LOL! These actually are getting pretty funny. There’s nothing that works better than a camera to reign in stupid neighbors. But this is a case of a couple who put up so many cameras, they were eventually charged with stalking.
Great guest post by Dave Russell yesterday, good enough that I’d like to add to it.
Around the country, Homeowners Associations continue to wildly discriminate against families with handicapped youngsters. They’re shunned, they’re fined, they’re labeled ‘bad people’ who aren’t allowed to use the common areas. These stories are as disgusting as they are endemic. And they should serve as a warning to any potential home buyer that HOA property is fundamentally diseased, unfit for Americans who believe in human rights.
Yes, H.U.D. occasionally comes to the rescue on behalf of a damaged family. But these federal lawsuits are so rare they can, at best, be described as ‘show trials’ similar to the massive HOA racketeering case now being conducted in Nevada. A show trial is exactly what it sounds like. The feds ride onto the scene like rodeo cowboys, crack a few whips, and hope that other criminals across the country will be deterred from committing similar crimes. They never are.
The only solution to human rights violations by the HOA system is federal fines massive enough to stagger the imagination. Under the current system the feds win an occasional lawsuit, the HOA insurance company pays for the lawyers and fines, and the homeowners never have a hint about what really happened.
How to solve the problem? When an HOA commits an ongoing violation of federal law confiscate the entire neighborhood under public nuisance laws. Every house, every family gets evicted without compensation.
Outrageous, you say?
Impossible and illegal you say?
Hey, just look at a 2006 Supreme Court decision called Kelo. The government essentially confiscated an entire neighborhood simply for the crime of “not looking nice enough.” Actually, there was some underlying corruption there. A pharmaceutical company wanted the neighborhood for a construction project and the state gave it to them. The irony is that the drug firm decided they didn’t really want the land after all. Now this former neighborhood is just a field of weeds.
Maybe what this country really needs is a few more weeds.
(link to story on cerebral palsy family driven from Kentucky neighborhood)
Canadians often seem much more polite than Americans, but the BBC documentary linked below is one that everyone on this blog should watch. Downtown Toronto has been devastated by defective construction in many of its high-rise condo towers. The U.S. government is following the exact same political path as the governments of Toronto and of Canada have been following over the past seven years.
With the inevitable world financial collapse that’s coming, many building shortcuts are going to be overlooked in the U.S.. Massive construction projects will be seen by our government as an escape valve against the housing market bubble. Thousands of people in rapidly expanding financial markets like China and Dubai will be buying newly built American condos without ever making a personal visit or inspection. And American building inspectors will be ordered by their bosses to overlook common sense building regulations.
This blog is all about protecting you. My guest bloggers put a lot of work into researching and writing about certain subjects to protect you, the homeowner. But believe me, we’re getting pressure from the CAI cacophony and the realty folks and property managers. We make no money on this blog by encouraging our followers to be cautious in their investing.
Caveat emptor.
In the past I’ve shared with my friends my fears about the coming tsunami of world economic collapse and a housing bubble unlike any this country has ever seen. My degree is in Political Science and not Economics but I am a successful investor and money manager. I also do a lot of reading about economic issues.
So, what’s my concern today? A new CNBC report talks about coming interest rate increases and how that will cause ‘massive volatility’ in the markets. The interest rates that are coming will crush the mortgage and housing industry.
After years of moderating and running this blog and years of writing and researching my book, “Neighbors At War,” I firmly believe that people in Homeowners Associations are going to be the first ones slammed by the coming mortgage crisis. I’ll list the reasons why HOA properties are Bull’s Eye Number One.
1. Potential home buyers are getting a whole lot wiser about the dangers of HOA living. The HOA industry has done no favors to homeowners by earning such names as ‘the lawn Nazis,’ ‘HOA Nazis,’ ‘the HOA Mafia.’ People aren’t stupid. They read these stories of the bullying of people in Homeowners Associations, the assessing of ludicrous fines, the abusive (if not illegal) practice of artificially running up legal fees in an effort to get homeowners to try to stand their ground against bullying. The more a homeowner tries to assert his property rights in a dispute, the bigger his financial fall when the HOA wins. This kind of knowledge in the hands of homeowners and home buyers means HOA property values can only go down.
2. A massive wave of foreclosures hurts HOAs more than non-HOA property. An HOA which has 15 to 25 percent foreclosures is pretty close to bankruptcy. Lose 25 percent of your dues, you have to savage the remaining owners for dues increases. If not, the community swimming pool turns green, the lawns don’t get cut, and the roads don’t get plowed. A potential buyer won’t make an HOA investment when he sees the neighborhood falling apart. On the other hand, non-HOA property owners have no problem surviving when a large number of foreclosures hits a neighborhood. Those properties are quickly bought up, especially in neighborhoods where homeowners have voluntarily worked to keep their properties looking good.
3. HOAs which restrict the percentage of rental property do themselves no favor. Being able to rent your condo or house in an emergency is a great escape valve for a homeowner. It saves his equity and he doesn’t have to turn the property over to foreclosure. HOAs with ‘no rentals’ regulations will be the first to suffer catastrophic collapse.
4. Idiotic court decisions like the recent one in Nevada, in which a super priority lien (HOA fine) can extinguish a first deed of trust (the bank’s mortgage) create a lose/lose situation for mortgage companies. Why would they invest in such a state? Why would mortgage companies not demand massive down payments and arbitrary monthly dues to handle an HOA’s excesses. Such new mortgage requirements will crash property values, and the coming financial tsnami will ensure those neighborhoods crash first.
Readers of this blog will have many more reasons why the approaching economic collapse will hit HOAs first, and I encourage you to leave those reasons on our comments page.
(link to CNBC article on coming collapse)
In complaining the other night about health problems, age problems and computer problems, I completely forgot the main point of bringing all of this up in the same post. It was a way of directing you to one of the funniest commentaries on old age that I’ve ever seen. It was a speech to the Conference on Aging done by a well known California weatherman.
You may end up with some laughter-related medical problems of your own.
