Category Archives: Fraud

Color Them Happy

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

Why buy a condo or townhouse when a colorful little village awaits us sans taxes, upkeep, the basic boring beige and the biggest reason of all NO HOA or their ridiculous dues and psycho boards?!

What a smart investor Mr. Blankenship seems to be.  He builds these darling small houses on concrete slabs and has the exteriors finished in three weeks.  He paints the exteriors beautiful warm colors of pink, green, purple, robin egg blue, and a steel blue.  He changed the roof lines so they don’t look like all of our “cookie-cutter” HOA neighborhoods.  
 
Three weeks is all it took for him to rent every one of them on one year leases at $500 per month.  And utilities are running around $50 per month.
 
This concept could be duplicated anywhere.  And everybody wins.  No apartment.  No condo. No Co-op. No HOA.  
 
For the money I’ve lost on my townhouse I could have built this whole village.  Geez, if only I could turn back time!
 
 

Please Don’t Leave Me!!!

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Dear Friends: I really don’t won’t to lose any of my regular readers. But it would be irresponsible of me to find a great HOA website and not let you know about it. This is a good one for you to mark and check in with regularly:

(click here for HOA Consumer Affairs)

 

Excellent Advice!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

“At any given time there’s always a certain percentage of Americans looking to buy a house, and if you’re one of them we warn you: if you want a single-family home (as opposed to a condominium or townhouse where you and your neighbors share ownership of walls, roofs and other structures) avoid any real-estate purchase that requires you to join a homeowners’ association, or HOA.” ~Jennifer Abel

I’ll add one sentence. Do not buy a townhouse or condo or Co-op either!

(click here for Consumer Affairs story)

 

Ouch! Things Get Nasty!

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The latest neighborhood nastiness comes to us from Newport News, Virginia and the Kiln Creek Homeowners Association. Eight years ago Bill and Janeth Garlette built a koi pond in their backyard. And for eight long years the HOA has approved of their pond and their various gardening improvements. 

All of a sudden, a new HOA board has hit the couple with two dozen alleged violations of neighborhood covenants. The couple’s attempts at fighting the allegations were futile, so Garlette ripped out the koi pond and razed the backyard to bring it into compliance. But even that wasn’t good enough, and the HOA has filed a 300,000 dollar lawsuit.

Yes, there are allegations of death threats back and forth between the Garlettes and a neighbor who they think instigated the HOA lawsuit. And yes, the Garlettes say they are now officially out of money.

HOAs claim they were set up to protect property values. But this is one neighborhood where property is going to be very difficult to sell.

(click here for WVEC-TV story)

 

Council Member Shevawn Akers Kicks Off Her Heels…Says Come On, Let’s Fight!

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guest blog by Nila Ridings

    ~follow up to blog of November 15th~

HOA members across the country are outraged to hear the story of 75-year old Ingrid Boak, who lost her mortgage-free home in Lexington, Kentucky. And it was all over a minuscule amount of HOA dues owed to Masterson Station.

Nathan Billings, the HOA’s attorney, says they followed the CC&Rs and it was all legal. Okay, but had there been a mortgage for $135k would this same procedure have been followed??? Admission has been made that MOST foreclosures by HOAs include an unpaid mortgage. Sorry, Mr. Billings, but this case smells worse than a pile of race horse manure!

Kentuckians are now scared of losing their homes and panic has set in. The checks are stacking up with delinquent dues payments. But don’t be jumping for joy too soon! Thanks to this story, far more home buyers nationwide have now learned the nasty, ugly and ruthless truth about HOAs! And you can bet their Realtors are going to hear, “Don’t show me any property with an HOA!!!

Hearing that a City Council member is supporting Ms. Boak gives us hope that the end result will be what’s morally right. Shevawn Akers has a Facebook page. What do you say? Let’s encourage her with our support so she’ll fight harder to save Ingrid’s home.

If Stephen Collins Foster were alive today he’d probably change his 1851 song title to, “My Old Kentucky Home before The HOA.”

http://www.kentucky.com/2013/12/03/2967748/masterson-station-foreclosure.html