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Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

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Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#31

Post by darth_avocado »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #4

The problem is always with the extremes. On one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that. Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... tu…

Getting people to vote on things for their own Benefit is surprisingly hard. My parents’ condo association is constantly fighting each other because increasing monthly dues requires 70% vote and people have been refusing year after year. And what does increase year after year is maintenance requirements. First the nice to have amenities stopped. Then the elevators stopped. Now it’s 24x7 running water because the association doesn’t have money to fix the motors. Now they’re all trying to get the building to be sold so that it can be developed into an even bigger apartment building and that is also failing because it requires 75% vote. Imagine you voting against getting a brand new apartment in 3 years that’s larger in size and you get your rent paid while it’s being built.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#32

Post by criddell »

baq wrote: post #22
bearjaws wrote: post #6

There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…

A HOA for a highrise is a very different beast than a HOA for a suburban neighborhood. That is, I agree - but the suburban SFH HOAs are shitshows.

In my suburban neighborhood the HOA mostly takes care of common areas. Things like community swimming pools, dog parks, tennis courts, sports fields, landscaping, etc... They also organize fun runs and movie nights and other seasonal events.

There's occasional drama, but mostly things just run fairly smoothly.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#33

Post by impendia »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #13
bearjaws wrote: post #6

There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…

The irony here is I've never found my neighborhood HOA problematic. They plan the block party and take care of the landscaping of the neighborhood signage. My condo HOA experience was so bad I would never again recommend someone buy a condo. They refused to look at a structural issue until I got a lawyer and then refused to let the residents see the engineering report for the building we legally own . (Note: If you e…

Is that legal?!

I would have thought your lawyer would be salivating at the prospect of raking your HOA over the coals. Or at least of mailing a nastygram with all sorts of colorful threats. I suppose not?

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#34

Post by wat10000 »

tallanvor wrote: post #26

The problem you'll run into is when the HOAs are responsible for common areas or shared infrastructure. In some places the HOAs are responsible for the roads and there may be a common pool, gym, or other amenities. You'd be better off preventing HOAs from doing petty things like requiring homes to be painted certain colors and requiring them to have their books audited yearly to ensure there's no fraud or abuse going…

We used to have local governments provide that sort of thing (and still do to an extent). One reason for the prevalence of HOAs is that they have a much easier time keeping out the riffraff with uncomfortably dark skin, but maybe people will just have to put up with them.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#35

Post by jm4 »

mschuster91 wrote: post #9
ajsnigrutin wrote: post #4

The problem is always with the extremes. On one side, you have someone creating a car junkyard in his frontyard with a car tire bonfire behind his house and on the other, you have a random karen neigbor measuring your lawn greenness and soil humidity to see if you're not watering the lawn enough and fine your for that. Take the power from a few powertrippers and make it more democratic and you solve both issues... tu…

> If the issue is so bad, that 70% of your neighbors actually come to a meeting and vote against what you're doing, it must be something really bad. Two dangers with that. First, mandatory votes are ... difficult. They exclude a lot of people, particularly those that gotta work two jobs to make ends meet, thus giving more power to those people who have lots of free time (i.e. pensioners, SAHM busybodies). Second, tyr…

I believe the modern purpose of HOAs is for the developer to keep the neighborhood looking good long enough to sell all the homes and make a return on their investment. Fair enough. Then it gets turned over to the residents and they go batshit crazy.

HOAs are a huge problem in Florida. It’s hard to find places to live without one. We escaped one that was controlled entirely by one family. Ten years later, they are still in charge of that HOA.

Now, we live in a neighborhood without an HOA. It’s not without a few minor problems, but people are generally more willing to just talk to each other and the city steps in with code enforcement if something ever gets really bad.

I think a lot of people here have PTSD from living in other places with an HOA. Last year, we had a newer resident get a little bit aggressive in trying to start an HOA. He was going so far as patrolling the neighborhood in a golf cart and calling code enforcement on people for all kinds of petty reasons. We ran him out of the neighborhood pretty quickly after that.

I will never live in a place with an HOA again unless it’s a shared building where you kind of have to have something.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#36

Post by afavour »

bearjaws wrote: post #6

There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…

Agreed. The logical answer here is to limit the things HOAs can and cannot do rather than ban them outright. But that doesn't make for a good headline.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#37

Post by toomuchtodo »

bilbo0s wrote: post #15
bearjaws wrote: post #6

There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…

This. And then when more of their towers collapse these same politicians will look around with surprised Pikachu faces.

Florida is just kicking the can, as they always do. Their real estate market is rapidly cooling due to ever increasing carrying costs (insurance), and they are doing whatever they can to enable existing real estate owners to sell and to attract new people to the state.

https://www.tampabay.com/news/environment/2025/05/06/florida...

https://nypost.com/2025/06/26/real-estate/south-floridas-res...

https://www.newsweek.com/florida-condo-prices-plunge-2099157

https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-cities-where-house-prices...

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#38

Post by OptionOfT »

In Phoenix developers cannot build new communities without HOAs.

Even if your HOA is not gated and doesn't have a clubhouse, not a pool, it is the HOA that is responsible for maintaining the streets and parks.

But... that is normally paid for by tax money. Yet the home owner's taxes in those communities are not lower. So the city is double dipping.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#39

Post by wasjosh »

bearjaws wrote: post #6

There will need to be some sort of carve out for towers, condos, townhomes etc. I cannot imagine running a building without an HOA, or some form of it. Who pays for the external repairs? Who pays for shared staff? AC units for a highrise are $2-5M, who is saving for that? This is just typical lawmaker BS, "oh I am going to do away with it", no real plan. If anything just remove the HOA bylaws that are clearly violati…

You can't run into a problem if you are the problem.

There is no problem being addressed here. You are salivating over a conversation on "peanut butter bad, lets regulate it!"

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