Category Archives: Foreclosures

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

 

Good, Good HOA Site

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I always hate to send my readers away to another link. It’s supposed to hurt my SEO ranking. If you don’t return, my overall SEO score goes down and I get fewer followers.

Still, I feel it’s my obligation to occasionally send you to links that I feel are not only valid, but are important as we try to articulate what’s wrong with the National HOA scam. I read this one and was impressed with the way they analyzed the current HOA system and why this supposedly extremely ‘local’ government entity is not really local at all.

Read and enjoy, return to me, and comment.

http://tinyurl.com/lhomvr2

 

 

 

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 

 

Non HOA. But Incredibly Important!

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All most Americans want from the government is to be treated fairly. But in the perversity of today’s various legal ‘interpretations’, no American can read the law and find what’s legal and illegal. Perversity is a mild word.

Just read the following link and figure out how far the courts have strayed from the original intent of the founders of the country:

http://tinyurl.com/mopzgof

And if you still don’t believe you can be stripped and handcuffed to the bars of a police holding cell for four hours just for raising questions about the financial health of your HOA, just read this story about Col. Robert Frank and Tim Stebbins.

http://tinyurl.com/lf6p8jz

God help us!

 

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.