I think the root of this is treating housing an asset, which justifies all kinds of arguments. My house would probably increase in value a lot if I bulldozed all the others and replaced them with public gardens. The sane place for me to draw the line is where the property ends.

What a great answer to losing a great deal of money: just don’t treat it as an asset! Just ignore the loss, who cares! Sure it’s nice being wealthy, ain’t it.

I’m not saying to ignore the loss, I am saying to limit people’s ability to use the government to protect their asset value by mandating what others do with their property. In my view too many municipalities treat decrease in asset values like a kind of pollution that leaks from your property into the surrounding spaces, and use that logic to force certain uses of people’a property. But unlike physical pollutants that leave properties, the decrease in property value is often a nebulous and subjective force, and enforcement boils down to enforcing conformity with the majority. The harms are nebulously defined and the slope is so slippery that you have neighborhoods where they have slid all the way into mandating color pallets and lawn type and length.

This kind of system doesn’t let people do something as simple as postpone repairs until they can get favorable financing, and ends up a tax on the poor or different to protect an asset for the majority landowners in my view.

> that loon shows up next door and paints their house purple

HOAs started as a way to handle common infrastructure, like drainage. They allow a few homes to share drainage, without sticking all of the costs of maintenance to the homeowner who happens to have the pipe on their property.

In my case, my HOA carries property insurance for undeveloped land, maintains a grassy cul-de-sac, and maintains a fire road. (I personally spend about 2 hours a year trimming growth on the fire road because so many people walk on it.)

As far as saying that an HOA is to keep the loons out, we did have a hoarder live around the corner from the HOA. The people who lived across the street couldn't sell their home. (They had kids and wanted a larger house.) Could the HOA really do anything about the hoarder? I know the people who lived around the hoarder all put a lot of pressure on hee, the town condemned the house, and eventually it burnt to the ground. At least my with HOA, there isn't any good way to "evict" a loon who makes a mess.

Can’t you fine them to death then foreclosure for the ammount due when it’s not paid

I believe it can work with liens, but those can effectively be ignored until the home is sold.

In the case of the hoarder, she owned her home outright. The town put liens on the property to cover the cost of cleaning up the lot. But, she still owns the lot and hasn't put it on the market. (She also places things on it, too.)

> your house might lose $300,000 in value

Dramatic license aside, I'd hate to live anywhere where property value (or residents' senses of well-being) was so fragile that it couldn't handle a purple house.

I have literally seen that happen, although the house was electric blue and not purple. I did in fact put my money where my mouth is and moved to a farm without an HOA.

They would hate to live in Tobermory I suppose: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tobermory_Main_Stree...

Or indeed, Boston: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/victorian-houses-in-cambri...

Tangentially, Victorian houses were frequently very colorful. The lack of color photography leads people to think of them as drab, depressing shades of gray. But nothing could be further from the truth. HOAs that restrict colors to a boring beige are doing a disservice to their neighborhoods.

If I lived in one of those houses, would I be able to paint it whatever color I wanted (e.g. pink and yellow stripes)? Or is there some sort of coordination to make sure they all look appealing as a set?

You can choose whatever colour you want. It seems they used to me more sombre but around 50 years ago the owner of the hotel decided randomly to paint it bright yellow and neighbouring houses along the front thought it was a great idea and started choosing their own outlandish colours.

>What happens when your spouse gets a sudden offer to relocate and you can’t make your money back on the house?

How is that someone else's problem? Ironically, in some areas around me properties without HOAs are priced and selling a couple of 100ks higher than ones within HOAs.

Where did I say it is someone else’s problem?

One of the most desirable neighbourhoods in my city has houses painted all sorts of different colours, including purple. Somehow the property values survive.

The root issue here is that you frame it as you paying something for him. What is actually happening is that you demand that everyone else pay for your mortgage by subjecting themselves to your restrictions.

Shocking how quickly peoples opinions change on this stuff when an eccentric next door can lower the value of their own investments

Since they paid their money to buy the property, they can paint their house whatever color they damn well please, IMO.

I mean I don't think they should be any rules really, I'm just pointing out that a lot of people who would be very free thinking before hand become very "Not In My Back Yard" about it as soon as they have skin in the game.

If there’s an HOA, they probably agreed not to.

If they’re my neighbor, they’re probably not in an HOA. (Though that would be an amusing experience to live in the first property outside the HOA wire.)

One of my cousins got in to a fight with the neighboring HOA over something (think the developers were trying to force them to sell to own the whole track) so they set out to be as annoying as possible — pink plastic flamingos, broken down cars &etc.

Maybe we shouldn't think about housing as an investment

Maybe we shouldn't try to control people, including what they think, in such an authoritarian manner.

Who's being authoritarian? I'm suggesting changing how we think about housing

There’s nothing authoritarian about entering a contractor voluntarily

Agree completely

Which is why I no longer live in a place with an HOA