Category Archives: Horror Stories

But My HOA Protects My Property Values!

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If you believe that, then you’re visiting the wrong shrink!

No, Your HOA absolutely does not protect your property values. Your HOA is there to keep track of your net worth. Your net worth (not just your home value) is pledged to a community pool which can be used whenever necessary to cover the cost of lawsuits, repairs, maintenance, insurance, embezzling board members.

All neighborhoods age, that’s just a fact of life. But developers get special breaks for cramming more homes into smaller spaces, and often those developers are just self-centered and financially motivated to cut corners. Meanwhile, building inspectors look the other way knowing it’ll be years before construction problems start becoming apparent.

When a mortgage or financial crisis hits and HOAs don’t maintain the common areas wild things start happening. A few homeowners lose their homes. Then a few more. Suddenly, there’s not enough money in the budget to maintain the common areas. More homes or condos are turned into rentals. Crime increases. More lawsuits are filed. Then it gets especially messy as the entire neighborhood collapses. Who’s still around to claim, “Our HOA protects property values?”

A prime example is linked below:

(Georgia condo complex gets trashed)

 

 

A Homeowner-Oriented Law Firm

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Many homeowners are dismayed when they start looking for a lawyer to represent them against a Homeowners Association. Such law firms are close to non-existent. Lawyers who align themselves with such organizations as Associa and CAI make a massive amount of money.  But defending individual homeowners against HOA abuse is almost always a money-loser.

So I’m happy when I can pass along the name of a homeowners’ rights law firm. The Herb Milgrim Law Firm in Fort Lauderdale is a name you Florida homeowners should keep track of. They don’t blog often but their blogsite, linked below, is worth checking every so often. And I’m still collecting names of other good law firms around the country. If you run across a lawyer or law firm that stands for the rights of individual homeowners, please email me their names.

Ward@NeighborsAtWar.com

(link to Florida Condo Attorneys)

 

 

 

 

 

Stoopid HOA Buyers

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I have enormous sympathy for people who buy into an HOA. Heck, I was dumb enough to do the same thing. Three times! But in retrospect, I was STOOPID! I was a lamb among the wolves. Never had a clue.

The biggest unreported financial crime in America is embezzlement from an HOA. The following story isn’t even extraordinary, it happens in city after city, day after day. But homeowners (like me) are just too witless to ‘get it.’ The HOA scam is beyond any reasonable explanation. If you’ve bought an HOA property you’ve just donated your life savings to a massive national criminal enterprise that the government will never investigate, expose, or end. Kiss your life savings, ‘Goodbye.’

If you live in a non-HOA neighborhood, fall in love with those boat trailers, the purple front doors, the obnoxious lawn ornaments. Your life savings are protected. Your investment will continue to grow. And feel a modicum of pity for the ritzy people on the other side of the street.

(link to Tampa Bay News story on 300 million dollar fraud)

 

Sara Benson!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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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!.

(link to Chicago Tribune article on Sara Benson)

 

Another Nutty HOA

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My job is just too easy. Lots of people read this blog site and you’d think I’d struggle to come up with a new subject each evening. But with people around the country gradually waking up to the HOA scam there are stories everywhere about out-of-control Homeowners Associations.

The link below deserves reading. It’s a tiny Homeowners Association in Arizona that suddenly decided it needed two lawyers and a security guard at its annual meeting. The HOA hired a new management firm which is fining homeowners for a bizarre range of ‘violations.’ So homeowners suddenly have to pay fines, pay for unneeded lawyers and an unneeded security patrol just to make sure nobody protests the hiring of such people.

Life can be creepy.

Beware of buying property in the Carter Ranch Homeowners Association!

(link to Coolidge Examiner story on Carter Ranch HOA)