On 6/12/2010 2:31 PM, cshenk wrote:
> "Omelet" wrote
>> Terry Pulliam Burd wrote:
>
>>> And I have never seen an HOA board that didn't include the *most* anal
>>> retentive morons in the development. I'd use the term "Nazi," but the
>>> first one to toss that perjorative out...
>
>> Point and score!!!
>> THIS kind of thing is why I hate HOA's!
>
> But the real point is that they vary. Sure, thousands of horror stories
> like Terry had, but many have a happy relationship with simple basics in
> the HOA. It's when they get overtly restrictive that they are bad. (I
> can't imagine one telling me what color I can paint my house!)
>
> There are plenty of HOA's out in the county areas that just help get
> basic gardening to communal areas (not covered by any other, owned by no
> home owner). Some just require if you have excess cars, you park them
> mostly on your own grass so you don't impede others driving on the road
> or a firetruck getting past them. (One we lived in required #of cars not
> exceed # of drivers except by 1 and no more than 3 feet of the car could
> be in the street which I thought reasonable).
>
> I had a great laugh over another friend's predicament with an HOA. They
> required wood fences (no specified height). He put up a steel chain link
> that was 8ft tall, with another 2ft underground then properly covered it
> with a very nice 8ft wood fence on the outside. HOA erupted. Holds a
> meeting. He attends. Quietly, at his side are his 2 HUGE Great Danes. He
> parked them with a firm 'stay' right up at the front and they just sorta
> sprawl as small as they can, quiet and well behaved but BIG. Along comes
> time to mention the fence issue, he just asked if anyone had a problem
> that he had one a little higher as lower might not be that smart and his
> dogs were known to eat wood fences? LOL! He told me silence reigned and
> they moved on to another subject.
>
> So, HOA's can be reasonable. It's all about what that one is looking for.
>

We lived in two separate subdivisions in the Houston area, one from 1976
to 1979. HOA took care of the streets, street lights, mowing the lots
that hadn't been built on, mowing street verges and public areas. They
maintained the dock on Lake Houston, the tennis courts, the golf course
(9-hole) and both swimming pools. Cost us about $20 a month and well
worth it. Your home color and fence were your business but you did have
to maintain the property. The other HOA, we lived in a rental for about
two years. 36-hole championship gold course, multiple tennis courts, two
Olympic size pools, bike and hike trails, $33.00 a month, which our
landlord paid. We don't golf, bike, hike, play tennis nor hang out at
the country club, to which we had a membership. Used to eat there
occasionally but not that often. The only worthwhile thing we got out of
the HOA was the street maintenance and all the other ancillary
maintenance of the subdivision and the fact that I could fish the San
Jacinto river with a boat launch and dock and also Lake Houston with a
boat launch and dock. I spent almost the entire two years fishing. Got
fussed at for fishing in the water hazards on the gold course so had to
quit that. Asked if I could bow hunt around the golf course as there
were a lot of white tail deer there. Nope, they had posted the whole
subdivision as a wildlife preserve. Friends who still live there said
the deer population exploded in the last two years or so and they have
been hiring licensed hunters to come in and clear them out. Other than
that both places were pretty nice places to live except for the drunk
lawyer next door who like to blow "Charge" on a bugle when he got tanked
up. I persuaded him to stop that when I squashed his bugle with an
eight-pound maul. His wife hugged me for it. Oh yeah, he always blew it
about 0200.