If you live in a suburb, do you have a Home Owners' Association?

[AngieW in Texas]

Absolutely not! After living in a neighborhood with an HOA, we determined that we would never again get ourselves into that situation. Our neighborhood has HOAs around it, but we don't have one ourselves and we all like it that way.

[Mergath]

We live in a quiet neighborhood in a small rural town, and there is no HOA. That would drive me nuts. And we probably wouldn't last long, with our vegetable garden and firepit with a stack of firewood and soccer net and my rocking chair on the porch next to my overflowing bin of gardening stuff and cats everywhere... Our yard is far from immaculate.

[EmilyGF]

We have lived in two college communities in HOAs.

 

The HOAs are able to actually enforce rules like no loud parties or no "decorations" visible from the street (imagine for yourself how partying college students like decorating their yards). So, while there are restrictions, it is nice to actually live in a family-friendly place when the neighbors in "single family homes" are suffering from loud parties and obnoxious neighbors.

 

(And those "single family homes" around the neighborhood of course all have 5-8 college students living in them.)

Emily

[Halftime Hope]

We have an HOA that is reasonable.  The neighbors work together to maintain our neighborhood, and a management company takes care of paperwork and compliance letters--a really nice feature so that it's not one neighbor having to confront another over eyesores. 

 

We did have a president who was an enforcement nazi, but he was voted off the HOA board because people were fed up with the kinds of things he was nitpicking.

 

Our neighborhood is very desireable because when it was developed, the original developers had a vision for trees, so it's newer with nice big maturing trees.  And it has a community playground and pool which are paid for by the HOA dues.  Woo, hoo!  Our yearly dues are less than pool chemicals for our own pool for a year, so my kids--smart cookies--said they did not want a house with a pool, but they'd take this neighborhood, gladly.  LOL!

 

My experience with the HOA has been good.

[TechWife]

Yes, we do. The fees go to maintain the neighborhood pool, playground, tennis courts, basketball court, retention pond, common land and entrances. We get a lot of bang for our buck here. The appearance stuff is no big deal to us. We cut our grass anyway and I'm glad they prevented the neighbors from painting their house pepto bismol pink with teal trim (yes, that really happened).

The town does have parks, green ways and tennis courts along with a gym and a couple of ball fields, but almost none of that was there when the neighborhood was built. the few playgrounds they had were onthe other side of town. There has never been a town pool.

Things have built up considerably around here, with an interstate going in and now there is an elementary school being built directly across from our neighborhood. Our home value has risen about 30% since we bought it 14 years ago. In light of all of that, I don't have a problem with the HOA because I think they have helped preserve the property values.

 

ETA: Our HOA actually prevents the "cookie cutter" look. When houses were built, the builders were not allowed to repeat the elevation within a certain number of lots. Also, they do not allow homes to be painted the same color within five houses in either direction, nor directly or diagonally across from each other. We can repaint our house the same color without a problem, but if we want to change the color, we have to go by the rule and get approval. It's really expensive to change the color of a house, though. Only a few people have actually done that. There were the people who painted their house pepto bismol pink w/teal trim without permission from the HOA. The HOA caught it when it was about 1/2 way done and they had to stop working on it while they argued about it, then when they lost, they had to repaint it colors that were approved (it ended up white with teal trim). The pink actually wasn't the problem, it was the shade of pink they selected in combination with the trim color they selected. It was horrid! The house next door to us is a pale pink with white trim and grey shutters, ours is light green with white trim & black shutters and the one on the other side of us us bright yellow with white trim and black shutters. We are all about color here - there are homes that are barn red others that are emerald green. It's all in how it is done in combination with the architecture. 

 

ETAA: There is also a house in the neighborhood that is pink with purple trim. It matches the architecture and looks quite nice. 

[PrincessMommy]

yes, and I hate every minute of it.  We've only been here about 3.5 yrs and in that time it's become more helicopter like.  I've gotten letters because my recycling bin was left out overnight once... and because my mailbox was leaning 10% off.  Yup, someone apparently came through with a level and checked all our mailboxes.   

 

 

The new thing is they want to raise the fine for doing improvements without approval from $150 to $1000 per infraction...   They have a new long list of styles we can use when improving (such as style of garage door). I don't have a problem with the list per-se --- but we still have to jump through hoops and go several months to get approval for pre-approved garage door replacement styles.  Meanwhile my garage doors are slowly rotting.  Sigh.. I just don't even want to begin the process anymore, it's so tedious.

 

We moved from a non HOA neighborhood to this.  Biggest mistake I ever made. 

 

For the record -I lived in the HOA neighborhood for nearly 20yrs.  In the time we never had problems with people letting their lawns get too long, deciding to color their house purple, or refrigerators on the front porch.   I'm sure there are neighborhoods with that problem.. but I've never seen it.   

[spudboy]

No HOA means no excuse not to put up a ham radio antenna (when I get around to it...) I like walking around our neighborhood with eclectic paint colors, vegetables in the front yard, open garage doors, whatever. Living in an HOA area would stress me out.

[Jean in Newcastle]

Vegetables in the front yard is our neighborhood's latest trend.  I think at least four new front yard vegetable  gardens were put in just in our block in the last couple of months.  

[FairProspects]

Yes, we have one and I like our current one. Both the dues and requirements are reasonable and go to pay for parks & the pool as well as keeping the neighborhood looking nice. We also could sell our home in days due to the neighborhood. We have been in unreasonable HOAs too, so we were very careful upon moving into our current neighborhood.

 

And no, our town does not provide these amenities. Our suburb has been ridiculously overdeveloped as a bedroom community for the city. There are no public pools at all (save the largest member YMCA in the entire US which is a complete zoo and requires a lottery to gain access to classes/swim time) and the few parks that exist are insanely overcrowded. I could drive into the city for pools and parks but that means a minimum of 30 minutes in traffic each way and more like 45 some days. That is generally not worth it to me.

[KungFuPanda]

No HOA means no excuse not to put up a ham radio antenna (when I get around to it...) I like walking around our neighborhood with eclectic paint colors, vegetables in the front yard, open garage doors, whatever. Living in an HOA area would stress me out.

Our HOA must be very relaxed compared to most. DH has wires coming from our bedroom window for his ham equipment and our neighbor has an antenna. I think our HOA is more focused on architectural changes than any landscaping choices.