Category Archives: Home Assoc

HOA Alligator Killing Goes to Court

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The story is tragic. An 83 year old woman is killed by an alligator in the Landings Homeowners Association.

Gwynth Williams’ body was found in a lagoon in an exclusive community in South Georgia. Her family is suing the HOA, saying it was negligent for not removing the gator. The HOA and its golf course say they’re not responsible for controlling wild animals that roam the area.

Those are the raw facts, but the behind-the-scenes story will probably not get told by the mainstream media. Win or lose, millions of dollars will be spent on this case. Perhaps the HOA will be punished by a large jury award. That seems to be par for the course in today’s atmosphere of tort law.

The real story is where those millions of dollars will come from and where they will go. They will come from the pockets of homeowners who bought homes in The Landings Association. They will go into the bank accounts of lawyers who represented Williams or who represented The Landings Association.

It’s a tragedy, of course, for the family of Gwynth Williams. It’s a double tragedy for the American system of justice.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Homeowner Associations a Social Disease?

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Just like a social disease that keeps coming back, some Homeowner Associations never let a patsy out of their grip.

The latest “sucker” is some poor fellow in The Times Condominium At Sweetwater Del Webb Master Homeowner’s Association (Whew! Where do these names come from?)

Anyway, resident Larry Murphree thought he knew what was meant when GW Bush signed the “Freedom to Display the American Flag Act” in July of 2006. Muphree planted two little flags in flower pots outside the door of his condominium.

Along comes the HOA and starts whacking him with fines of a hundred bucks a day, liens, threats of lawsuit and foreclosure.

Murphree is now in federal court in Jacksonville, Florida. He notes that the flag act specifically says “A condominium association… may not adopt or enforce any policy, or enter into any agreement, that would restrict or prevent a member of the association from displaying the flag of the United States on residential property within the association with respect to which such member has a separate ownership interest or a right to exclusive possession or use.” Hmmm. Sounds moderately clear.

Whichever way it goes, Murphree will lose tens of thousands of dollars. The HOA will lose tens of thousands of dollars. The stature and marketability of the neighborhood will fall. The lawyers, of course, will earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. It always seems to come back to that, doesn’t it? The lawyers. They just keep coming back.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

A Homeowners Association Dating Scam?

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Sometimes it hurts too much to cry…so you just have to laugh…and give ’em the publicity they so richly deserve.

It’s another embezzlement from an HOA. The suspect is 62 year old Nancy B. Walker of Boonsboro, Maryland.

Details aren’t crystal clear yet, but investigators claim Mz. Walker filched from $100,000 to $137,000 from the Ballenger Creek Meadows Homeowners Association.

It seems she was involved in an Internet dating scam and was wiring the money to a man in South Africa.

Just an idle question, here: How low does your I.Q. have to be to qualify as the HOA board member in charge of the the neighborhood treasury?

SOMEBODY’S GONNA BE IN TROUBLE!

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Residents of the Laural Hills Condominum on Tennessee’s Renegade Mountain have been arguing over the price of water for the past six months. The property association, not the homeowners association controls the water. But those danged hillbillies up at Laurel Hills kept up the argument.

Now the property owners association has raised the ante. They just flat-out turned off the water to 84 homes. Turned it off! And that, my friends, is against the law.

Monkeying with someone’s water is almost a shootin’ offense. In fact, a lot of people have been shot during the water wars of the past three hundred years.

Hopefully, we won’t see any of that. But laws are being broken! Can’t you just smell the perspiration of all those lawyers trying to climb Renegade Mountain to solicit clients?

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

Gunfight in the “Not OK Corral?”

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Some desperate homeowners in the underwater mortgage markets of California, Nevada and Florida may be turning to a garish, and undoubtedly illegal way of keeping up with the mortgage. They’re allowing their homes to be turned into giant billboards.

Reuters News Service is reporting on a family in Buena Park, California who permitted a marketing firm to convert its home into a giant “Brainiacs From Mars” billboard. Some neighbors are furious, even to the point of threatening gunfire. Others are looking at their own underwater mortgages and wondering if they should take a second look at accepting a second stream of income.

The marketing firm says it has about 38,000 applications from eager homeowners around the country. The campaign will generate lots of publicity for “Brainiacs,” but it’ll be a rare billboard that stands for more than a month.

Although homeowners have been promised up to a year’s worth of mortgage payments, city codes and HOA covenants will soon come crashing down on advertising that doesn’t conform to local laws.

Ward Lucas
Author of
Neighbors At War: The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowners Association

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