Homeowner's Association

OliveOyl

New Member
Hey, I was just wondering...

For those of you who live in neighborhoods that have a required homeowner's association, what does it provide?

I'm feeling a little fed up with my association and feel stuck! They don't do much and nothing really seems to change. Anyone else in this boat? :boo:
 

RoseRed

American Beauty
PREMO Member
I don't have one, but it might help others to let them know about where you are living? Is there a particualr neighborhood you are in?
 
K

Kizzy

Guest
I cannot complain. I pay only $25.00 a year for mine and they have a nice picnic area somewhere around here. I have been meaning to check it out for years, but I haven't. Also, they plant flowers at the end of the street every spring.

I use to live in St. Charles and they would come around and tell you to paint, cut your grass, fix your fence or whatever. So when I moved here, I called the president and said hey the hubby and I want to expand our driveway what do we need to do? He said (true story) I don't give a $hit what you do. I said oh and while we are at it, I think will paint the house barney purple and the shutters pink and hung up. From that point on, we never called to get another thing approved.
 

Frank

Chairman of the Board
I live in the Ranch Club - and we pay a handful of fees, and also pay taxes because of a "Special Tax District" that the homeowner's association is able to spend. I see very little of where that money goes, except I have to pay it, and most of it appears to go to the mechanism to billing me for it, and supporting the staff that charges me. It sucks - we need a revolution or something.
 

John Z

if you will
My neighborhood's Homeowner's Association is a bit like IM4Change's. We pay $25 or $35 a year, and all it pays for is the maintenance of the signs at the 2 "entrances". It pays for the minimal landscaping, sign replacement (some whipersnappers tore down the sign last year), and electricity for the lights that illiminate the sign at night.

Paying the $25 isn't even mandatory. Plus nobody hassles you about how many cars are in your yard, how long your grass is, what color your front door is, etc. The rules are pretty basic, like no running a business out of your house. It works out pretty well, but since most of our lots are 1.8 acres, we aren't on top of each other getting annoyed at our neighbor's slightly off-hue shutters. :biggrin:
 

SeaRide

......
Originally posted by OliveOyl
For those of you who live in neighborhoods that have a required homeowner's association, what does it provide?
I don't have HOA at where I live. But my best friend(my ex-finace:bawl: ) paid $60 a month in northern va community. It doesn't matter what kind of home you live in. There are condos/1200 sq ft townhouses/ 5,000 sq ft houses in the community. What they get are:
  • numerous olympic size swimming pools
  • numerous recreation areas ( basketball courts, tennis courts, soccer fields, football fields, etc)
  • miles and miles of trails - paved and unpaved for biking, rollerblading, joggin, walking dogs, etc
  • numerous playgrounds
  • exterior home inspections
  • trash service
  • road maintenance, snow plow service
  • enforce community rules like no heavy automobile mechanic activity, etc.
  • crime watch
  • landscaping / beautification / flowers / cherry trees / dogwood trees etc
  • numerous other things I can't think of right now
 
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Frank

Chairman of the Board
Originally posted by Barbra
Frank, perhaps you need to get out more and see all the things your HOA fees are paying for. :kiss:

Hey I *read* the budget layout - and I get kinda disgusted, because it looks like overhead costs are high.

Appreciate the comment - but items such as the campsite and stables are self-supporting - they are maintained by the fees they collect. So I pay a separate road fee - what am I getting for it? "Community gardens"? What's that? The flowers out by the sign? Tennis courts? You mean those things out by the golf course? They're a shambles - weeds, nets collapsing - if a DIME goes towards maintenance, it's wasted. The "lodge"? That drafty old building has GOT to be paid for by now, along with the storage areas, and I'm fairly certain renting it has to pay for upkeep.

I've read through the budget - there's a LOT of waste - doesn't the special tax district pull in a few hundred more per year, per member? Aren't they getting about 500-700 bucks per member, and there's what, 3000-4000 members? For the money they get, I ought to get a lot more.
 

tipsy mcgee

Always thirsty
Well, I live in Wildewood and I pay $1,000 a year for it. Yep, $250 every three months. Takes care of trash, parking lot electricity (I guess), landscaping/blowing leaves, resurfacing of the parking area, the water fee for those that use the car wash area and I guess some other little things I may be forgetting. Seems kinda steep compared to others. I wouldn't mind if they could actually get the parking lot lights and walkway lights to work on a consistent basis.
 

SmallTown

Football season!
One of the areas we are looking at in NoVa the fee is about $350 year which includes the use of 5 pools, a marina, trash pickup twice a week with recycling, and a few other things.. I guess when you have more people in a smaller area, they can offer more stuff for less money.. Heck, we pay almost $280 a year here just on trash pickup..
 

Sharon

* * * * * * * * *
Staff member
PREMO Member
Road maintenance in CRE is a joke. They shovel filler out of a pick-up truck and run over it with the back tires. :lol: The rain washes it away soon after. We now pay twice for what we have. What started as a 5-year (STD) road program has been extended to 10 years. Why? They swore they could do it in 5, but now they are saying 10. :really: My street was supposed to be paved in year 3 of the old plan and now it has been pushed to year 8. For 10 years there has been no maintenance (except the pothole fillers) on it and it's falling apart.

Frank's right about the stables and the campsite being self-supporting but add the airstrip also. Those that use it pay and maintain it, for the most part, as I understand. There is a lot of wasted money. Remember when they had gates? Thank God they did away with them. We were paying employees $10-$12/hr for people to basically sit and watch TV all day. There are nice beaches, a lake, and a boat ramp, playgrounds, ballfield, basketball court, etc.

We are not a part of the golf course (tennis courts) or marina any longer. I think it costs $175 if you want to rent the clubhouse that we are already paying for. There is no trash pick-up, but you can pay a private company for that. They do an excellent job of plowing and keeping the roads open for the most part, during bad weather.

Besides the HOA fee approx $350, (did I mention that some owners are exempt from any paying fees?) we also pay over $1800+ in County taxes (including the STD). The county basically ignores us and uses our money elsewhere because we are a private community.

Not that I mind (too much) because I love it here. I have a private beach and it's quiet because my street backs up to the bay. You gotta live somewhere right? :wink:
 

SmallTown

Football season!
Speaking of taxes, did you see where Maryland is in the top 5 states with regards to the largest benefit of Bush's tax plan??
 

Frank

Chairman of the Board
Originally posted by Sharon
Remember when they had gates? Thank God they did away with them. We were paying employees $10-$12/hr for people to basically sit and watch TV all day.

Not only that - they had to have TWO people in them, at all times, and they had *CABLE TV* in there. If someone ran the gate, they had zero authority or capability to do a damned thing about it. When they showed the HotSpots for the county, it was shown that the gates DID not keep crime OUT - it kept them *IN*. The gates served NO purpose whatsoever, except to be an expensive inconvenience - it didn't keep anyone out at all.
 
B

bluebird

Guest
Our HOA fee is around $250/yr. The road is a public road so I think the fee won't go toward snow removal, road repair, or street light. There's no swimming pool, tennis court or any sport fields. There's a tot lot but I don't have kid. Besides, $250 for used of tot lot is ridicules. We pay trash removal fee seperate or take trash to a dumpster ourselves. It seems we get nothing. There're 50 homes so each yr they collect around $12,500. I hope they don't use this money for cruiship vacations.
 

jeneisen

Indy Bound
I just recently moved to Cedar Cove and our association is about $40 a year but I used to live in a neighborhood where the fees were 300 a year. Now they didn't do anything. I got fed up one year and spoke to the president. Apparently they are so over extended and worked :)bawl: ) that they couldn't find the time to keep up with the maintenance since no one in the neighborhood was helping. Well my answer to that was isn't that what the 300 pays for? To find people to do the maintenance and run it? Why should I keep cutting the grass in the common area and shoveling snow and pay dues? Well to make a long story short, the only way to get heard is to contact the founder directly and either try and help and change it or abolish the HOA all together. Its nice having one sometimes but it can be a hassle if its not run properly.
 

pilot

Member
Originally posted by tipsy mcgee
Well, I live in Wildewood and I pay $1,000 a year for it. Yep, $250 every three months. Takes care of trash, parking lot electricity (I guess), landscaping/blowing leaves, resurfacing of the parking area, the water fee for those that use the car wash area and I guess some other little things I may be forgetting. Seems kinda steep compared to others. I wouldn't mind if they could actually get the parking lot lights and walkway lights to work on a consistent basis.

Tipsy,

That's very interesting. I live in Phase I of Wildewood, and we only pay about $275 a year. Of course, we have to pay for our own trash hauling, but that's about $60 four times a year--it still seems like you're paying a lot more up at your end.
 

pilot

Member
Originally posted by Sharon
Remember when they had gates? Thank God they did away with them. We were paying employees $10-$12/hr for people to basically sit and watch TV all day.

So, have your rates gone down any since they did away with the gates? Just curious.
 

Frank

Chairman of the Board
Originally posted by pilot
So, have your rates gone down any since they did away with the gates? Just curious.

They're exactly the same - except they decided to EXTEND the five year plan on the Special Tax District to TEN years - yeah - they got more money per year after shutting down the gates, forced us to cough up more bucks for the STD, and they STILL needed more money.
 
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