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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

#151

Post by wat10000 »

dgrin91 wrote: post #97
RandomBacon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who are you charging $175?

I think what GP is saying is that if I was a homeowner for 30 years, paid HOA fees all those years, then last year sold to someone else, who gets the HOA reimbursement then? I paid thousands over years and would presumably get nothing, while some other guy who just moved in all of a sudden gets a big check? That seems unfair.

Imagine you dissolve a company that has a lot of money in the bank. What do you do with that money? Distributing it to the shareholders seems like the right way to dispose of it. What if somebody sold all their shares a day before? Well, they get nothing, that's how it works. The company's money should be accounted for in the share price, so it all works out, there's nothing unfair.

An HOA is no different. All the owners are also owners of the HOA. When you buy a place in the HOA you also buy into the HOA, and when you sell you also sell your interest in the HOA.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#152

Post by ghaff »

LargeWu wrote: post #141
ghaff wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things like beaches/pools/golf clubs/etc. can generally be policed with tokens/keys and so forth. That is not generally true of all shared facilities in a neighborhood. And I'm not at all sure the local government should be responsible for anything that residents should care to share on a communal basis. Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe. But now that's up to a broader…

>> Want a playground or dog park? That's the government's responsibility? Maybe Yes, this is how it works pretty much everywhere else. Even my rural hometown with <1500 people has an elected park board that is responsible for parks, the swimming pool, tennis courts, summer rec programs, etc.

And the 7K person town where I live in, there are some conservation lands (no idea how maintenance splits up between town and conservation/commission and other volunteers), along with other conservation organizations. But dog parks, playgrounds, etc. just don't exist.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#153

Post by reactordev »

LargeWu wrote: post #140
reactordev wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't because they don't have elections... It's up to the documents to determine when elections can be held and often these HOA's in FL make it so that once elected, they don't hold elections again for 25 years.

25 years is wild. No wonder HOA's have a reputation for boards with power trips.

Just long enough to milk the other homeowners for their own personal mortgages - paying off their own home, earn a cool $100k, and watch their property values go up.

An HOA that has $500/mo dues and 240 homes pulls $120,000/mo yet we have to cut our own grass, follow their paint scheme, follow their trash rules, keep our roofs new, front door clear, driveway clear, and packages out of sight.

EDIT for those downvoting, here's some cases for ya...

https://www.wlrn.org/local-news/2022-11-16/prosecutors-hoa-b...

https://www.miamidade.gov/global/release.page?Mduid_release=...

https://wsvn.com/news/investigations/arrested-again-ex-avent...

https://www.volusiasheriff.gov/news/volusia-county-sheriff/f...

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#154

Post by olddustytrail »

next_xibalba wrote: post #116
olddustytrail wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not kill the guy with the motorbike and cut out the middleman?

It's the libertarian dream. Unfortunately, the state has an outrageous monopoly on violence.

Outrageous government overreach. Why can't you just choose the corporation to pay the weregild? It would be far more efficient!

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#155

Post by wat10000 »

dgrin91 wrote: post #106
Ekaros wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well any funds in HOA is part of the property. Could have reported it when selling and increase price correspondingly or at least some fraction.

Hoa funds practically never get redistributed back to owners. I've never heard of such a case. We are only talking about it here because a legislature is talking about changing something state wide (and realistically this won't happen anyways). So there is no realistic scenario where hoa reserves factor into home price

Reserves are money available for HOA expenses which would otherwise require new money from the owners. For that to factor into home prices, you just need buyers and sellers to be aware of this and what it means for their wallet in the future. Which may not be the norm since people are often clueless, but it doesn't seem completely absurd.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#156

Post by therealpygon »

firesteelrain wrote: post #45

I am a BOD and Officer in a HOA. This will be messy - we would have to sell all of our common amenities, parking lots, overflow parking lots, playgrounds, gym, pools etc to the government or a private company if this happens. County would have to take over maintenance of our platted common property and property that we mow (and get paid for) by the County. County would have to step up enforcement of parking on street…

I don’t believe this to be entirely the case, having served as President of a HOA for 10 years. HOAs are generally incorporated and hold said property. Should the Mandatory HOA be banned, the corporation could simply switch to private membership and offer access to amenities to those outside the community. If the residents don’t want that, they’d need to pay up. Condos, however, likely have different needs because of shared construction, but I’m certain a solution for that could be found.

I absolutely HATE living in an HOA for private property reasons; I don’t enjoy being told what I can do on and to my own private property and being bound by decisions other people make about my own private property. Things like being forced to use a specific (terrible) trash service and specific lawn care company (charged at 2x what I pay for lawncare with 4x the property), which are things friends complain about in nearby communities.

However, I also fully understand their value for communal property/amenities and see nothing wrong with maintaining mandatory membership for those features. The biggest problem is that those costs continue to be inflated in the HOAs around us, and now our own after I stepped down. For many of them it is the unnecessary improvements or using a board members cousin contractor, or a member, who charges 1.5x while providing .5x the value. That, or it gets turned over to a management company that takes a 30% cut and milks the budget with their own in-house contractors doing a similar overcharge/underperform thing.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#157

Post by ryandrake »

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…

The HOA's authority should end at each homeowner's individual property line, in the case of a SFH HOA, and their authority should end at each condo-owner's doorstep in the case of a condo or townhome. So, sure they manage the shared amenities and infrastructure, but should have no power over the individual homeowners' property. There are probably reasonable exceptions to this, but I don't understand how it's justifiable that an HOA should have the power to tell someone how often to mow their lawn or what color to paint their door.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#158

Post by NoGravitas »

delichon wrote: post #139
josefritzishere wrote: post #135

We need a federal level HOA ban. They serve no productive purpose. When people defend HOAs that usually boils down to them feeling like they have some right to tell other people how to live.

Our HOA maintains the roads and the community water system. The county is unwilling to do either. Without the HOA I'd need a specialized vehicle to get through the mud to my driveway in the rainy season, and I'd have to haul in my water, because it's too deep for me to afford a well. So I'd probably end up living elsewhere.

Those are both functions of the local government. If the county approved the development, they need to maintain the infrastructure.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#159

Post by NoGravitas »

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…

Cities and counties have code enforcement to deal with the first case. You don't need another level of unaccountable private government between you and the county.

Re: Florida lawmaker floats ban on HOAs amid growing backlash

#160

Post by NoGravitas »

next_xibalba wrote: post #7
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…

I lived next to a guy who would do maintenance and repair on his motorcycle which had “pipes” until nearly midnight. I would’ve killed for an HOA back then.

Your city/county police don't take noise complaints?
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