Quote Originally Posted by cb7
when they let the residents run it, thats when people really start poking in your buisness. i won't live where there is a HOA. they are just to busy worring about what others are doing and things they don't like.
the HOA went nuts in my parents neighborhood. dues started out at $700 a year and almost hit $900 a year. members of the board were stealing money, plus they were spending pool money on the tennis courts (25% of the people use the tennis courts and almost 90% use the pool). as an example the pool was swithed over to salt water (easier/cheaper to maintain) and only opened from the begining of june to the end of august (it had been the end of april to the end of september before the contractor left). the amount of money they spent on the pool, in the budget, didnt change, but the tennis court got resurfaced (i think they paid an extra $500 that year for the tennis court resurfacing). so about a yr ago, the HOA tried to bump dues from $800 (they had steadily gone up over the years) to $900, plus they wanted to charge each resident an extra $1000 to expand the parking lot and put in bleachers so more people could come watch the desperate housewives tennis league. that pissed off a ton of people, so my dad (recently retired after 30yrs in the army) got elected to the HOA board. he and some of his buddies fixed dues so you only paid for what you used, which ment 90% of peoples dues went down to like $300 a year and they put a private firm in charge of the pay roll(for things like maintenance, up keep, and landscaping). the last thing they did was disban the HOA and write a stipulation that 100% of the residents had to agree to bring it back (at that point you only need a majority vote to get anything to pass). so no more HOA for them and most everyone is happy about it.