Egads! I’ve never met Sara Benson, never even talked to her on the phone, but I’d have an affair with her in an instant, if she’d agree! (Yep, I’m not very classy, but I’m sincere!)
This incredible Illinois Realtor has discovered that up to 80% of Illinois Homeowners Associations are unknown and untracked by the state! The implications are massive. It means that huge numbers of Americans have signed away their access to rights conferred by the U.S. Constitution by buying homes in private corporations where they’re lying naked in front of all their fellow homeowners. They think they’ve bought private homes, but what they’ve actually bought is shares in unregulated corporations in which they can be taxed, liened, sued and bankrupted with their life savings going into a common pot owned by all their fellow neighbors.
It’s the biggest transfer of private property wealth to government in the history of America. Seductive. Illegal. Subversive. There just aren’t words enough to express it. I thought I was pretty smart about the evils of Homeowners Associations. I hate to admit it, but I didn’t have a clue. Not a clue.
This should be the Number One headline in every news organization in America. Sadly, it won’t be. I love America, but Americans are fundamentally stupid. Like the frog in the pot we just enjoy the increasing heat. Until it’s too hot.
Sara Benson and Don DeBat, I hope you sell a zillion copies of Escaping Condo Jail!.
Yes, welcome to your new condo. You’re going to love living here. The neighbors all get along and we don’t seem to suffer the kinds of problems felt in many other Homeowners Associations. You’re buying into a little bit of Heaven, your own private home. Welcome, welcome, welcome!
Oh, we’re sorry we couldn’t give you copies of the covenants, the budget and insurance papers in time for your real estate closing. At the time you requested them, the paperwork was tied up in some minor snafu. But it’ll all get worked out soon.
Ah yes, and ignore the story in the newspapers today. Those crooked reporters always make up their facts and get the story wrong. Everybody knows how warped and dishonest the media are. Just sit back and enjoy your new life!
Transfer fees are among the biggest scams in the housing business. North Carolina residents tried to get them outlawed. Colorado is trying. New Mexico is trying. Transfer fees are a ‘little’ item on your paperwork that pops up when you try to sell your home. If you live in a Homeowners Association of any kind you’re likely to learn that you have to pay the fee before you can sell to a buyer. Transfer fee. That means some property manager had to photocopy the HOA covenants, probably a hundred or so pages. But you don’t photocopy them one page at a time. No, they’re on his computer. Push one button and the printer spits them all out in a couple of minutes.
So, what do transfer fees cost? Well they can cost the buyer anywhere from 150 to 4000 bucks. For photocopies! And many a house sale has fallen through because someone in the transaction has to come up with that extra money.
Where does the money go? Simple. It’s a transfer, remember? A transfer directly into the pockets of some board officer or the property manager. That’s why HOA giants like Associa and CAI fight like the dickens when state legislators start getting wise and drafting proposals to reign these crooks in. With those two phony organizations constantly lying about how they “represent homeowners,” it’s blatantly obvious they don’t represent the interests of homeowners. No, they just represent the dollars they can sneak out of a homeowner’s pockets.
Crazy story from the city of Commerce in Los Angeles County. A community newspaper reported on a growing scandal involving an alleged two million dollar kickback scheme involving the mayor of Commerce and several city officials. At least two of the officials live in a gated community there. Now an HOA board member, in the foulest imaginable verbal assault, has told the newspaper delivery guy that he’s no longer allowed to deliver the paper to homeowners in the HOA.
In Greek mythology, the Hydra was a terrifying sea monster that had many heads and used them to devour innocent seafarers. Our hero, Heracles, forced the Hydra into the open and began chopping off its heads. But each time a head was severed two new ones grew back. It seemed like a hopeless task but Heracles was undaunted. He finally figured out that if he used a torch to cauterize each severed limb they failed to regrow.
The news this week that the nation’s two largest HOA management monsters were getting cozier with each other was beyond astonishing. Top officials for Associa are being given all sorts of awards by the CAI and vice versa. Could a merger between the two organizations be in the future? Former Texas state senator John Carona and his ethically-challenged Associa would be perfect in a merger with the similarly ethics-challenged Community Associations Institute. Such a new organization would control tens of billions of dollars worth of income-producing properties. It’s a monster. Each person in this country who thinks he owns his own home should start facing the facts. You are John Carona’s income-producer. Carona, as one of the most influential power-brokers in Texas government, built his vast wealth by sponsoring and passing state laws that directly increased his personal bank balance. Now he’s buying infrastructure around his thousands of HOAs so that homeowners have no other option but to bank in his banks and buy insurance from his insurance companies.
Associa and the CAI? Together? And this massive (anti-trust?) organization which perpetuates the lie that it represents homeowners, when it actually only represents its own income stream from dues-paying lawyers and management companies, is becoming a regrowth of the legendary Hydra.
The symbol of The Torch is often used to represent light, the shedding of light on a dark subject. Maybe, just maybe, we can take a lesson from Heracles, the slayer of monsters. We just need to find a way to cauterize these various heads to keep them from growing back.
