Florida HOA help!

[dlavender]

We live in a large subdivision in FL that is under an HOA.

For the most part we have had no issues. This year we have had one issue. Because of the hurricane, lots of debris stayed piled in our yard. This killed a section of our grass. We haven't replaced it yet, as putting in new sod during winter months doesn't make since. We have gotten annoying notices and are fighting one fine right now. We will resod next month, but I find it ridiculous that they expected us to put some in during january/Feb... Especially when 1/3 of the neighborhood is dealing with the same issue.

I have found that if your HOA is handled internally, its better regulated/more reasonable. If its an outside company handling it, it's my personal belief that they just see $$ opportunities.

 

[BigAlsGal]

I understand the appeal. It’s a good thing to make people keep up the appearance of their home. I’m worried about things like parking, pets, and just being able to live our lives the way we like to. I want to be able to park in the driveway. Or street if needed. (I’ve got 3 kids who will all be driving before I know it). I want to be able to put up a dense if I feel necessary. I don’t want someone telling me my Halloween decorations aren’t approved. And I don’t want someone measuring my lawn or walking around with clipboards constantly critiquing my house. I like privacy. I don’t like chatting it up with the neighbors all the time. I guess I’ll just need to look into things really closely.

It’s funny to hear people talk about keeping property values up and being able to sell their homes, because this is a huge deterrent for me. Worse than a neighbor parking in the streets.

 

[Christine]

I understand the appeal. It’s a good thing to make people keep up the appearance of their home. I’m worried about things like parking, pets, and just being able to live our lives the way we like to. I want to be able to park in the driveway. Or street if needed. (I’ve got 3 kids who will all be driving before I know it). I want to be able to put up a dense if I feel necessary. I don’t want someone telling me my Halloween decorations aren’t approved. And I don’t want someone measuring my lawn or walking around with clipboards constantly critiquing my house. I like privacy. I don’t like chatting it up with the neighbors all the time. I guess I’ll just need to look into things really closely.

It’s funny to hear people talk about keeping property values up and being able to sell their homes, because this is a huge deterrent for me. Worse than a neighbor parking in the streets.

Hopefully, when you find a neighborhood, you can get some feedback from the current residents. I wouldn't want to live in a neighborhood with an HOA that critiqued my holiday decorations or measured my grass either. I know there are some out there like that and I have NO interest in being a part of that. I think you'll find *most* HOAs to be reasonable, but I do believe you should really research them.

My HOA kind of goes back and forth on how strict they are. Basically they will look the other way on things that break the rules until your break them so far that it become egregious.

For instance, our covenants state that we cannot have home-based businesses operating out of the house. Now, the reason for this is really to stop something like a lawn care business or something like that which would then mean trucks, equipment, etc being parked all over the place. It's also to reduce traffic of some times of businesses. If you were a tax accountant and worked out of your home, I doubt it would even be noticed. Well, my next door neighbor read the covenants but specifically chose her house to open up a home-based daycare. For years, it was small and was not noticed, but she expanded, did all sorts of business related work in the yard, and had up to 20 children there with aides outside blowing whistles, etc. Finally, the adjacent neighbors begin to complain. The HOA president and board members didn't live near her so weren't aware. They ended up having to shut her business down as it was very disruptive. She got a lawyer at some point but backed down I guess after advice that she was violating the covenants--which she had read and agreed to. Had I been in non-HOA neighborhood, I would have to live next to this noise for forever.

 

[gillep]

I understand the appeal. It’s a good thing to make people keep up the appearance of their home. I’m worried about things like parking, pets, and just being able to live our lives the way we like to. I want to be able to park in the driveway. Or street if needed. (I’ve got 3 kids who will all be driving before I know it). I want to be able to put up a dense if I feel necessary. I don’t want someone telling me my Halloween decorations aren’t approved. And I don’t want someone measuring my lawn or walking around with clipboards constantly critiquing my house. I like privacy. I don’t like chatting it up with the neighbors all the time. I guess I’ll just need to look into things really closely.

It’s funny to hear people talk about keeping property values up and being able to sell their homes, because this is a huge deterrent for me. Worse than a neighbor parking in the streets.

Obviously all HOAs are different, and you absolutely need to really look at the covenants. Neither of the two HOAs I lived in had rules about parking, outside of the laws already in place at the local county level, no pet restrictions outside of county leash laws, we did not have to have any decorations approved, although we did have set dates that decorations were allowable, but they were pretty long spans of time for each holiday and we always had ours up for a much shorter span as was our preference, we did have rules about lawn length, but those were also reasonable as the type of grass we had was recommended to be kept shorter than that length anyway, we did have to have fencing approved and the type you were allowed varied by where your house was located, but all of these things were very clearly written out in our covenants that we had to review and sign before the sale progressed past the contingency period. I have no doubt that some HOAs are crazy, and some had restrictions that we were uncomfortable with so we avoided those, all in all we had good experiences and would absolutely move to another HOA community, I never felt like we couldn't just live our lives, but everyone is different and has a different tolerance level. Good luck finding a home you love in a good community for you and your family!!!!!

 

[wgeo]

I understand the appeal. It’s a good thing to make people keep up the appearance of their home. I’m worried about things like parking, pets, and just being able to live our lives the way we like to. I want to be able to park in the driveway. Or street if needed. (I’ve got 3 kids who will all be driving before I know it). I want to be able to put up a dense if I feel necessary. I don’t want someone telling me my Halloween decorations aren’t approved. And I don’t want someone measuring my lawn or walking around with clipboards constantly critiquing my house. I like privacy. I don’t like chatting it up with the neighbors all the time. I guess I’ll just need to look into things really closely.

It’s funny to hear people talk about keeping property values up and being able to sell their homes, because this is a huge deterrent for me. Worse than a neighbor parking in the streets.

There are definitely HOA's that would do that, but there are many that wouldn't. We've never heard a thing about decorations - other then the HOA sending out an email at Christmas complimenting people on how much fun it was to drive through the neighborhood. We've never had our lawn measured or anything like that. We can park on the street and driveway, but it is in our rules that you can't park on the lawn. I'm ok with that. Our HOA manly watches out for incredibly dirty houses or roofs that need cleaning, trees that are hanging into the street and they keep an eye on people getting their trash cans out and back in a reasonable time frame. We do have to ask to paint the house but I've never heard anyone get turned down.

I guess ours is pretty relaxed, they just want the neighbordhood to look decent. For example the streets are small and can be hard to get around with a lot of cars parked in them, so one of the rules is that you can't park an RV. One guy brings his RV out of storage every year and it's in his front yard/driveway for 2 days as he gets it cleaned up. No one ever says anything because they know it's temporary. But at least there is a rule on the books so that if someone essentially permanently stored one on the road and blocked the road they could be asked to move it.

Again, it's all about reading the rules for any particular subdivision and seeing if you are okay with them. There are places that require an irrigation system, or a certain type of roof (tile) or that you have X number of trees or shrubs or flowers in the front yard. We stayed away from that.

 

[PollyannaMom]

People who have a positive outcome rarely take the time to tell the world.

This.

Most people probably have no issues at all. It's just that you only hear about the ones who do. (It's like the evening news. - 200,000 people in your city can arrive safely at work, but you see pictures of the one car accident.)

I'm not in Florida (so as others said, maybe that's a stricter area) but our HOA is practically non-existent. We don't have meetings, they struggle every term to get someone to volunteer as president, and all they do is collect the fees and pay the taxes on the common areas. (It's the "collect the fees" part that keeps me from volunteering myself. - I'd do the accounting in a heartbeat, but I am no good at badgering people!) I'm not aware of any special rules about anything, and I wouldn't particularly want them anyway.

I think you really do just need to look at the rules before you decide to buy anywhere.

 

[Klayfish]

Just curious as to why you hate yours. Mine has been so reasonable for 20-plus years that I cannot imagine feeling like you do.

My feeling is that if you want to pay my mortgage for me, then fine, you can have a say in how my house looks, what I do with my property, etc.... But IMO, it's utterly ridiculous to pay for my home than have someone tell me "You can't paint your house tan because your neighbors house is tan" or "You must have white curtains showing in the window" or a ton of other nonsense rules is crazy. Example...when we had our home built, it's got a very steep decline front to back...so much so that we have a walkout basement with 12' ceilings. I wanted to extend my driveway past the side of my house, down the hill and into the exit of my walkout basement because one of the rooms in my basement is actually the size of a two car garage, so I want to put a car down there. Well, they gave me grief about it. I pushed back hard on them and we wound up compromising so that I know have a "walkway" going down there that's wide enough (barely) for a car to travel on. We also have some ordinance about having our garage door open. We never use our front door to go in/out, we always use our garage. We've gotten whiny letters from the HOA about having it open. Tough. That's how we go into/out of our house, I'm not going to have them tell me what door to go in my home. And honestly, I'll give this HOA credit, they're more lenient than others I've come across, and the lady we deal with is pleasant and flexible, but the entire concept of an HOA is just utterly wrong, IMO. Can't wait to get out of here.

 

[tvguy]

I can't speak to Florida but at least in California all the HOA rules and the monthly costs have to be public, and disclosed before you buy. So on paper, you should know all the rules and fees before you make a purchase offer.
The issue with HOA's however, tends to be in how the board interprets and enforces those rules. We had an incident locally late last year, that someone posted here on the DIS about an HOA requiring homeowners to leave their garage door open during the day to make sure nobody was living in the garages. The rule was clearly disclosed before anyone bought their homes, the issue was in how the HOA board decided to inspect homes to make sure the rule wasn't being violated.
DD is house hunting, and her issue is the fees. The places she is looking at often have month fees that approach 25% of the monthly mortgage payment.

Also, there can be selective enforcement. I don't live in an area with an HOA, just CC& Rs. Working from your residence is forbidden. That has never been enforced, not that there really is an enforcement method other than an individual neighbor filing a civil suit against another neighbor in Civil Court. This is a subdivision started in 1976, so not ancient rules. And as I have mentioned before there are the older neighborhoods built in the 1920's and 30s that have racial restrictions on who can live there. Those of course are not only not enforced, but would be legally impossible to enforce. But they remain on the books because the legal costs involved in revoking them are astronomical.

 

[maxaroni]

We have not lived in an HOA community, however, my parents did. They moved into a 55+ community and knew the rules of the HOA, accepted them and never had a problem. Both wound up on the ARB (architectural review board) and would be ones to go around with the clipboard. Basically, it depends upon the board members and can change from time to time. Some things they were quite strict about, while other things they let slide a bit. However, if you are relaxed a bit with one person, you set the tone for others. At first, DH & I thought to ourselves, “no way would we want that”. However, we have come to be flexible and if we move to an HOA community, we would look at the covenant and decide if that particular one is acceptable to us.

My dad has since moved to Florida, 55+ HOA community, loves it. He knows the rules and abides by them. It is also a gated community.

 

[sam_gordon]

My feeling is that if you want to pay my mortgage for me, then fine, you can have a say in how my house looks, what I do with my property, etc.... But IMO, it's utterly ridiculous to pay for my home than have someone tell me "You can't paint your house tan because your neighbors house is tan" or "You must have white curtains showing in the window" or a ton of other nonsense rules is crazy. Example...when we had our home built, it's got a very steep decline front to back...so much so that we have a walkout basement with 12' ceilings. I wanted to extend my driveway past the side of my house, down the hill and into the exit of my walkout basement because one of the rooms in my basement is actually the size of a two car garage, so I want to put a car down there. Well, they gave me grief about it. I pushed back hard on them and we wound up compromising so that I know have a "walkway" going down there that's wide enough (barely) for a car to travel on. We also have some ordinance about having our garage door open. We never use our front door to go in/out, we always use our garage. We've gotten whiny letters from the HOA about having it open. Tough. That's how we go into/out of our house, I'm not going to have them tell me what door to go in my home. And honestly, I'll give this HOA credit, they're more lenient than others I've come across, and the lady we deal with is pleasant and flexible, but the entire concept of an HOA is just utterly wrong, IMO. Can't wait to get out of here.

Here's the thing... just because you live in a strict HOA, or you've read about strict HOA's don't mean they're all that way. All of the houses in our neighborhood are brick, so I don't think there's anything about color requirements. We don't have anything about decorations, but we do have limits on fences (need to be wood), outbuildings (need to match the design of the house), and pools (need to be inground). Saying "all HOAs are evil" based on your limited experience would be no different than saying all auto insurance agencies are evil and will fight tooth and nail to not pay out anything. Are there some like that? I'm sure. Are most? Probably not.

 

[Klayfish]

Here's the thing... just because you live in a strict HOA, or you've read about strict HOA's don't mean they're all that way. All of the houses in our neighborhood are brick, so I don't think there's anything about color requirements. We don't have anything about decorations, but we do have limits on fences (need to be wood), outbuildings (need to match the design of the house), and pools (need to be inground). Saying "all HOAs are evil" based on your limited experience would be no different than saying all auto insurance agencies are evil and will fight tooth and nail to not pay out anything. Are there some like that? I'm sure. Are most? Probably not.

Please be sure to read my post...I never said I live in a strict HOA. In fact, I made a clear point to say that they're more lenient than others I've come across. Again, I give them credit, as HOAs go, they're OK, relatively speaking. Frankly, I'm not even sure what all the different rules are because I don't particularly care.

This isn't my first rodeo with HOAs either, so it's not "limited experience". I've owned a lot of houses of the years, we've moved a lot. DW was even one of the founding board members of an HOA (we were the second family to have a house built in the community). That ended in disaster, just not our thing. For me, even having a limit on fences, outbuildings or pools is unacceptable. For me, it's my property, my decision on what to put on it. YMMV, but for me, all HOAs are

FYI, insurance agencies don't have anything to do with paying...they just sell the policies, but I know what you're saying. And sure, trust me, I know there are a lot of people who feel that way, and that's their decision.

 

[Marchand63]

I have lived in a HOA community for 13 years. It is not bad at all. I feel mine is to relaxed and wish they were stricter. To each their own.

I lived on military bases until age 14, then I joined the military as an adult (for the next 20 years of my life. LOL). So perhaps I am more accustomed to having "rules" in place that residents should follow.

I work in very rigid enviroment not military but close. I don't need anyone telling me what color I can paint the rooms in my house. I can only have white Christmas lights. You can put them on December 1st but they have to be down by December 27. No plastic ornaments on the outside, only live wreaths allowed, a red bow is okay but no other decorations. Even my appliances were regulated, oh and no modern updates everything had to be within historical parameters.

I loved my last year I found the most garish lights, ugliest wreath and 2 huge Mickey & Minnie, think 48 inches, that lit up on both sides of my door. Which btw I painted the nastiest red I could find

 

[Feralpeg]

All HOA's are different. The larger the community, the more issues you'll hear about. Townhouses are notorious for HOA problems. The HOA covers their roof and exterior upkeep, therefore, their dues are higher and they seem to have more issues.

I've had two different HOA's since moving to Florida 14 years ago. I've found that most people take very little part in their HOA as long as the common areas seem to be kept up. People only tend to get involved if there is something they don't like or it affects them directly. I have great respect for the HOA board members. They work like dogs for nothing and get nothing but grief. In the 14 years I've lived here, neither HOA ever had a meeting that met quorum and, for the most part, nothing could be passed that required a majority vote of the homeowners.

To tell you the truth, I wish the HOAs had more teeth. Some poeple just let their property go and it looks horrible. I just don't understand why someone purchases a home and lets it go to pot. The HOAs send notices, but it is really hard to enforce any rules.

OP, do check out HOA fees. They tend to differ dramatically from neighborhood to neighborhood.

 

[tvguy]

I work in very rigid enviroment not military but close. I don't need anyone telling me what color I can paint the rooms in my house. I can only have white Christmas lights. You can put them on December 1st but they have to be down by December 27. No plastic ornaments on the outside, only live wreaths allowed, a red bow is okay but no other decorations. Even my appliances were regulated, oh and no modern updates everything had to be within historical parameters.

I loved my last year I found the most garish lights, ugliest wreath and 2 huge Mickey & Minnie, think 48 inches, that lit up on both sides of my door. Which btw I painted the nastiest red I could find

LOL. December 27th? The Epiphany isn't even until January 6th. Someone with too much money and time on their hands could probably get that restriction tossed in court.

 

[Marchand63]

LOL. December 27th? The Epiphany isn't even until January 6th. Someone with too much money and time on their hands could probably get that restriction tossed in court.

Yeah not when you live around the corner of a Heinz/Kerry - Louisburg Square . Reason we moved.

 

[NinaBella]

I work in very rigid enviroment not military but close. I don't need anyone telling me what color I can paint the rooms in my house. I can only have white Christmas lights. You can put them on December 1st but they have to be down by December 27. No plastic ornaments on the outside, only live wreaths allowed, a red bow is okay but no other decorations. Even my appliances were regulated, oh and no modern updates everything had to be within historical parameters.

I loved my last year I found the most garish lights, ugliest wreath and 2 huge Mickey & Minnie, think 48 inches, that lit up on both sides of my door. Which btw I painted the nastiest red I could find

No homeowners in my area (Tampa Bay) have any of those outlandish rules you mentioned. I would say that would be very rare to have such an extreme HOA. I have never heard of any HOA dictating what to do inside your home other than what color window treatment can be exposed to the outside that others walking down the sidewalk could see (like all white).

 

[Kitty 34]

My middle DS and wife moved into a 16-home HOA community last summer here in Michigan. They haven't had any real issues with the "rules"of the HOA except for the fact that they cannot build a small shed somewhere in their yard to "house" such things as a riding lawn mower. So unless they park one of their cars outside of their garage they will not own a rider. Just think that's odd.

On another note my BFF's daughter and family are looking at a home in an HOA (again in Michigan) that allows no fencing whatsoever so they're not sure what they'll do with their big doggie.

I'm kind of with Merchand63 on this one.....I would dislike very much an association telling me what to do or not to do with our home and yard. Too Big Brotherish for me. But again that's my honest opinion for what it's worth!

 

[kdonnel]

My feeling is that if you want to pay my mortgage for me, then fine, you can have a say in how my house looks, what I do with my property, etc....

My feeling is that if you are going to live in a subdivision with less then 10 acre lots that I want some assurance that my neighbors are going to paint their home agreed upon colors and maintain their exterior and yard to an agreed upon minimum standard.

For my sake and for theirs.

 

[Fldisneyfamily4321]

I live in a nice neighborhood with a HOA and for the most part it’s fine , typical stuff like yard or home maintenance to keep the property nice .They have nice pools and golf courses and a nice private school we have our daughter in . I have to pay someone to do the lawn once a month and just keep things nice . It has not been really that bad .

 

[diznygirl]

I know everyone is harping on HOAs, but sometimes city ordinances are the problem. For example, the city of Apopka has very strict street parking regulations.