[legion]

My HOA in Georgia was $500 a year. That went towards the maintenance of the pool. That means the HOA management company collected $200,000. I'd be willing to accept that just maybe, they might have spent as much as $50,000 a year on maintenance. (Basically mowing the common area near the pool and cleaning the pool.) That means that 75% of the fees just went to the HOA management company, to keep.

When I moved in, I got a 400 page book of covenants. Basically, what it boiled done to was that I couldn't do anything to my property or the exterior of my house without prior HOA approval.

Every house I've had in Central Illinois has been without a HOA. I've never had a problem.

HOAs are established by builders so that the neighborhood looks a certain way until they sell all of the units. They set the initial rules and contract a management company. After all of the units are sold, the builder turns the HOA over to the homeowners, where it is almost always dominated by an uptight busybody (or group of them). The rules never change and the management company just gets renewed year after year with little scrutiny and accelerating fees.

In my year with the HOA: I saw a group of homeowners try to take over the HOA to personally benefit themselves. I saw my fees go up by another $100 with no explanation. I saw my neighbor, whose house was immaculately maintained, get fined by the HOA for "old pine straw" (she had a landscaper change it three times a year while I never changed mine once and I never got fined). I saw the HOA ignore the actual habitual offenders in the neighborhood. And I got to pay for that? No thanks.