HOA Horror Stories
Homeowner
horror stories: Associations are heaven or hell
By Paul Bannister
To many people it's Shangri-La. Heaven. Paradise. Everybody's lawn is manicured.
No one's gone to an electric chartreuse and fuchsia color scheme. No one's got
her granny panties -- or thongs, for that matter -- flapping on a clothesline.
No junk cars in the side yard. No sofas on the front porch. Everything looks
wonderful. To others, it's sheer hell. Hades. Purgatory. Skip one Saturday
mowing the lawn and the Gestapo comes down on you. Four hundred and some houses
are the same boring shade of beige. You can't get that nice fresh-air fragrance
in your unmentionables. That classic Corvette you were planning to restore got
towed away, and your wife has been officially informed that the cute little
swing near the front door is a violation punishable by death. Depending on your
perspective, your homeowner's association is either the best of all worlds ...
or the worst. Here are just a few homeowner horror stories.
A man from Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., lost his home because he planted too many
roses on his four-acre site. The board fined him and watched monthly as the
fines mounted. When they slapped a lien on his home, he went to court and
lost because he'd transgressed the board's architectural design rules. He was
stuck with the board's $70,000 legal fees and lost his home to the bank.
A woman from Pomona, Calif., who was involved in a divorce fell behind with her
monthly dues. The board said she owed $1,000; she said it was less than $800,
and they went to court when the board threatened foreclosure. The woman was
right -- the volunteer board's amateur accountants goofed, but the judge ruled
she should have made back payments during the dispute, anyway, and the therapist
was handed a $22,000 legal bill.
A couple from Lawrenceville, Ga., found they had a $3,500 lien on their house
when they tried to sell it. The homeowners association had been fining them
every day they left pink flamingos on their lawn but didn't tell them. The
association got the money, but the couple have filed suit to get it back.
A Maryland man asked for a six-foot fence as protection from a neighbor who'd
attacked him with a log. The board denied the request, so the homeowner sued --
and lost. It cost him $23,000 in legal fees and interest. Chastened, he built a
shorter fence, but in places it was several inches taller than the four feet
allowed. Board members came with a tape measure, fined him, slapped a lien on
the home and seized the man's paycheck. "They took all my savings and
treated me like a common criminal," he says.
Near snowy Donner Pass, Calif., a development has rules that you can't drive
over the snow or clear it from around your house to preserve the rural
appearance and to provide zones for snowmobiles. A woman resident with a back
injury wasn't able to walk the half mile to her house, so she drove over the
snow. The association fined her up to $500 a day. She faces more than $50,000 in
fines and has been fighting her HOA in court for three years. The case is
unresolved.
A Tampa, Fla., woman thought her attorney had paid all her delinquent HOA fees
of more than $4,000, but she was wrong by $497. It cost her the house. The busy
physical therapist ignored legal papers mailed to her, the association
foreclosed and held a courthouse auction. A property company snapped up the
house for $4,651, the price of the HOA's legal fees, then sold it for $88,000.
A family that cares for five foster children in Port Richey, Fla., was
threatened with eviction from their residential development. The association
considered having foster kids a business because the state paid $2,028 a month
to care for the children. The 56-cents-an-hour 'business' owners are still
fighting the case.
Sometimes a poor homeowner feels the wrath of the HOA even when he tries to
succumb to the obscure rules and regulations. The nightmare for one Florida
resident started only after he admitted he made a mistake and informed the HOA
he was going to rectify it immediately. It seemed this hapless soul painted his
house a bright blue -- after believing an HOA's secretary who said prior
approval by the HOA was merely a formality. When he learned of his misdeed, he
quickly agreed he would switch to a sanctioned shade. That's what made the
subsequent assault by the HOA so bizarre. First it held a meeting to discuss the
crime with neighbors -- but didn't invite the culprit. Then they stuffed fliers
in each neighbor's mailbox -- carefully skipping the scene of the crime -- in
which they went on at length about their outrage over the unauthorized paint
job. When he got a copy of the flier from a sympathetic neighbor, the stunned
homeowner wrote to the HOA president, reiterating his willingness to repaint the
house and politely objecting to what he felt was needlessly abusive treatment
and a dismal lack of neighborliness. He got no response from the grand poobah
but did receive a threatening letter from the HOA lawyer. The final straw came
at the end of the month when the HOA's monthly newsletter came out -- while the
repaint work already in progress. The top story on the front page was a copy of
the lawyer's nasty threatening letter to the harried homeowner, along with a
note warning that all such miscreants would face a similar fate.