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 rules, trespassing on what would become County property. What do we do with the $500k we have the operating funds and reserves collected over the past 40 years?
County would have to find another place to do their voting as we have offered our clubhouse for years. We would have to fire our LCAM.
County would have to maintain some expensive drainage and ponds that our HOA manages. Fountains. Weir replacement alone is $250k that we keep up.
Yes, reform HOA laws but abolishing them I am not sure is the right thing to do. It would create such a massive mess and requirement for Counties to maintain things that they don’t currently manage. It may lead to these areas to incorporate because then you would end up with City based code enforcement.
HOA reserve funds (not Condo) needs to be relooked at. We have healthy reserves because we have been keeping on top of reserve studies.
I upvoted you despite entirely disagreeing with your premise. Yes - negotiate with the county to take over management of the playgrounds and lawn mowing. Yes - make the clubhouse and parking lots open, fee-based and voluntary, and controlled by a private corporation rather than an imposed, taxed service. Yes - return the excess money to the current homeowners, or use some of it to effectuate these conversions.
Honestly, the amount of money you have in reserve, plus the list of amenities you list, makes it sound like the HOA has been sitting on a spigot of endless cash for a very long time and finding nice-to-have things to justify the continued fees.
We have a reserve study completed by a professional company that requires us to hold this much. For example, we are replacing two AC units for $50k total. Pool needs to be resurfaced for $100k. We have roof repairs that will need to be done eventually, gym equipment replacements, various beautification repairs, weir repair ($250k), fish guards/blockers, pond maintenance etc
Cities or counties suddenly having to take over lots of road, playgrounds, sidewalks, street lights, and etc is going to be a big drain on their budget. Sure they could run with the HOA's money for a while but eventually they're going to have to pay.
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.
> What do we do with the $500k we have the operating funds and reserves collected over the past 40 years?
Uhm, return it to the property owners?
The real pattern is that HOAs have been abusing their power; or in other cases are required because municipalities don't want to do their job. As a result the lawmakers will, unfortunately, overcorrect.
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 violating peoples rights, like not being able to have cars in your drive way or only display flags certain ways.
Probably true in general but, to the degree there are shared areas, someone needs to assess and allocate costs which isn't always obvious. Not really suburban but I have a relative who lives on a private road with other houses and (primarily) plowing and road maintenance needs to be dealt with.
I agree that "your lawn isn't neat enough" HOAs are generally a plague at least up to a certain point.
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.
Not all townhomes have HOAs but it is absolutely insane to say a townhouse that does, where land is owned by the HOA, would have land redistributed to various individuals by legislature fiat.
It's even a crazy proposal for detached single family homes. Will a government official show up and decide what land is owned by each owner and record by government decree what the new property lines are?
I think he's only planning to try to ban them for single family homes:
>Porras acknowledged condominiums, with shared roofs and common areas, present a more complicated case. But he said single-family HOAs in particular have lost their purpose.
Are HOA officials elected by the residents? I live in a country where building management is compulsory and their meetings are subject to law and even can be witnessed by state officials. I know it sounds a bit fascist and I can't say it isn't, but that's how buildings are taken care of. If you don't like the management you can change it in the next meeting if you gather enough support.
By the way land is usually collectively owned by the apartment owners too.
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.
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 ever experience this, get out. There is no louder signal of an unsafe structure than "the engineering report is privileged".)
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?
HOAs get lots of hate because many are terrible, but like all things there are good ones and bad ones.
My current suburban HOA is fine. My only gripe with them is when I had to get some outdoor changes approved, I never heard back from them so I had to wait until it was approved by default after no response for X days. Dues are $160/year so I'm not really complaining. Other than that, they maintain the common areas and the only times I've seen them flex their muscles were to pressure the bank to maintain and sell foreclosed homes in the neighborhood to get somebody living there again.
I also used to own a condo in a four unit building and the HOA board was just everyone who lived in the building.
I can imagine some scenarios where portions of the report may be privileged - if there are photos of people's apartments or unique information. But the summary with a list of deficiencies and recommended/required actions should certainly be provided!
Those things are usually rentals here in Florida. HOAs are a real problem here due to the legal protection they have. They can literally take your house because your mailbox is blue.
There are over 1 million condos in Florida, and many of them are in buildings that need repairs the HOA can’t pay for. Remember the Surfside collapse?
Sure, it’d be interesting to see how people work out the concept of shared benefits that need being paid for from scratch, but I know and like some people in Florida so I’d still be sorry to see them do it.
Maybe just take away that protection? Where I live nobody is losing a house for having the wrong color mailbox, but there are certain historical protected areas where beauty is an externality — you can’t demolish a historic house in the middle of the beautiful downtown
HOA's are ultimately run by the homeowners themselves. It's right there in the name. If the HOA is such a problem, elect different people to the board and change the rules.
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.
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 on.
Pretty wild that HOAs are not required to have audited books. Where I'm from HOAs are regulated by law, is registered as a legal entity, and therefore needs audited financials submitted to the tax man every year.
There is also a very powerful ombud created to mediate and resolve the kind of hoa horror story bullshit we often hear about online.
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.
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.
Privatize it. If I want the road in front of my house fixed, I'll pay for it, I can get a pool membership, gym membership, or other amenities ad-hoc. Fuck the HoA.
In Florida, condominium associations (COA) and homeowners associations (HOA) are not legally the same thing, but in discussions like this people often refer to them interchangeably. There is a big difference between an HOA requiring mowed lawns and paint colors and a COA that maintains roofs, pools, playgrounds, common elements, etc. People will refer to Surfside as a reason HOAs are important but the Champlain Towers was a condo.
I volunteered to run my HOA in Massachusetts because I was afraid someone would come in and abuse their power and fine everyone for trivial matters.
What I learned was that the town "forces" all new developments to have an HOA because town politics prevents the town from adopting roads from new housing developments. Thus all new neighborhoods in the town have "private" roads.
It's a lot of "BS" work that's pushed on residents simply because of malfunctioning politics.
Sounds to me like the more effective use of residents' time would be to get several of them together to run for town office and break the deadlocks. Assuming you can contact enough other frustrated HOA members and get them onboard, even if the problem is several town board members (or whatever body it is), it could be possible to replace them with sane people.
I don't want to say too much because it would reveal where I live. But, to be general, my town has a very unique political system where a plurality of voters is the deadlock.
Basically, to break the deadlock, it would require a very large plurality of people to overrule a large group of retirees who have nothing better to do but reject adopting our private roads.
Typically there is a special tax assessment district when inside city limits - for example, my property in Georgia inside an HOA has a city millage of 0.003, but the streets of the community were indeed deeded to the city. On the other hand, if someone wants to build not actually inside city limits, of course they’ll need to pay for their own roads and utility maintenance since the county isn’t responsible for things like that.
As a non-American, I've always been surprised with how common HOAs are, and how over-bearing they seem.
I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
In some places they act as a kind of local governing authority similar to a town or village council. In much of the US the lowest level of governing body us the county, and those can be pretty huge and diverse areas so HOAs are used to fill that gap.
Sure, I guess I can kind of understand that. It's just not something I've experienced. I've never felt that there was a "gap" that needed to be filled. Especially not by a group that can also tell me that my paint has to be a certain color or whatever.
They're not common everywhere in the US. Here in West Michigan I don't know of anyone that's part of one (other than condo associations, where it's part of the selling point).
I’ve lived in two. They were fine. They collected reasonable dues, provided some services, and that’s about the extent of it.
I still wouldn’t want to live in another one. Even if they behave well, they’re just annoying. It’s another set of de facto laws I have to keep track of, elections to vote in, proceedings to follow. The HOA’s finances are my finances so if they screw up it’s my wallet on the line. (I see so many people asking, the HOA fucked up, can they make us pay for it? You are the HOA, there’s nobody else to pay for anything.)
And they’re just not necessary in most places. Maintain common areas? We have something for that already, it’s called local government. Prevent eyesores? Fuck off, if you want to control what happens on a property then buy it. It’s unavoidable for a condo, but completely unnecessary for detached houses, and even townhouses don’t really need one.
You hear the bad stories. It all depends on who was elected and who votes. Most HOAs are not the horror stories you hear, just a quiet entity that maintains common property and is a backup solution for problems (when talking to neighbor does not work). Mine is cheap, like $300/year and we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation. They only send out letters for egregious violations and don't police or nit-pick.
If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.
>we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation.
This is where my confusion comes in. My local government handles this sort of stuff. But I understand that we (as countries) have different thoughts on governments and their responsibilities.
What's stopping them from charging you $3000 or even $10000 next year, or escalating progressively to these numbers? What's stopping them from adding ten new ridiculous rules? Nothing. It's about giving up your freedom.
America hates government and taxes but occasionally someone thinks wow, it’d be nice if we could split the costs of this road and water pipes we all use! But all the existing standards for how to do this basic function of society are terrible!
Readit News
County would have to find another place to do their voting as we have offered our clubhouse for years. We would have to fire our LCAM.
County would have to maintain some expensive drainage and ponds that our HOA manages. Fountains. Weir replacement alone is $250k that we keep up.
Yes, reform HOA laws but abolishing them I am not sure is the right thing to do. It would create such a massive mess and requirement for Counties to maintain things that they don’t currently manage. It may lead to these areas to incorporate because then you would end up with City based code enforcement.
HOA reserve funds (not Condo) needs to be relooked at. We have healthy reserves because we have been keeping on top of reserve studies.
Be careful what you ask for is all I am saying.
Honestly, the amount of money you have in reserve, plus the list of amenities you list, makes it sound like the HOA has been sitting on a spigot of endless cash for a very long time and finding nice-to-have things to justify the continued fees.
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.
Uhm, return it to the property owners?
The real pattern is that HOAs have been abusing their power; or in other cases are required because municipalities don't want to do their job. As a result the lawmakers will, unfortunately, overcorrect.
What would happen is we would have to surrender those funds to the State.
So this would lead to a huge windfall for the State.
States have rules for what happens when a HOA dissolves. That means the money goes right to the State including the sale of the common property.
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 violating peoples rights, like not being able to have cars in your drive way or only display flags certain ways.
That is, I agree - but the suburban SFH HOAs are shitshows.
I agree that "your lawn isn't neat enough" HOAs are generally a plague at least up to a certain point.
There's occasional drama, but mostly things just run fairly smoothly.
It's even a crazy proposal for detached single family homes. Will a government official show up and decide what land is owned by each owner and record by government decree what the new property lines are?
>Porras acknowledged condominiums, with shared roofs and common areas, present a more complicated case. But he said single-family HOAs in particular have lost their purpose.
By the way land is usually collectively owned by the apartment owners too.
Don’t let Karen and her buddies run the meetings.
People nagging about HOA seems like are not owners or not knowing how HOA works o r supposed to work.
if you don't want to join an HOA....
you don't join an HOA?
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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 ever experience this, get out. There is no louder signal of an unsafe structure than "the engineering report is privileged".)
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?
My current suburban HOA is fine. My only gripe with them is when I had to get some outdoor changes approved, I never heard back from them so I had to wait until it was approved by default after no response for X days. Dues are $160/year so I'm not really complaining. Other than that, they maintain the common areas and the only times I've seen them flex their muscles were to pressure the bank to maintain and sell foreclosed homes in the neighborhood to get somebody living there again.
I also used to own a condo in a four unit building and the HOA board was just everyone who lived in the building.
Sure, it’d be interesting to see how people work out the concept of shared benefits that need being paid for from scratch, but I know and like some people in Florida so I’d still be sorry to see them do it.
This is hard to believe. Have you got a source?
And then when more of their towers collapse these same politicians will look around with surprised Pikachu faces.
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...
There is no problem being addressed here. You are salivating over a conversation on "peanut butter bad, lets regulate it!"
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 on.
There is also a very powerful ombud created to mediate and resolve the kind of hoa horror story bullshit we often hear about online.
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What I learned was that the town "forces" all new developments to have an HOA because town politics prevents the town from adopting roads from new housing developments. Thus all new neighborhoods in the town have "private" roads.
It's a lot of "BS" work that's pushed on residents simply because of malfunctioning politics.
Basically, to break the deadlock, it would require a very large plurality of people to overrule a large group of retirees who have nothing better to do but reject adopting our private roads.
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.
I know that I only hear about the crazy ones because blogs about normal/good HOAs aren't going viral, but I've seen enough horror stories that if I ever moved to the US I would do my best to avoid one like the plague.
I still wouldn’t want to live in another one. Even if they behave well, they’re just annoying. It’s another set of de facto laws I have to keep track of, elections to vote in, proceedings to follow. The HOA’s finances are my finances so if they screw up it’s my wallet on the line. (I see so many people asking, the HOA fucked up, can they make us pay for it? You are the HOA, there’s nobody else to pay for anything.)
And they’re just not necessary in most places. Maintain common areas? We have something for that already, it’s called local government. Prevent eyesores? Fuck off, if you want to control what happens on a property then buy it. It’s unavoidable for a condo, but completely unnecessary for detached houses, and even townhouses don’t really need one.
If I had to pick one thing I dislike the most about HOAs, it would be this. There is never a guarantee that your quiet HOA will remain that way in the future. Which, to me, seems like a crazy chance to take.
>we have a shared park, community space, and where I live lots of irrigation.
This is where my confusion comes in. My local government handles this sort of stuff. But I understand that we (as countries) have different thoughts on governments and their responsibilities.
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png