Sometimes, a movement, a protest, a demand for decent treatment of others can be condensed to just a few words:
And another:
“Whenever one person stands up and says, “Wait a minute, this is wrong,” it helps other people to do the same.” -Gloria Steinem
That’s all we’re trying to do in exposing the national HOA scam. We just want to help someone.
Governor Jerry Brown! In what orifice is your head hopelessly lodged?
California is in the middle of a horrible drought, even the drought of a lifetime. Farmers who generate most of the nation’s food are going broke. Governor Jerry has asked homeowners to quit using so much water on their lawns. In fact, he’s even declared a drought emergency.
A Republican State Senator has even proposed a law to force HOAs to quit fining residents over their brown lawns.
How impotent! And ignorant
Homeowners Associations are merrily fining, suing and foreclosing on homeowners who’ve followed the governor’s water rationing requests and have allowed their lawns to turn brown.
You see, Homeowner Associations are private non-profit corporations which are beyond the control of state and federal laws. After all, Americans have a Constitutional right to make contracts, even if those contracts are counter to decency and common sense.
Despite the efforts of the governor and other California legislators, Kentucky Bluegrass will continue to decorate the grounds of Homeowners Associations.
http://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2014/01/24/drought-or-not-brown-lawns-bring-hoa-fines/
(link to Democratic Underground story)
(link to CVT HOA story on drought emergency)
Homeowners Associations can, indeed, wreck your life. So there isn’t much humor in the anti-HOA movement. Still, it’s great to see a homeowners rights advocate in Texas making such a good video and sharing it with the rest of the world.
Turn up the volume, click on the video, sit back and enjoy!
http://www.classclownpictures.com/
http://www.classclownpictures.com/
by the Real Estate Bloggers
It is one of those horrible scenarios, but you may be on the hook for a potentially large assessment from your homeowners association, and not even know it. In fact, your homeowners association may be close to being broke…
When you buy a home that is governed by a homeowners association you sign a long document that gives the association certain powers over your property. Typically you get the bylaws right around closing time as you have 100 plates spinning in the air, and you give it a quick glance at the homeowner bylaws and then sign that you agree to be bound by them.
This could be costly. These agreements govern how the homeowners association can collect their dues, including potentially foreclosing on your house to do so, how you must maintain your home, and assess special fees if the association needs to make upgrades or create new amenities.
So you may wake up one day to hear about a $10,000 assessment because the association feels the need to fix a problem or add an amenity and it will be coming out of your bank account.
Now here is the scariest part, a majority of the homeowners associations in the United States are underfunded. The housing crisis has put incredible pressure on the associations as people just can not pay their dues, or the homes in their neighborhoods are in foreclosure.
Foreclosures on delinquent properties by homeowners associations were almost unheard of before the financial crisis of 2008. Now lawyers and real estate researchers say they are becoming more common as association funding bases shrink because of previously foreclosed homes’ standing empty. About 70 percent of association-governed communities are underfunded, up 12.5 percent from 10 years ago, according to Association Reserves. The average association has financial reserve accounts — the amount required to maintain infrastructure and common areas — that are only funded at 52 percent, down from 60 percent a decade ago, its research shows. via AOL Real Estate
This is not to scare you from buying a home with a homeowners association, but do read the documents when looking at the neighborhoods and ask about potential assessments in the future, or common maintenance issues that you see. It may save you from an expensive mistake.
(link to The Real Estate Bloggers)
http://www.therealestatebloggers.com/is-your-homeowners-association-underfunded/
I still think I’m right on target in predicting a coming housing and HOA bubble that will make the 2008-2009 implosion look like child’s play. And this one is aimed EXACTLY at the country’s Homeowners Associations. This is a crisis to be very afraid of.
The New York Post story linked below discusses it, not as a housing crisis, but as a lack of spending crisis.
Demographics show our population is aging. Older people have already paid for their cars, their homes, their toys. If we follow Japan’s financial implosion in the 1980s people will suddenly have no money to spend. That means a disaster for aging Homeowners Associations.
More folks will be moving out, deflation means home prices will start dropping like a rock. HOA budgets will be crushed. As evidenced by their behavior over the past eight or nine years, HOA lawyers will be filing more liens, lawsuits and foreclosures over increasingly minor infractions.
As you read this New York Post story, keep thinking about the potential impact on your HOA investment or the real value of your vacation home!
