deeply divided politically, culturally, and was experiencing a general decline in civility. Just based on this, why would any developer want to create another layer of government in the form of an HOA, where the current culture fosters cabals, cliques and division? Why would that be a selling point? Perhaps in the 1950's, when there was general societal harmony, but certainly not in 2010-2020 (before the pandemic).

OK!! so we eliminate the HOA's, Oh by the way we're doubling your yearly property taxes.

Oddly enough, I think that the more invested people are in their homes/communities, the more likely you are to see cliques and whatnot. Certainly in my condo community - which is nicely diverse, thank you very much - the main attitude is "whatever". As long as the water flows and the trash is picked up, that's pretty much the extent of people's interest.

Yes, we have neighbor to neighbor squabbles from time to time, and occasionally boorish behavior, but that's human nature: you can find that sort of thing in any group. What we don't have is organized fighting among ourselves.

We have no amenities that would encourage socializing. We also don't have any social media or other online platform on which homeowners can publicly rant and rave since those things encourage bad behavior. I can pretty much guarantee that if we did have such things that we would have the kinds of incivility you mentioned, although I suspect it would be limited to a small group because of the general "whatever" attitude of our owners. I never thought I'd have good things to say about apathy or lack of sociability, but here's one example. :-)

Tim,

The point was that having an HOA means there are restrictions in place against those sorts of things ... those with chickens and goats, or with idling semi trucks, or with other unacceptable behavior avoid the HOA constructs.

Did I phrase my initial response confusingly?