The most onerous things HOAs do can be a simple rule change that the board can do by majority vote. In some cases it is just an interpretation of an existing rule that stretches the meaning but you need a lawyer to fight it and you still might lose. At my wife's HOA they had cases where one board member would create a policy without even consulting the other board members and the people would just go along because they didn't know. I am very happy we don't have a real HOA here. In fact, I am the one who raised the rabble that defeated the idea of reinstating the HOA that expired in 1978. The vote went 14 "for" to 44 "against" in the most heavily attended annual meeting in the history of our neighborhood. I just took the time to knock on every door in the neighborhood and see what they thought.
Our biggest incentive to pay is the ramp. Without the boat ramp our participation might be a dozen. One of the reasons I bought here was the public roads. I know people on private roads and how much they have to pay, just to keep them passable.
We have lots of critters that would set up housekeeping in your garage if it was open. My wife had to go run off all sorts of things when she was at the HOA. She is not afraid to go after anything with a broom. The biggest was a 4 foot nile monitor. She had help with this gator.
A squirrel is just a rat with a publicist. They chew on the same sort of stuff. Neither offend me outside but in the house they are a dead rodent walking. Rat shot in my Colt Frontier Scout seems to do the deed with minimal collateral damage.
Two moves back, I was in a neighborhood where the guy across the street hadn't paid his HOA dues in nearly 15 years. Rather than take him to court, the HOA just placed a lien on his home, updating it every year to reflect the new amount, so that when he sells the home they get their money. With no plans to sell, he figured the joke was on them.
Most days, my garage doors (3-car garage) are open during daylight hours. Several of my neighbors do it the same way. We never park inside the garage, so the vehicles are always on the driveway. The garage is primarily my woodworking shop.
Buying a new house in Florida without an HOA is difficult unless you buy a piece of land and build. I was not willing to do that.
I did, however, take the time to read the regulations. They were not overly restrictive. Nor did I hear from anyone when I broke a couple of rules the first week here.
I used PODS when we moved and they sat in my driveway a little longer than the rules. Not a big deal but it is there to prevent someone from putting on in front of the house for permanent storage.
My DR Horton (builder) sales guy, as well as several realtors, all said that homes with side-facing garages were quicker to sell, so I guess it's something that people want.
It simply doesn't work for me at all. On those houses, they always seem to put the garage door on a side of the house that has no windows, and since we park on the driveway and leave our garage door(s) open during daylight hours, it's not an acceptable situation for us.
Like I said, instant disqualification, just like a driveway that slopes down toward the garage, as if rain is going to run uphill away from the house, or a front yard that has an open drainage ditch where you'd expect a sidewalk to be. I'm looking at you, Florida. Stick a culvert in there and cover it with dirt & sod, for crying out loud. No one wants to see standing water in an open drainage ditch. I'm supposed to mow that? I'm supposed to control the mosquitoes? I don't think so. There are lots of houses for sale, let's keep going. We don't even have to get out of the car to look inside.
When we go house hunting, our list of disqualifying conditions is fairly extensive but realtors seem to like the fact that we've gone to the trouble of making a list.
Ah, well. My garage isn't attached to the house. It doesn't much matter which way it faces.
Why do you leave your garage door(s) open during daylight hours?
We have such a ditch, but it never has standing water in it. Or never more than an inch or so for a short while after a heavy rain.
Another ditch runs behind our property and in the spring it has a fair amount of water in it. But by mosquito hatching time, it's dry.
We've only been house hunting three times. It's not a hobby for us. We've been in this house 21 years and plan to leave feet first. My mother has us beat by a long shot: she's been in the same house since 1966.
Back in the early 90's I briefly rented a house with a detached garage. I knew it wouldn't be an ideal situation, so I wasn't surprised when I didn't like it. You get spoiled quickly when you can go to the garage without going outside.
We're in and out far too often throughout the day to be opening and closing the door each time, especially my wife. She usually spends her days outside, planting flowers and doing other green yard work. For me, when I'm not working at my real job I like to go out there and build something. I've made most of our tables, chairs, rocking chairs, storage cabinets, dressers, yard art, etc. Every time I put a wishing well or water wheel in the front yard someone stops by, asking to buy it. I always sell so I can make another, just for the fun of it and to try to tweak the design.
One nice thing about modern technology is that the garage door texts me if I leave it open past dusk, and it makes seasonal adjustments to the time. Dusk in February isn't the same as dusk in August.
It seems to be becoming the norm to move every 7 years or so. I've had multiple realtors tell me that. For us, we tend to get itchy around the 5 year mark and we're gone either that year or the next. The country is too big to stay in one place for long.
Now that we're getting older, we're starting to think about summer homes. We like Frankenmuth or Tawas City in Michigan, the Black Hills of South Dakota, the area just west of Boston near Waltham, and the area around Kennebunkport, Maine. Newport, RI, was really nice, but I think it caters to a better class of people than we are.
If you like to move, good for you. I'm in my third house since I got married 55 years ago. Last house was 37 years.
My next door neighbor is 78. Our houses are 2 1/2 years old and he just sold to move from FL to TN. Something like 29 times for his including in the service.
His next house needs a new roof and updated kitchen so he is planning now for the move in a few weeks. One reason I bought here was I should need nothing more than maybe a light bulb for the rest of my life.
My daughter is moving over the weekend. Her 25th address, 7th in FL alone.
I am not sure what state you are talking about but in Florida, if he has a mortgage, the joke might be on them. Their lien is subordinate to the 1st and other subsequent mortgages and if they try to go to foreclosure, the mortgage company will bid the outstanding loan value. There won't be any money in the pot unless someone can outbid the mortgage company. If it is a tax lien auction, everyone else's encumbrance is wiped out. Usually again, the mortgage company will pay the tax to avoid that process and foreclose on the mortgage. I went through all of this trying to get the house next door. I had a pretty good lawyer but not willing to spend enough money to outbid the mortgage company for a tear down. They still ended up taking a $50k bath and the other $20k in bad paper was just gone. Some of it was voided anyway because there is a time limit on some types of liens. Either foreclose within a couple of years or lose it. Mechanic's liens are certainly that way. I don't know about HOA liens. That was the only kind of bad paper she didn't have.
I imagine that is true. There are not many builders building one off spec houses. I do know some "on your lot" builders tho but they are mostly high end. I would sub a house out myself if I was building but my wife still knows lots of people in the business.
I agree on the driveway or even the whole house. I want to be above the road. That is particularly true if you have city sewer. The sewer line typically runs down the center of the street and if it backs up, I want the shit to come out of a manhole in the road, not my shower. The swales should drain. If they don't I would be on the county/city's ass until they fixed the grading. It is OK in front of my house but we have a few places where homeowners have built dams and blocked the original flow. DOT screwed up on the inspections to allow that. They own it. They own the first 24' next to the road here. If I didn't want to mow it, I could make them do it. I don't bother because I want it mowed more often than the Bushhog comes down here. They do maintain the swales on the main road coming in at the end of my street.
Once I cleaned out the jungle behind my house and the village cleaned out the swale on the other side of FPL, my mosquito problems pretty much went away. I am up on FPL several times a day/night and I seldom even see one. It used to be horrible.
Florida tax laws punish you for that. My real estate tax hikes are capped at 3% a year as long as I live here based on an old appraisal. If I move I start being taxed at 80% of the price of the house I buy. You also lose a year of homestead exemption. Fortunately I like it here. I am not sure where I would want to move too. If I hit the lotto I might buy a summer house up by Bowman tho. I would just be out of there before the first snow. My kids are in Northern Michigan and that area doesn't grab me at all unless I was right on a fairly good sized but not "great" lake and a lot of acreage. I think I would be just as happy north of Tampa doing that. My buddy lives there. (Odessa) That is Keystone Lake 424 acres. Big enough to boat on.
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