Category Archives: beekeeping

How’s Your HOA Home Value, Now?

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True believers in the HOA system say, “Well, at least it protects my property value.” That statement only comes from the spectacularly stupid.

When you sign those real estate documents, you are essentially becoming a legal partner with every other member of your HOA. As thoroughly documented in my new book, Neighbors At War, when you have all those other homeowners as partners, you’re liable for every single accident, temper tantrum and lawsuit across the landscape. You’ve made yourself a legal financial partner with people you’ve never even met, possibly many people you’ll NEVER EVEN meet.

“OK, I’m just spreading the risk,” you might respond. But with a rogue HOA board, you will probably be sharing the expenses for every single one of the nonsensical actions your board takes. Your deep pocket will be probed by every trial lawyer in every slip-‘n’-fall, and every little outrageous conduct case that comes along. Just shut up, open your checkbook and turn your head. We’ll tell you about the damage and the special assessments later.

In the case linked below, a Homeowners Association in Illinois is going to have to defend itself against a couple who allege that actions by their HOA caused a stream to overflow its banks and ruin their five HOA properties. Surely this HOA has insurance protection, right? Yes, but that comes with a deductible and a limit. Should this couple be awarded ten million dollars, the HOA’s one million dollar insurance policy will be helpless, hopeless, hapless and useless.

It’s the Lake Iroquois Homeowners Association. And you’d better bet homes in that HOA will be impossible to sell.

Sorry, Guys.

You should have listened to me.

http://tinyurl.com/lo6o7uw

 

Creepy, Creepy Realtors!

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LOL! I intentionally avoid going to other Homeowners Rights websites so I don’t inadvertently post a story without giving full credit to the initial blogger. But someone in our movement emailed this to me, and it’s too good not to re-post. In any event, full credit here goes to Dr. Evan McKenzie for coming up with this one first.

It’s about a couple of Realtors involved in high-end McMansion sales who were caught throwing dead animals around the driveway of a neighboring property, apparently to scare potential buyers away from a rival Realtor’s listing.

There really must be some rampant mental illness going around in the real estate business. This is one they really should highlight at the annual Realtors Convention. Somehow, I think they won’t.

http://tinyurl.com/mxlwrwa 

 

Want To Do A Guest Blog?

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20,000 people a month are now logging into NeighborsAtWar.com.  I like to keep you up to date on what’s going on in ‘HOA Amerika’, but keeping track of it all is a daunting job. So I want to invite each of you to consider doing a guest blog on situations with which you’re familiar.

Just a warning: I’m a tough taskmaster. After 40 years of investigative reporting and television news editing, I want total control over the final edited product. That’s because I have to take responsibility for what we publish. And I want to make sure each guest blog is short, pithy, to the point, and has punch. It has to be absolutely factual, and whenever possible, it has to link to an original published source.  This helps keep us out of legal hot water.

But I encourage you to join in. From everything I can see, our movement is growing and it’s only through YOUR efforts, NOT MINE, that we can eventually get the whole country educated about the organized crime element that runs through the entire national HOA system.

As I’ve said before, the dozens of indictments produced by the federal investigation of racketeering in Las Vegas Homeowners Associations could probably be reproduced in every city in America. This isn’t just a case of homeowners irritated by covenant restrictions. It’s hard-core violations of RICO statutes aided and abetted by a tort industry willing to violate professional ethics in order to create a massive income stream that comes straight out of the pockets and the equity of homeowners and into the pockets of HOA lawyers and HOA ‘insiders’.

Lastly, each one of us who have Homeowners Rights websites have to work hard to increase our SEO rankings so more homeowners can find us. This means leaving frequent comments on each others sites, and the frequent linking of our sites to one another.

KLOUT score is also becoming a big deal in the cyber-world. Each of us (whether you know it or not) has a KLOUT score, which measures the degree of your influence in the Internet community. Your KLOUT score measures the kind of influence you have over your contacts, your friends and associates. The higher your KLOUT score, the more people will find us. That means creating good content, and bringing as many people as possible into your circle of contacts. 

We used to be powerless as individual homeowners. But the Internet has given each one of us amazing power to attack and correct the wrongdoing of evil or misguided institutions.

You can reach me privately at ward (at)  NeighborsAtWar.com.

Crazy Birds

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imagesCAVA9UV9How the heck did we lose all our freedoms in this country? When did it happen? Did it begin with Political Correctness? Is it an actual political movement, or just what happens when a government grows too big? I have no answers. But I do have the ability sometimes to point to a bureaucracy gone nutz.

Alfred and Annette Rockefeller of Ramsey, New Jersey were shocked to discover they were criminals because they had installed a bird feeder in their yard. A simple birdfeeder. Not a mass wildlife feeding center, just a bird feeder.

The couple are in their 70s. Alfred is disabled. At age 77 you’d think he’d be allowed the simple pleasure of sitting back and watching the birds. It’s done by millions of homeowners across the country.

But a neighbor complained. He complained that the bird feeder was attracting other unwanted creatures, like ducks, deer, chipmunks.

This week, the couple had to appear in court to be fined anywhere from 250 to 500 bucks for illegally feeding wildlife.

In years past, feeding the birds would just be considered an old man’s pleasure. These days, you’re a creep for wanting to watch the wildlife.

　

 

http://tinyurl.com/mlg782k

http://www.myfoxny.com/Story/22668762/nj-couple-facing-fine-over-bird-feeder

Home Gardener About To Get Bashed

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I have a lot of sympathy for Chris Gilson, a homeowner in the Brandermill Community Association in Chesterfield County Virginia. But I also have a prediction. He’s about to lose his home and his life savings.3p1[1]

After years of unsuccessful attempts to plant a lawn in his rocky front yard, he planted a vegetable garden, which has grown quickly. Now his HOA is fining him ten bucks a day until he removes it. The HOA says it’s going to assess that fine each day for 90 days. Gilson says he’ll be glad to pay $900 for the privilege of keeping his garden. But the poor fellow just doesn’t get it.

Disobey a mindless demand from your HOA and you’ll be fined, of course. But the HOA doesn’t like being scorned. So what’s waiting for Gilson at the end of those 90 days is a lien on his home, massive new fines, legal fees, debt collection costs, a lawsuit, and eventually the foreclosure and sale of his home at auction. His house, of course, will be auctioned for just a few thousand dollars. The most likely buyer will be a friend of a board member or a buddy of the lawyer that brings the lawsuit.  That ‘buddy’ will then kick back some money to the board member or the lawyer, and the home will quickly be sold and resold through a series of quick transactions. Those quick sale transactions are designed to make it impossible for Gilson to ever get back his home.

It’s the same kind of scam that cost Captain Michael Clauer his home while he was deployed in Iraq. His home was sold and re-sold in several transactions designed to make it impossible for him to get it back. The foreclosure against a serviceman deployed overseas was a blatant violation of federal law. So in Clauer’s case, a judge ordered a secret settlement that allowed Clauer to partially recover what he had lost.

Chris Gilson doesn’t have that kind of protection in the fight over his garden. He will lose. He will lose big time. With a scam as well-entrenched and as profitable as the HOA scam, very few if any people win. The one percent, or so, who actually win in court against an HOA end up with a massive net loss once the legal bills are paid.

Chris Gilson? Get out. Leave the neighborhood. This HOA will forever slander you, harass you, and vandalize you. Your daughters will be tormented by schoolmates. Anonymous calls will be made to your employer demanding that you be fired.

Chris? Are you listening?

Just believe me.

original source:  The Chesterfield Observer    http://tinyurl.com/o6ofhvr