Absolutely. HOAs bring out the worst in people. If you're reading this and you don't own a house/condo yet, think twice before you buy into an HOA community. HOAs can quickly devolve to point where entire meetings are spent discussing whether or not someone should be allowed to put chickenwire on the bottom of their back fence (true story).

And, unlike you're principle payment (which at least is an asset), HOA payments are something you will never see any return of value on, especially since they reduce the desirability of the property in question. If you doubt this, Just ask anyone who's had an HOA, whether or not they'd rather buy a property with an HOA or one without.

At the same time, you should consider possible shenanigans that your neighbors may get up to. While there is always a lot of petty stuff going on in our HOA, I also see a lot of chatter from people on nextdoor who don't live in an HOA and their neighbors can be quite annoying. Loud roosters waking you up at 4am and the like.

Many of the "hoa-style" complaints can be dealt with by careful inspection of the local laws before buying. You can find communities that ban roosters (the one I'm in does, and charges $25 a year "hen fee" for up to three hens lol).

Living with other people is annoying, but you can work to mitigate the biggest issues, and sometimes the right answer might be a HOA. Investigate the HOA before buying and talk to your potential neighbors. Many people will gladly go out to dinner/drinks if you ask and bitch about any problems there may be.

And there will always be problems; the key is determining if they'll be annoying enough for you to bypass it.

One friend years ago pointed out that he could buy a much nicer house if he spent the HOA payment on mortgage instead; and so went that way.

not all the rules are in the HOA booklet. For example, ours doesn't say anything about banning vegetables in the front yard, not a single rule. And yet, if we even so much as grow fava beans, the HOA will say we can't do that due to the catch all rule: "No unplanned modifications". It's all up to the HOA directors mood and discretion. And while you may currently have a reasonable HOA board, that can quickly change with just one election.

Wow - "no unplanned modifications" is a really big loophole, I wonder if that refers to some "master plan" somewhere in a cupboard behind the leopard.

And yeah, the elections can change everything - and sometimes nobody cares and you can run for the HOA board and effectively take control muahahahahah.

Er, I wouldn't know anyone who would do that. Ever.

It can also be changed more permanently with changes to the covenants. Many covenants require a super majority vote of the members so even a future bad board member can be restrained to an extent.

I have a home in an area without an HOA and I have had a 100% resolution rate by just talking and explaining. Being decent and pragmatic goes a long way.

For shared building situations, like a condo in a downtown highrise, I think they're unavoidable: there's inherently shared resources that require maintenance and co-ordination, even if there's a mininum of services. Add in things like a pool, shared gym, doorman, or large recurring maintenance (roof), and you absolutely need a governing body to collect costs for that and handle the work, which is, in essence, an HOA.

You're confusing apartment living vs. living in your own private house with an H.O.A

You can't live with 200 other families in a shared building without some sort of structure. What's allowed and what isn't, Can dogs swim in the shared pool? Can you ask the doorman to go find a parking spot around the block?

The HOA in question is a shared building. Which is more like a corporation, with 20-30 employees.

> Can dogs swim in the shared pool?

That's a thing???

Oh god you don't even know. A pool in a shared living building/setup is a recipe for every sort of possible disaster known to man, and some known only to an advanced AI trained on horror movies.

In my mother's apartment building there a guy who uses his kayak in the swimming pool to practice his rolls etc. You can imagine the angst when parents bring little Johnny down for his swim. Or when tenants have a rowdy party around the pool. She is grateful that COVID rules effectively shut the pool down for a couple of years. So yeah I can totally imagine someone wanting to let their dog swim in the pool

They also save a ton of time spent on sourcing maintenance, getting competitive bids, and managing the process. Not something most can appreciate until they own an older home. They also reduce the odds of one batshit crazy neighbor destroying quality of life and property values for the rest.

Too many people think of an HOA fee as throwing away money, but I think it's a net savings in a small and well-run HOA (and these do exist!). The money all goes to the upkeep of the building or complex with minimal overhead, so none of the fee feels wasted: it'd cost more to do it alone. A local management company charges a fee but they're local employees and it's better than trying to manage the books myself. Larger HOAs -- like where full-time maintenance staff is necessary -- can have very high fees, but, paying people fairly on an ongoing basis requires ongoing money, no matter how you slice it.

> well-run HOA (and these do exist!)

Part of the challenge is determining the quality of the HOA before buying, and that quality can change over time. And you may have minimal influence over it.

"Another reason to avoid HOAs at all costs, over the lifetime of the property the cost is astronomical."

Hate to break it to you, but the maintenance costs for a house over the lifetime of the property are astronomical. True, if you are a do-it-yourselfer and want to do all the maintenance work yourself you can save money. But the comparable cost to pay someone for things like yard work, internal repairs and upkeep is, in my experience, much higher in a house than a condo because you don't get the benefit of scale and good, defined supplier relationships. E.g. in a condo building you're paying a landscaping company to do the yard work, but that work is split amongst 50 or whatever condo owners.