Current and former residents of an HOA, what’s your “I’ll never live in an HOA again” story?

I got a HOA violation for my neighbor’s vines growing into my yard.

I was just learning to drive and parked my car too far away from the curb. Parents and neighbors didn’t get along so neighbors measured the distance from the wheels to the curb and parents got fined.

Now I live in the country with pretty much no rules. We have goats and emus in our front yard.

This didn’t happen to me but several years ago a co-worker told me about how she and her husband put in a small in-ground pool in their backyard. They got all of the required permits and everything and nobody said boo during the weeks of construction. After the pool was installed and they were getting ready to open it, the HOA sent them a letter informing them that it was in violation of the HOA rules and it had to be removed. (I guess their community had a public pool at the clubhouse or something.) They ended up going to court and spending thousands of dollars to fight it. In the end, they agreed to erect a high privacy fence around it so that it wouldn’t be visible. How ridiculous!

Not my story as I would never live in an HOA neighborhood.

My sister bought a house in an HOA neighborhood 3 years ago. To be fair, none of us are super familiar with HOAs since none of us had ever lived in one and my sister was told the HOA fees were just for lawn upkeep and snow removal. The realtor who showed her the house said that the HOA really didn’t get involved in anything except for doing the lawns, removing snow and trimming weeds.

The whole experience has been an “I’ll never live in an HOA again” story for my sister. The trouble started pretty much the second she moved in there.

The first issue was the electrical not working. My dad (RIP) was a master electrician so went over there to troubleshoot and fix the issues. He was over there working on some re-wiring and one of the HOA board came up and asked him what he was doing. My dad told her he was fixing the electric. The HOA board member had a fit about my dad having a small red toolbox out on the porch. My dad got back in her face and she went off in a huff.

Second issue was my sister planting some roses. The roses were the wrong color–only pink, white, or light peach roses were allowed. My sister had committed the cardinal sin of planting red roses! The HOA flipped out and demanded she remove them and fined her for it.

Another dumb issue was a citation for her teenage (at the time) daughter ‘loitering with a group’ on the front steps. Her daughter had been standing on the steps for a few moments talking with another girl and exchanging phone numbers.

My sister has always been a person to do what she wants so you can imagine this went over really, really poorly.

She painted her door bright blue out of anger. She rips up the notices of fines and leaves them in the HOA president’s mailbox.

She has the house on the market and has another picked out. She is supposed to hear this week if she is approved for it or not.

There were 366 units spread out on over 200+ acres of land.

One of the residents got fined $1,250 for putting outdoor Christmas lights on 2 trees in front of their unit (outdoor decorations being prohibited beyond residents’ front door entryway).