Frugal in an HOA?

[Thrifty Ray]

My friend lives in a home that has Home Owners Association rules. I have never lived in one...and am really unknowledgable about them.

But she and I were talking about being frugal and she was sharing how they can't hang their laundry outside, wash or repair their cars in their drive-ways or have yard sales...

Are these normal rules for an HOA? Are there other 'rules' that would limit frugalness?.

Edited to add: I am just amazed. I guess this keeps a 'desired' look and feel to all of the homes...but I am glad I don't live in one and can do as I want.

[shengmei]

The way I see it, it is like you pay them to sue you!!!

They have so many rules. You can't even have a vegetable garden. You can't have wildflowers. You can't have vinyl siding. It is a pain in the butt!!!

[34saving]

The only thing she can do it make sure that she knows the REAL rules. Often the county recorded rules are different (and more lienient) than the rules that everybody thinks they're living under. That being said, even if the real rules allow for all sorts of stuff, she's probably still going to make enemies if she violates the assumed rules. I'm glad I don't live under an HOA either. Just as an aside . . .my sister lives under an HOA and association pays more for liability insurance on the board members than on the community swimming pool . . .hmmm . . .

[boefixepa]

Yes, those are all normal. We have such rules in my neighborhood. Though getting them enforced is near impossible....neighborhood wars...grr...

Fences have to be wood or vinyl, no chainlink or chicken wire. (Just the expensive stuff!)
No hanging clothes out to dry.
No cars parked on the grass.
All yards, front and back, must maintained (ie lawn/landscaping)
No 'out buildings'
No RVs, boats, etc on the street (they have to fit in your driveway.)
No unregistered cars etc.
No barnyard animals
-That's all I can think off of the top of my head.

There are plus and minuses to having them, but it does help the neighborhood looking nice, but when the homeowner took over after having the developer finish the neighborhood it became a war zone. The HOA officers lives were even threatened. Basically because people didn't want to be told what to do with their own house. Even though they agreed when they bought the house to live by these rules. It was a mess...basically because the developer didn't set it up right. Whatever the case, make sure before you buy a house that you look into it and are willing to live by it if the rules are ever enforced. Generally speaking if you have to pay money to HOA (you don't in my neighborhood and that's half the problem, they don't the $$ to enforce anything and have to get 3/4 of us to agree to pay...yeah right!) then you can bet there are people to enforce it.

Make sure you know what you are buying

[Thrifty Ray]

Wow....

and by 'outbuilding' do you mean putting up a shed in your backyard???

[boefixepa]

Yep, thought I can think of....4 houses in my neighborhood that have them. Like I said, we don't have anyway of enforcing them. Though there is this neighbor, I have a few ideas about who it could be, who uses their own $$ to leave little notes on everyones doors to 'remind' them of the rules. But there's no way to enforce it unless it happens to be a city ordinace too, and many of them are. I think this same 'mystery' neighbor calls the city daily. We now have 'pooper scuper' bags at the park, and 'weed violation' notices to neighbors with unruley back yards (aka they never finished them and they went wild). I really get a kick out of it sometime. Generally I really don't care, I'm not doing anything wrong, but I'm not going to tell someone what to do either. Course I have one more dog than the city says I can have, but that's a city rule not a HOA rule. And I TRIED, VERY HARD, to get a waiver or something, but the old saying is true 'you can't change city hall!'

[veronak]

I am not surprised by the rules, my co-worker stated her community re-paved the roads which were fine but because the VP wife "juggled" when she was roller blading the roads needed to be repaved, yep she stated "jiggle" can you believe it...lol the VP wife actually said this at a meeting so everyone was stuck with $1500.00

[boomeyers]

Our subdivision just makes sure you get permits before building anything like fences and decks.

[PrincessPerky]

We have a no laudnry rule, I use a swing the kind woith a cross bar free standing, I cna only fit a load a day, but it is way in the back, no one has complained.

We have a weed rule, but no one can complain about mine when I have an empty lot next door frequently overrun by weeds, or worse (IMO) stacks of busted sidewalks.

We have a permet required rule for building, and there are some rules about how close to the curb or other houses, and coloring but for the most part you would have to be a redneck or downright rude to cars vision line to break them.

The fencing on the other hand they have some silly rules that leave less than desirable fences...

The driveway rulke is a paina nd hard to get around, but if you have a two car garage move the cars out and go to it in the garage.

As for the grass rule this guy acrross the street has had a busted truck in his grass since he moved in, 4 years ago...

Anyway what someone else said, find out what is a real rule and what is a 'we wish it was a rule'.

That and look at the why, do they not want a clothesline cause your house back yard butts against a major inroad? Can you move a semi perminate thing on the side to kindof hide it a bit? Also you are more likely to have complaints about your underware hanging thatn a swimsuit (everyone does that!) or a towel. Can you line dry in the house (midwinter it is warmer and faster in house than out anyway) Does the rule state no garden, or just some silly undefinable idea of what particular flower you can plant? lots of vegetables flower, so they can safely be defended as pretty .

[Ima saver]

We are not in a hoa, but we have covenants. Any out building must match the house, (no sheds) fences must be wood, all cars must have current tag, no motor homes unless garaged, no clothes lines. The neighborhood does look nice!

[Thrifty Ray]

again....wow.

I live outside of town in a little subdivision called "The Land of Many Oaks".
We are required to get a permit to build here...but that is a county thing, not a hoa type rule.

The only stips we have are that we can't subdivide- (our lots are all 2+ acres) and we cant put any 'rental' property on our land.

Otherwise, we can do whatever we want. I do have one neighbor who looks to be starting an old-dead car graveyard..but otherwise, the homes are all attractive and the neighborhood is very quaint.

I do seem to be the only person in the area with a clothes line. But I dont worry about it...because again...we are all a couple of acres away from each other....and I always 'sandwich' the undie type stuff between the towels and sheets

Oh- my DH has his log decks out back....boy that sure wouldn't fly in a HOA.

[Ima saver]

We are on 2 acres too, that helps.

[flash]

Yes, we have no fences...fun with a new pup and no building...but all that requires is a signoff on the plans from the "owner" of the development. The idea is to keep homes from losing value...which I did not fully appreciate until we assisted my DH's grandmother in evicting her renters...who had loaded the back with old car shells, tires, trash, in a very expensive community. It WAS hideous. And it DID prevent other people from selling their homes at market value.

That said, they are a royal pain. We have two acres, and fairly flexible neighbors, but MANY rules.

[Ima saver]

The rules do help keep your property value up. We asked a realtor to show us the prettiest piece of property in this county when we were looking to buy. It was beautiful, but right across the street was a 1950 mobile home. So being in an area with covenants is nice, it is also nice that my husband built most of the houses in our subdivision. (There is one house, on another street, that has the meter box on the front of the house, looks awful)

[CRFSaver]

It all depends on how much power your HOA has as well. Planned communities like Reston, VA and Irvine, CA have extremely powerful associations and they can break it down in some cases, what brand paint you can use (which i thought was just plane stupid, but was not my house at the time).

I have also discoverd it is how much of a power trip the association president and board are on. The more power hungry he/she is the bigger issues you have.

Mind you the rules are there to "protect the value" of your home but they go over board many times.

[lillyb]

OUr city has a lot of ordinances. We have to get a permit for everything. When dh built his shop he had to post a permit, give them his plans, it had to be a certain amount of feet from the street and alley and be in line with the other buildings (ie. can't jut out in front of theirs), inspected all the way and have somethings professionally installed, even though he could have done them himself.

I was looking into putting a small building/cottage in our backyard to open as an office for myself and was told a ton of things I'd have to do to make it possible, costing me more than any home buisiness projected income would have been for the first year. There's tons of zoning restrictions, too. Just can't do whatever I want in my backyard.

However, there is no ordinace against people owning about 8 vehicles and parking most of them in the street, thereby making the home owners having to play chicken just to get to their homes. I really feel like there should be some rules or limits there, yikes!

[notmadeofmoney]

Our HOA is pretty restrictive. You have to get permission to add a fence, change the paint color of your house, install a dish (like Dish Network), etc. etc. While our home's value has greatly increased, I am not sure how much of this is due to the HOA. I think it is more just our location in Florida that has caused the price increase. When we had the hurricanes 2 years ago, we had a person from "code enforcement" come to our house to tell us the tape on the windows had to come down!