Tag Archives: HOA Stories

Stupid Reporters, but They’ll Learn

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An amazingly ignorant story was posted by reporter Jeff Skrzypek of WPTV this month. It noted that Homeowner Associations in Florida were crippled by the housing crisis. He did have the class to acknowledge that developers were also impacted.

Then, the reporter interviewed whiny homeowners in Lake Worth, Florida who pay their dues each month but just don’t see the neighborhood improving because so many foreclosed homes are driving down prices, and those homes don’t contribute to maintainance of the common areas.

Besides, they complain, the developer can’t sell 9 of the 60 homes there, so he’s decided to rent them out instead of selling them and turning control of the HOA over to the residents.

The average thumb sucking dullard could figure a few things out, here. Housing prices have nose-dived in Homeowners Associations because home buyers are getting smart. They’re figuring out that the worst investment in the world is an HOA home where the dues aren’t being paid. Yes, the local swimming pool is covered with green grunge, but that won’t change until every home is occupied and all dues are being paid again. That could take years.

And that rotten developer! What if he just turned those homes over to the bank? That’s nine more foreclosures in a neighborhood that’s already going through its death throes. He’s actually keeping that housing development on life support, probably at enormous personal expense.

Then the idiot homeowner complained that she thought she was moving into an ownership community? Wake up and smell the coffee. Pass a state law that says no HOA resident is allowed to rent out his home. Then you’ll see how low housing prices really can go!

One more thing. Homes inside Homeowner Associations take a faster dive in value than any other kind of housing. So much for the promise of protecting the equity of your home.

I just had an idea. What if all those weepy homeowners quit talking to reporters and walked around the neighborhood voluntarily cleaning things up. Nah, come to think of it, that doesn’t happen in Homeowner Associations. They’ll wait until they can appoint a cleanup committee.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

A Trip through Hell in a West Palm Beach HOA

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The Summit Run, West Palm Beach. It used to a heavenly place to live. But all of a sudden we had a little economic burp that sent a number of homeowners flying elsewhere. Adam Sinclair’s job is to fix up what’s wrong at Summit Creek, keep the water running and the trash picked up among its 254 residents.

He’s also supposed to collect HOA fees among the residents, and what a thankless job that is. The residents see the trash and the unkempt grounds and the leaky faucets and they say, “Why should I pay dues? My neighbors aren’t!” And they’d be right. A quarter of Summit Run residents are late on their dues. And when they don’t pay, management has to go hire lawyers to kick in the heads of the recalcitrant owners.

I’m surprised no one has used this analogy before. But if you train a dog with gentle praise, rewards and love you can train that dog to do almost anything. If you yell at it, berate it, hit it with sticks, you can never again get that dog to love and respect you.

Our communities are dying, not because of the housing bubble, not because there weren’t enough owners vs. rentals, not because we didn’t try our hardest to keep our communities clean. No, we lost the trust of homeowners who comprise the very thin veneer of a residential cell. We beat them, we sued them, we screamed at them and slipped hate mail under their doors.

The HOA movement wasn’t prepared. And it should have been.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Justice Department Fights for Homeowners. Feel better?

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The big news this week is that the U.S. Department of Justice, Eric Holder & Co., has reached a mass settlement in the housing bubble scandal.

It’s a settlement of more than $25 billion dollars. That’s to pay for all the phony loans, the robo-signing deals by phony bank officials who never ever looked at your real estate closing documents. Attorneys General across the country are hailing it as a landmark settlement, a massive achievement, to help cash-strapped and bankrupted homeowners. They’re holding news conferences and talking about how hard they fight for the average consumer.

Hmm, let’s see. You got crushed in the Fannie/Freddie housing debacle. You lost your house in the mortgage slamdown. Your wife left you and went back to her parents in New Jersey. Your credit is crap. You’ll get to see your kids maybe one time a year. The settlement is for 25 billion dollars. That means at some point in the future, you might… you might, get a check say, for $2000.

That means IF you qualify for a settlement payoff, you COULD get a reimbursement of $2000.

Gosh, I suddenly feel all warm and fuzzy… just warm. And fuzzy.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Homeowner Associations a Social Disease?

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Just like a social disease that keeps coming back, some Homeowner Associations never let a patsy out of their grip.

The latest “sucker” is some poor fellow in The Times Condominium At Sweetwater Del Webb Master Homeowner’s Association (Whew! Where do these names come from?)

Anyway, resident Larry Murphree thought he knew what was meant when GW Bush signed the “Freedom to Display the American Flag Act” in July of 2006. Muphree planted two little flags in flower pots outside the door of his condominium.

Along comes the HOA and starts whacking him with fines of a hundred bucks a day, liens, threats of lawsuit and foreclosure.

Murphree is now in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida. He notes that the flag act specifically says “A condominium association… may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.” Hmmm. Sounds moderately clear.

Whichever way it goes, Murphree will lose tens of thousands of dollars. The HOA will lose tens of thousands of dollars. The stature and marketability of the neighborhood will fall. The lawyers, of course, will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. It always seems to come back to that, doesn’t it? The lawyers. They just keep coming back.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

A Homeowners Association Dating Scam?

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Sometimes it hurts too much to cry…so you just have to laugh…and give ’em the publicity they so richly deserve.

It’s another embezzlement from an HOA. The suspect is 62 year old Nancy B. Walker of Boonsboro, Maryland.

Details aren’t crystal clear yet, but investigators claim Mz. Walker filched from $100,000 to $137,000 from the Ballenger Creek Meadows Homeowners Association.

It seems she was involved in an Internet dating scam and was wiring the money to a man in South Africa.

Just an idle question, here: How low does your I.Q. have to be to qualify as the HOA board member in charge of the the neighborhood treasury?

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