HOA Drama
 

I’m on the fence with our HOA, while they do some of the typical BS crap like sending letters about trash bins left out too long and street parking for the most part it’s pretty good.

Our community started 15 years ago and is still building. The place looks great and even the original areas do not show their age.

A strong HOA certainly does preserve property values and for that I give them credit.

Since we are still building the HOA is still controlled by the developer with residents as advisors but the developers management company really calls the shots. Control wont fully convey to residents until building stops which is still a couple of years away.

We are in what is known as an Unincorporated area. Means we pay property taxes to the county but the county has very little power over the community. Even though we are 4,000+ homes we are considered “rural”. I can set up a spoon range in my 1/3 acre backyard and as long as my background is clear I’m legal. We have no police, county Sheriff covers us but none of our road signs are technically enforceable by any other law enforcement agency. I can run every stop sign and drive 2x’s the posted limit and none of the neighboring towns popos can do **** about it.

Texas local government is a bit weird, we have all sorts of small taxing units that deal with various things, municiples are handled by Fresh Water districts, EMS either directly by individual towns which towns without a FD can contract with directly or through the counties EMS taxing division which is funded by property taxes.

If your development goes the county property tax route it’s $0.10 per $100.00 of assessed value. Which I have a problem with, they say it’s so larger homes pay more which I call BS on as I don’t really see how a larger home costs more to service but OK. The other problem is there are homes assessed a higher value than larger homes in other subdivisions or even on the same block. Charging $0.xx per sq ft seems to make more sense if in fact a larger home costs more to service and would be fair to all.

So to get to the point of the drama.

Rather than pay the $0.10 per $100 our developer made a deal with the town next door for services at $0.06 per $100. Cool.

But then the developer did this weird thing.

The billing period for services runs from Oct-Oct but residents are billed in June, 8 months after the end of the service cycle. So for example, service from 10/17-10/18 gets billed to residents 6/19 with a 7/19 due date.

The developer has been covering the float the whole time and this has been going on for 10 years now.

Developer/HOA was advised that given how large we’ve grown this is no longer sustainable so this October they decided that over the next year they would get billing more closely aligned.

Historical
10/15-10/16 billed 6/17
10/16-10/17 billed 6/18
10/17-10/18 billed 6/19

Catchup plan

10/18-10/19 billed 12/19
10/19-10/20 billed 10/20
10/20-10/21 billed 10/21

We will effectively pay 3 times in a 16 month period for 3 years of service

Now I get it, it should not have come to this and it needs to be fixed.

The problem here is they decided this in October and did not say a word, they just sent a bill that started showing up last week.

Naturally people took to the community page to ask WTF? We paid this.

Apparently there was a letter that was supposed to accompany the bill but conveniently they “forgot to include it”

You can imagine the **** show when an additional bill, payable in January, showed up at Christmas with no warning.

To make it worse, due to the gap in service and when people got billed anyone who sold a house between 8/18 and 6/19 never paid for the years service and the buyers were all asked to pay the bill on signing so they paid for a years worth service on a home they didn’t own.

So far the HOA refuses to allow extensions for this unexpected bill and has told buyers who paid the previous owners bill tough luck, you should have negotiated that.

Well you’d kinda have to know the money was owed right. Title company wont pick it up because its not a bill yet.

Also the bills do not have a line item for the period of coverage. This latest one only says 2020 EMS which since its 2019 you would think is for the coming year.

It’s a cluster.

I would think offering no interest financing payment plans might take some of the sting off a bit.

The letter of explanation was a huge PR mistake though.

I just click on these threads to see how other folks live. That reminds me.....I need to move my empty toter that's next door in a few days :)

really though, legally all they can do is put a lien on your property.


So what? don't pay it now, pay it later

They may be able to do a lien.

I know they do assess a one time late fee of $35.00

How do I know this?

7-8 years ago we had a horrible mail carrier and I did not get my bill. This was a well known issue in the community.

Next month it comes again with the late fee.

So I pay the bill minus late fee and call them to get the late fee waived.

They said sorry, not waiving it.

I thanked them for their time and hung up.

Realizing about the absolute worst they could do was put a lien on for $35.00 I ignored it.

So every month for the last 7-8 years they mail me a reminder that I have a -$35.00 balance. I don't even open it, i tear it up and it goes straight in thee trash.

I'm probably listing this spring and when I sell I will personally bring them their $35.00 check with the calculation of what it cost them over the years to collect it which is currently well north of $35.00

Closings I've dealt with involving any HOA dues, there was always a pro-rated portion determined at closing that the seller paid and went to buyer funds. (Same treatment as property tax.)

Or (if like my condo association) for a $50 contested charge they will ring up ~$50,000 in late fees, fines, and attorney charges, and then file foreclosure on your property..

What are the terms for the developer handing over the HOA to the owners? After 10 years, there haven't been enough homes sold where the ratio exceeds the needed amount?

The purpose of an HOA is so that all of the houses look a certain way while the developer is still selling houses. The "terms" are usually that the last lot in the development is sold. After that, the developer could give a crap about what happens with the HOA (as its purpose is complete) and they often morph into a place for overbearing busybodies to impose their will on the neighborhood.

There may be more current legislation than what I just read on the internet (an October, 2017 publication), but as of that date, Texas did not have legislation in place that addressed when the Declarant (the developer) must hand over the HOA to its residents. As such, the Declarant can keep control for as long as it deems necessary to protect its interest(s), unless successfully sued by the residents for control.

Many other States have laws in place that dictate how and when control transfer to the residents is to take place. As previously stated, it appears Texas is not one.

If the "terms" of such transfer in the Declaration (the Bylaws and/or C,C,&R's of the association) are not spelled out, then the Declarant can decide for itself when that transfer will take place, if ever (if you, indeed, reside in Texas as your information suggests).

The problem there is the 8 month drag on the bill.

The HOA is sending the bill 7 months after the billing period for EMS and it's due the following month.

Technically there is an 8 month gap where no monies are owed and the amount is based on property tax assessment so varies year to year as in not 100% predictable although using the prior year would likely only amount to a few bucks difference.

Nope, I spot check the bill just to make sure.

In 7 years my account is only -$35.00

Unless they send me a bill for more, that's all I'm paying.

That is how our deal works and we are a couple of years away from that.

Back in the day, KUSI had a fellow named Turko and he was a trouble shooter type of person. He had at lease one session per week with HOAs and he really raised they so badly they would almost always give in! I imagine there are good HOAs but......When my wife and I first got together in 1980 she had a side of a duplex in an area with a really strict HOA. She wanted to cover the small back yard with a deck just off the ground and in reading the rules very careful showed you and do most anything in your back yard as long as it was below the top of the 6 foot surrounding the yard. We bought the redwood, was hammering away and suddenly a mans head appeared over the fence and he said he was one of the board members telling us we were no supposed to do that. I showed him the rules (new version just a month old) and he went away pissed but we were okay. About 5 months we sold the condo as our family got too large.

In our HOA, that was spelled out in the HOA document at 50% of the houses at completed build.

Oh and, our HOA meetings, closed to residents unless they have an issue to discuss and then have to submit it and get permission to attend.

A bummer for all concerned to be sure.

Just an FYI a lien most likely will cost the HOA atty fees for filing/preparing. Which means you've paid an atty to file a lien against yourself.

What the heck? How can you be governed without having any participation? I guess it could be quite the cluster with so many homes involved but I'm not sure that seems fair. Perhaps the 'hood could be split into sub sections and each section could appoint a representative to attend meetings on their behalf.

That's insane!

The real purpose of HOAs, and the reason they were created in the first place, is to create a means for inadequate personality types to feel like they matter.