anther HOA strikes again

[jtindisguise]

Oh man, am I heated.

In March I contacted the management company for my hoa and asked to be put on a re-occurring automatic payment starting with my April bill.

Fast forward to August and I get a letter from a collection agency in the mail. My hoa fees ($120/month) haven’t been paid since March when I last paid them manually. My $600 worth of hoa fees are now $1500!!! I called the collection agency and told them that the management company messed up by not properly setting up my auto-payment and I would gladly pay my missed payments, however, I will not pay the collection agency fees since it was not my error. They told me where to shove it.

In early September I went to the hoa board meeting and explained what happened. I told the board members that I have never been late in 6 years and I had my phone bill with me to show that I placed the call to the property manager in March to setup auto-pay. The property manager, the board, and I agreed that I could pay all the missed payments in good faith (again, $600) and then we could negotiate the collection agency fees. The property manager and board wanted to know why I didn’t notice the money not being deducted from my account and why I never checked my hoa monthly statements. My response was that I never check my bank account balance and why would I concern myself with checking statements with zero balances. I told them I have a well enough padded bank account that I don’t need to check on it. I wasn’t boasting, I just stated the fact that my bills are less than 1/4 of my income.

I went home and wrote out a check for $720 to cover missed, or uncollected, hoa dues and my September payment. I emailed the property manager to confirm the conversation at the board meeting and in her response to my email she apologized for her company not setting up my auto-pay account properly. She admitted it was her fault in writing!!!

I just got my new statement and all $720 went to debt collector fees and none to my hoa fees. On top of that, the unpaid months, now April through September, had a late fee for each month. That’s another $90 in late fees. After paying all the money I still haven’t even touch my hoa fees. I am so angry I could go postal.

[Bell30656]

Got to love HOA's. What is even better is that you agreed to be treated this way. Yes, that wonderful fine print in the contracts that you signed.

[kjrmom911]

Reading about Hoa's on here only reinforces my original stance when we were home shopping 10 years ago. I told my hubby, no way will I buy into a community where someone can tell me what color I want to paint my house. Granted my neighborhood isn't always perfect in appearance, but I love my neighbors and I wouldn't change a thing, even if someone around the corner painted their house bright blue..uggh

[DYLAN150]

Kjrmom: I would love to have a HOA here where I live. They would help solve my dog barking problem with the neighbors. Besides, if you don't have a HOA what would you do if the neighbors painted their house orange with black dots? You would never be able to sale your house. We only have cc & r's here where I live. It says you can't park a RV on the street but everyone does. To enforce this I have to take my neighbors to court and spend thousands of dollars which I might not get back. With HOA, the association enforces the rules. Heck, my son to hates to mow the yard, got a notice from the HOA which he lives and forced him to keep the lawn mowed. Take the good with the bad.

[GIn]

It might be a mistake in accounting on the part of the HOA. The bookkeeper may not know what you and the board have discussed. Have you called them about this latest problem?

[bcohen]

Kjrmom: I would love to have a HOA here where I live. They would help solve my dog barking problem with the neighbors. Besides, if you don't have a HOA what would you do if the neighbors painted their house orange with black dots? You would never be able to sale your house. We only have cc & r's here where I live. It says you can't park a RV on the street but everyone does. To enforce this I have to take my neighbors to court and spend thousands of dollars which I might not get back. With HOA, the association enforces the rules. Heck, my son to hates to mow the yard, got a notice from the HOA which he lives and forced him to keep the lawn mowed. Take the good with the bad.

I am not seeing your point here. My experience with HOA's is that they are nothing but evil money-grubbing organizations run by people with an unhappy family life that are on a "power trip" because they are on the HOA. I used to work in HVAC (heating and air conditioning) and I saw repeatedly how overzealous HOA's drove up costs for our customers and made our job difficult for no legitimate reason. I also know people who lived in HOA communites and had to deal with nit-picking neighbors who complained to the HOA for every little thing, rising costs for membership dues , special assessments, and so on.

Contrary to the marketing propaganda put forth by developers who create these dang HOA's in the first place, you do not need to have a HOA to keep your neighbor from accumulating garbage on their property, letting their lawn become overgrown with weeds, having loud parties, dogs barking late at night, or any other nuisance. Nor do you need a HOA to prevent your neighbors from running a business out of their home. Why is that? Because the city or township where you live will have municipal ordinances governing these things, and a complaint to the police or code enforcement department (depending on the nature of the problem) will result in the unruly neighbor being ticketed and fined.

Also, you don't have to worry that your neighbor is going to paint their house baby-poop orange and supposedly crush your home's "resale value" because very few people ever re-paint their house a different color than what it originally was, and most people want their house to "match" the others on the block. Besides, a person painting their house some ugly color would be acting against their own self-interest because it would hurt their home's resale value.

In conclusion, I would NEVER buy a property in a HOA, and you could not give me one for free! Owning a home in a HOA combines the worst attributes of owning with the worst attributes of renting. On the one hand, you get to deal with all the maintenence and repair headaches, pay for insurance, etc; on the other hand, you still have to pay this monthly cost in order to keep your home, a cost which can rise over time or spike without warning due to special assessments.

If my only choices were to own in a HOA or rent an apartment, I'd take the rental apartment in a heartbeat. When you rent from a legitimate company (not a slumlord) you don't have to worry about maintenence and repair issues, the monthly cost is set in stone for the duration of the lease, and you generally won't get hassled about stuff that isn't a bona-fide degradation of the property. A good example of this is the fact that many HOAs will not permit you to park a marked commercial vehicle on your property--even though you need the work truck for your job--whereas an apartment complex will let you park any functioning, licensed vehicles (up to the number of parking spaces granted in your lease).

[justbroke]

Actually, there are some great HOAs out there notwithstanding any complaints about the entire lot of them. Mine is actually a Community Development District (CDD) with special taxing authority. This is something that almost all HOAs do not have. You will get the overzealous busy-bodies on the board, but a real HOA serves the community. You fix it just like you fix Congress... vote them out.

I must say that my CDD (HOA) has prevented my property from falling more than 10% underwater over the last 4 years. Despite the laws on the books, many municipalities do not care and/or do not employ the staff to deal with certain issues. It can take months to get a municipality to act on certain code violations.

Do I wish I never had an HOA? Yes. But, because the municipalities don't seem to care... I like my CDD /HOA)

[jtindisguise]

I believe HOAs are a mixed bag. Just down the street is a community that has a great, cheap, and effective HOA. Mine, not so much. We have the same board members year after year and each year the dues go up but the services go down. Since I live in a gated community with private streets I have to pay a bit more. What bothers me is every time I ask to see the budget the board members get shaken. I have the right to see where and how my money is being spent. What pisses me off even more is every single year I have lived here, 6 years now, the dues have gone up. It started at $30 a month and now its $120. That is a 400% increase. Imagine your rent or house payment going up 400%. Then every year I get a "special assessment" right around the holidays because the board has underestimated their operating costs so I get a nice $200 bill for Christmas to help offset the shortage. Sorry, needed to vent.

So, any advice on how to handle my current situation? I called an attorney I have used in the past. He said to continue to pay my dues by check made payable to the management company; not the collection agency. He said to write "for the purpose of dues" on the check and sit back and let them sue me. When they sue me I am supposed to go to court and show the judge the emails where the property manage has admitted fault, show copies of checks that were cashed by the collection agency although they were made payable to the management company, and show my payment history reflecting zero late payments prior to this episode. My attorney agreed to help me. He said we could then sue the management company to get back all my money that I spent on legal fees. He said if I really want blood, which I do, we could also name the board members in the suit.

[justbroke]

In my opinion, your attorney is having you do the right thing! Another thing would be to escrow the payments and file a lawsuit. They, upon filing suit, giving the escrow funds to the Court.

Some HOAs are incompetent and are indeed a mixed bag. My HOA technically only charges about $30/month. However, the rest of the "services" are in our property taxes as non ad-valorem taxes.

[DYLAN150]

bcohen: Ok, I see your point and it's just a matter of preference here. I perfer one and you don't.

[kjrmom911]

Kjrmom: I would love to have a HOA here where I live. They would help solve my dog barking problem with the neighbors. Besides, if you don't have a HOA what would you do if the neighbors painted their house orange with black dots? You would never be able to sale your house. We only have cc & r's here where I live. It says you can't park a RV on the street but everyone does. To enforce this I have to take my neighbors to court and spend thousands of dollars which I might not get back. With HOA, the association enforces the rules. Heck, my son to hates to mow the yard, got a notice from the HOA which he lives and forced him to keep the lawn mowed. Take the good with the bad.

I really don't think any of my neighbors are going to paint their house orange with black polka dots and luckily we all get along.My neighbor just comes over and tells me if something is annoying him about my property (which luckily doesn't happen often). I like though that if I am ust exhausted one week and don't have time to mow the lawn the lawn police don't come by to cite me. Usually one of my neighbors will just mow it for me and we all return the favor from time to time. No one parks their rvs on the street, but honestly I wouldn't care if they did. I think you are right though, it comes down to a preference, I prefer no HOA, but I can see the appeal to some people.

[DYLAN150]

kjr: I grew up in Southern Calif and I have seen some weird colors on houses. However, my old neighbor worked for a company that had some paint left over ( they painted their work building) and he brought it home and paint his house with it. Wish I had a picture of it. Yes, I really don't like motorhomes parked on the street because it makes it harder to back out and kids tend to play around them and some of them don't look both ways before crossing. Also, my current neighbor is a long haul truck driver and he will park his semi right across the street from me. Don't like that either.

[justbroke]

Additionally, most HOAs restrict parking commercial vehicles in plain site. Many people will initially react that "that's just not right" and "how can a self-employed person make a living" and a host of other similar words. However, did you consider the security aspect? Did you know that many thieves pull up in nice neighbordhoods right to the front door with "marked" commercial vehicles?

If a commercial vehicle is parked overnight on the street or in any driveway, expect a visit from the Sheriff's office to investigate. If one is parked in front of your home or driveway for more than 2 hours... the Sheriff will take notice and investigate.

There are reasons for these rules. They are not to annoy the owners. They do annoy some neighbors, but really... is it necessary for the kids to play basketball in the middle of the street? Why does law enforcement and the municipality need to "police" the neighborhoods for certain simple infractions? Yes, people do paint their homes strange colors in Florida. My HOA allows everything that is an "earth" tone. My home is Golden Wheat.

I agree that there are people who are non-conformers and would like to do their own thing. An HOA is not the place for non-conformers. It just causes angst and a lot of conflict. However, some people purchase their home and never really research just a.) what an HOA is, and b.) the "very" specific and recent events concerning the HOA that they are buying a house in! I actually read my HOA rules before moving in. I understood them and accepted them. There are a couple that I don't like such as my property being on "conservation" and I can only have a metal "non-privacy" fence so that people can "see" the conservation!

Oh well... I chose to live here with all forethought!

Let me end with this... there are some absolutely evil HOAs out there which should have their entire boards thrown out. But they don't, because people don't do anything about it. Sound familiar?

[jtindisguise]

So just a quick follow up to my original post...

I have been mailing my regular payments to the property management company. I write on the check, "For the Purpose of Monthly HOA Dues." I was told to do this by my attorney... and a few other attorneys who are just friends. The property management company receives the check and then hands it over to the debt collector and then the debt collector cashes it and applies to it their fees. Every check goes to debt collector fees. I've paid $800 and every freakin' penny went to the debt collector.

Can they do that?

[justbroke]

It's probably your issue. Even though you setup auto-payment, you had some duty to take corrective action within a relatively fair number of weeks; let's just say 8 weeks for argument's sake. If you didn't notice that for two months, the payment wasn't being taken from your checking account -- after your monthly/weekly reconciliation -- then it becomes more your issue. Unfortunately, a failure to monitor your bank account rests solely with you.

Yes, HOAs can be difficult to deal with. It reads as though you need to follow-up on the "negotiate" the fees part, which you indicated in your first post. You may need to go back before the board. Otherwise, you'd have to file a lawsuit, and that will cost you some money to defend. Your best bet may be going back to the board to "negotiate" the fees since that is what the board should have in their minutes from the meeting in which you advised them that you'd pay the arrears.