[masraum]

Originally Posted by legion

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.

I had a buddy that moved into a fairly new neighborhood. The neighborhood was built with privacy fences. The rules said that all privacy fences were to be built at least 36" from public sidewalks. My buddy knew a guy that got written up for his fence being 34" from the sidewalk. The fence/sidewalk was like that when the house was purchased as new. The guy told the HOA where to go. He eventually got a subpoena to see them in court. He then took a camera, ruler and notepad around the neighborhood and measured all of the fences and sidewalks and found something like 10 more homes that didn't meet the 36" rule. I'm guessing the guy probably had a lawyer contact the HOA board and tell them, we'll see you in court, and you should include these other 10 folks. Apparently, the issue was dropped after that. I'm sure there's a little more to the story, but the way that it was relayed to me was that someone wanted to exercise their "power".

It reminds me of a manager that I had at a retail parts store when I was young. Our store would get a fedex envelope with our paychecks on Wed. The manager always handed the checks out on Wed. We were all hourly, so we were excited to get our checks. He'd often take the checks into his office and let them sit on the corner of his desk for a random period of time before handing them out. One day a new guy asked what he was doing. I said (loudly enough for him to hear me) "He's not doing anything with them. He just likes to mess with us, so he holds them a while before handing them out."

The manager responded with something like "watch it, Steve, or I'll hold yours until Fri." (the checks were actually dated for Fri).

About a year later, I was in a room with that manager who was telling people why he liked being a manager "because of the power." It all became clear, and it was everything that I could do to not laugh hysterically.