Category Archives: Handicap

Changing Times

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I think it was Mark Twain who advised people to buy land because God wasn’t making any more of it. He also said, “No man’s life, liberty or property are safe when the Legislature’s in session.” His last witticism may have been more accurate than the first. 

Look  around the country where condos and residential high rises are being bought up by foreign investors. In Florida, California, Texas, Colorado, and Pennsylvania, senior citizens are buying small retirement homes where they hope to be comfortably living out their years. But as more and more of these apartments are turned into rentals, property values have plummeted.
 
Teresa Fusco of Reading, Pennsylvania found herself in a stunning situation. Her condo at Deer Path Woods was initially appraised at more than a hundred thousand dollars. She was one of eleven families who owned their homes outright. Ninety seven other units were held by renters, but the appraisals all said the units were worth about a hundred-thousand each. 
Then, Teresa learned that an investor was buying up all those rental units for about $7200 apiece, essentially giving himself almost 90% control of the entire complex. 
 
It gets deeper, still. 
 
The investor said that now he had all the votes he needed to control the association he promptly dissolved it. Throwing his new found weight around even more, the investor announced he was putting the entire complex up for sale. He got himself a new bulk appraisal which said the complex was worth far less than anyone imagined and the condominium was suddenly on the auction block. 
 
Any guesses as to who the top bidder was? Yep, the same investor who bought up all the rental units he had initially purchased and put up for auction. Except he now owned all those units which were once in private hands. Hands like those of Teresa Fusco.
 
Those former homeowners are just shaking their heads in bewilderment. This kind of thing can’t happen in America can it?
 
Well, it happened in Pennsylvania.
 
 
 

Wow! Any Doubt a Housing Collapse is Coming?

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This blog post is, indeed, a little esoteric. But many experts have predicted that another financial bubble is going to collapse, this one involving the HOA housing industry.

You really have to dive in between the lines of the story linked below. But this financial expert is predicting societal changes which actually could lead to a housing collapse in suburban America. He says the most dynamic part of our growing financial culture is the diversity of thought and creativity that’s only found in our inner cities and not in our stale suburban neighborhoods. He claims that our societal focus on suburban life is destined for failure and calls it “…the primary reason for global financial crisis.”

I’m no economist and my own predictions are far less sophisticated than his. But it boils down to the same conclusion: Sir Thomas More’s vision of Utopia is exactly backwards and is destined to collapse simply because the human spirit is not designed for life in Paradise. It’s evolutionarily designed for survival of the fittest. And the HOA Utopian model was never designed to handle the harsh realities of life. 

When those institutions which underwrite home loans discover that the typical Homeowner Association model does not protect or stabilize property values, when they discover that homes outside HOAs actually rise faster in value than those inside gated neighborhoods, when they finally discover that embezzlement is the Achilles heel of covenant controlled developments, then investor money will start flowing out of homeowners associations and back into more traditional neighborhoods.  

(click here for Richard Florida’s interview)

 

I Nearly Died Laughing!!!

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Oh, my sides still hurt from the hilarity. Linked below you’ll see a very short and amazingly insightful video from an HOA critic who is, as yet, unknown. If I can learn his identity I intend to send that person an autographed copy of my book to show my appreciation.

This fellow obviously lives in an HOA, obviously has been hassled over his holiday decorations, and obviously keeps up with current news events.

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And if one of you can figure out who this fellow is, I’ll also send you a book autographed to whoever you want, a neighbor, a Congressman, an HOA board member.

As a matter of fact, we need to keep the humor going. Anyone who sends me a photo or piece of video that needs to be circulated to followers of my website, please feel free to do so. If I end up using your video, you’ll also get a free copy of Neighbors At War in the mail!

Ward Lucas

Goodwill Identity Theft Nightmare

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A video now going viral around the country involves a Goodwill store which is inadvertently selling the personal tax records of a number of families who put donations in the Goodwill bins.

In this blog we usually concentrate on HOAs and the out-of-control tort industry. But as you watch this investigative report you’ve got to believe your personal information can be leaked when HOA boards or their attorneys dump their trash and files. 

Anyway, watch this and suppress your urge to ‘freak out’.

(click here for WTHR-TV news story)

 

Paper? Plastic? Or Old-Fashioned Roasting Pan?

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Yes, Thanksgiving is coming.
 
Since becoming the sole caregiver of a loved one a few years ago, I’ve had to spend a little time in the kitchen trying to learn to cook. I passionately hate cooking. Recipes always seem suspiciously like the semester of chemistry I flunked in high school. 
 
But in the past few years I’ve been amazed at the number of folks who know nothing about paper bag-baked turkeys.
 
My mother, God rest her soul, didn’t know any other way of cooking a turkey. You basically prepare the Thanksgiving bird in your favorite way. Open a brown paper bag, grab a stick of butter with your hand and smear it all over the inside of the bag. Then slide the turkey in and tightly seal the bag.  
 
No, the bag won’t catch fire. And after the appropriate time in the oven you’ll taste an incredibly moist turkey.
 
Speaking of shopping bags, communities around the country are beginning to pass laws which essentially fine shoppers who ask for paper or plastic. But I promise you this: You cannot cook a turkey in a canvas reusable bag. Buttered or not.