HOA Domain names

As far as I know, you cannot "force" somebody to transfer a domain name they own, even by law. The only way is if they infringe on trademarks or act on behalf of the association.

For example, If I was somehow able to own cocacola.com and started posting acting as if I was cocacola, then they can rightfully sue and force over the domain by law.

We also have a domain name owned by a real estate agent who used the website for listings (which has not been updated for YEARS). I called him. No shot. He will not be selling the domains, if fact he is collecting them as a lot of people do.
Best choice I had was to buy up the rest of the good domains left and market them harder.

People will learn which the official page for your association is if you do that.

I have since created a website to showcase the property (hopefully draw in more buyers) and to give the owners a voice with a contact form. Also, we added an info page with all of our general rules, bylaws, declarations, and even info on garbage removal/pickup.
Basically, the idea is that we want to 1. inform owners on how to do certain things so that we don't have as many violations and 2. give owners a voice if they want to speak up and be heard but not on a public bases that can spread misinformation.

I have never heard of such a thing but I agree with the others that it would probably be extraordinarily expensive. These days it doe not matter as much that you have a name that matches who you are. If you use the proper key phrases when you set it up, people will find you in a search. You could use an abbreviation or add a number or state abbreviation to the end. You also have the choice of domain extensions: .com, .org, .net, etc.

Here are some easy solutions for an HOA called Schitz Creek HOA (fictional, as far as I know) that would work for almost any HOA.

shitzcreektx
shitzcreektexas
myshitzcreek
upshitzcreek
shitzcreekassociation
shitzcreekhome

With multiple extensions to choose from the possibilities are limitless.

I'll just add as someone with more than a passing familiarity with this subject, though IANAL, a person *can* be forced to give up a domain.

The example above about Coca Cola? Doesn't matter if you're not engaging in infringing behavior if the owner of the name can convince a judge that your use of the domain would confuse people looking for cola and not whatever your web site sells.

All of this depends on the other party willing to pay legal fees though, which means it's typically clear infringement or asshole/wealthy companies that force a changeover.

I'd also be really pissed if my HOA wasted money on this.

Just get a little creative with the domain name and you'll have a much cheaper solution

I have some interesting direct personal experience on this matter.

I was bored once, with more money than I knew what to do with, and read some silly tail of trademark police stopping people from registering domains with trademarked names. I was sure this was nonsense, and I wanted to debunk this myth, perhaps by putting up some stupid "see I told you so" message on a domain that disproved the myth.

So I myself, personally registered with NameCheap, as an experiment, something like

AIGFidelityAppleNikeGoogleTrademarkCanary.com

I did nothing with it. private registration, no email, no website. I didn't impersonate a damn thing or defraud anyone. Didn't make a dime.

Namecheap deleted it from my account without refund about 3 days later.

Nobody's hoa is going to have that kind of clout. But if it's a fortune 500, there very much is some sort of secret kabal.

I worked in cybersecurity as well for a while. There are 'feeds' of all domain names registered every day. You can get a hold of them if you know someone at ARIN or ICANN. I had access to one where we downloaded a zipfile via FTP every day from ICANN.

Presumably, somebody who gets those feeds runs every single one through a list of companies who pay them money to be the party pooper police, and they make some legal threat to the registrars or otherwise have them in their pocket.

Option 1:
Look up the expiration date using ICANN.
Contact the former vendor who hosted the domain on your behalf per your agreement, and see if they are just hosting it or own the actual domain.

I did this last week. The vendor said it was ours, they just didn't know who to transfer it to. That was a good result from a phone call. But it may not always work out that way.

Option 2: get creative, and choose a new domain. you can have some fun with this. You can also pick up a dropped domain.

Option 3: imo, suing for a domain is not worth the money or time for a non-profit that is looking for a simple splash page. Hopefully getting creative with option 2 is the best route.