The problem is that VA has very unsophisticated and weak laws meant to prevent abusive HOAs and their idiot board members from infringing on residents’ rights. Fortunately, the courts occasionally step in and address the worst abuses, but it’d be nice if VA got off its butt and enacted meaningful protections (like CA has, for example).

HOAs and boards in VA can get away with murder. And the incompetent third-rate lawyers who tend to represent HOAs are some of the worst, most corrupt idiots I’ve ever encountered in 20 years practicing law.

My neighborhood (Mt Rainier) has no HOA (we do have code enforcement but I think it's as incompetent as the rest of the city government) and a wide variety of yard care standards. I figure the trade offs are worth it. We have a lot of quirky, interesting gardens and some really beautiful ones. We have some "previously gardened" gardens, I call them, because you can tell that someone used to tend to it but pretty much doesn't any more. It's interesting to see how they transition. And then we have "boring, but tidy" and "boring and unkempt." Part of that is just what happens when older people stay in their homes without a lot of money.

Before this I lived in a neighborhood where almost all of the green space was professionally tended, and one of the things that happens really fast is that your eye gets used to some of the chaos and it doesn't bother you as much. Also, we have a lot of birds and bugs and other creatures (we'd have more, but we also have a lot of "outside" cats wtf). I really like watching them.

There is still kind of a hippie vibe going which means people let their grass grow long but they get really excited when the paw paws are ripe.

I like how I could put a vegetable garden in the front yard and no one would flinch, but they might offer me seeds.

Anonymous wrote:HOA's exist because humans have a tendency to be lazy, gross and selfish. Without them, there's no telling what your neighbors will let their homes look like. Yes, even in Potomac and Chevy Chase....where the lazy kids inherit their parents' multimillion dollar home and then let it go to shit.

I live in an HOA community, and I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love them when they enforce the rules by not allowing people to smoke in the community's public spaces, but I hate them when they tell me that I can't install a Ring security system on the outside of my front door.

I'm curious, why no Ring? What's the justification for that? I have six cameras around my house.

Anonymous wrote:Our HOA is pretty mellow. All the houses are well kept up. You can paint your door any color you want but nobody does. Specifically you can’t paint your house purple but no one wants to. Why purple? More importantly the HOA owns and maintains a huge green space. Keeps the noise down and is a park for the neighborhood.

Why not purple?

Anonymous wrote:HOA's exist because humans have a tendency to be lazy, gross and selfish. Without them, there's no telling what your neighbors will let their homes look like. Yes, even in Potomac and Chevy Chase....where the lazy kids inherit their parents' multimillion dollar home and then let it go to shit.

I live in an HOA community, and I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love them when they enforce the rules by not allowing people to smoke in the community's public spaces, but I hate them when they tell me that I can't install a Ring security system on the outside of my front door.

HOAs exist for two reasons:

1. To gratify American suburban property owners' feelings of entitlement with respect to telling other property-owners what they can and can't do with their property.
2. To allow local governments to save money by offloading provision of services onto HOAs.

HOA's exist because humans have a tendency to be lazy, gross and selfish. Without them, there's no telling what your neighbors will let their homes look like. Yes, even in Potomac and Chevy Chase....where the lazy kids inherit their parents' multimillion dollar home and then let it go to shit.

I live in an HOA community, and I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love them when they enforce the rules by not allowing people to smoke in the community's public spaces, but I hate them when they tell me that I can't install a Ring security system on the outside of my front door.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HOAs have positives and negatives.

I live in a neighborhood without one and some people in one of the houses have ten cars in their one house, probably at least three renters who are so-called "family."

Two of their cars are always parked in front of my house. There must be 12 people at least in the house.

I live in a neighborhood with an HOA and they can’t control the number of cars one of the houses has.

maybe not, but they can control if those cars bleed out onto the street which in turn actually does control how many cars are in the driveway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anybody doing any cool stuff? HOAs are anathema to cool stuff.

Tell me about it. Our HOA just denied my appeal for a very obviously temporary structure at the front of our house.
I do appreciate the HOA in general because without it, people would have 10 cars in their front yard. But it burns my toast that they have so much say over what you can and cannot do. I guess there is no winning.

....that's because your DH erected a hideous "disinfecting station" attached to your front door, and all your neighbors get to look at it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We used to live in a painfully boring perfectly manicured HOA neighborhood. We now live in a decidedly non-HOA neighborhood where houses all look different, some yards are perfectly manicured and some are “bee friendly” weed fests, wildflowers and fruit trees are all over, and there are actual bumblebees wandering around to all the many flowering plants and bushes. Each yard looks different. I absolutely love it and am thrilled to death I no longer have to cough up $350/yr for the privilege of having to get approval to plant a local bush or receiving neighborhood-wide nasty notes about weeding or barking dogs.

HOAs are all about uniformity and conformity. My non-HOA neighborhood is eclectic AND has much higher property values than our former HOA ‘hood of nouveau riche.

I'm in a very strict HOA and my yard is almost all native and pollinator friendly and I also have a native bee house. Actually, the HOA requires us to have at least 8 shrubs or trees on the property and forbids planting invasive species, which is amazing. In my old non-HOA neighborhood, an idiot planted bamboo which invaded the whole neighborhood. It took us thousands of dollars each to control it, we could never eradicated it.

It must be a relatively recent HOA document, in that it values things like native plants. The old ones from the 80s and 90s all required just massove of amounts of grass. This is one problem with HOA documents—they are very hard to change so don’t keep pace well with changing tastes or norms. Things like solar panels, which may be important to our future, or more environmentally friendly landscaping are good examples.

They have to have special permission to join up with the existing public roads.

As for “your rights as an American” HOAs are a form of government because when new developments are put in they have to form an association for roads, electric and other services. Even if the road is short.

Our HOA is pretty mellow. All the houses are well kept up. You can paint your door any color you want but nobody does. Specifically you can’t paint your house purple but no one wants to. Why purple? More importantly the HOA owns and maintains a huge green space. Keeps the noise down and is a park for the neighborhood.

I kinda like the the beat up houses next to new builds/gut jobs. Gives the neighborhood some flavor.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We used to live in a painfully boring perfectly manicured HOA neighborhood. We now live in a decidedly non-HOA neighborhood where houses all look different, some yards are perfectly manicured and some are “bee friendly” weed fests, wildflowers and fruit trees are all over, and there are actual bumblebees wandering around to all the many flowering plants and bushes. Each yard looks different. I absolutely love it and am thrilled to death I no longer have to cough up $350/yr for the privilege of having to get approval to plant a local bush or receiving neighborhood-wide nasty notes about weeding or barking dogs.

HOAs are all about uniformity and conformity. My non-HOA neighborhood is eclectic AND has much higher property values than our former HOA ‘hood of nouveau riche.

I'm in a very strict HOA and my yard is almost all native and pollinator friendly and I also have a native bee house. Actually, the HOA requires us to have at least 8 shrubs or trees on the property and forbids planting invasive species, which is amazing. In my old non-HOA neighborhood, an idiot planted bamboo which invaded the whole neighborhood. It took us thousands of dollars each to control it, we could never eradicated it.

Not 7, not 9. 8.

Anonymous wrote:We used to live in a painfully boring perfectly manicured HOA neighborhood. We now live in a decidedly non-HOA neighborhood where houses all look different, some yards are perfectly manicured and some are “bee friendly” weed fests, wildflowers and fruit trees are all over, and there are actual bumblebees wandering around to all the many flowering plants and bushes. Each yard looks different. I absolutely love it and am thrilled to death I no longer have to cough up $350/yr for the privilege of having to get approval to plant a local bush or receiving neighborhood-wide nasty notes about weeding or barking dogs.

HOAs are all about uniformity and conformity. My non-HOA neighborhood is eclectic AND has much higher property values than our former HOA ‘hood of nouveau riche.

I'm in a very strict HOA and my yard is almost all native and pollinator friendly and I also have a native bee house. Actually, the HOA requires us to have at least 8 shrubs or trees on the property and forbids planting invasive species, which is amazing. In my old non-HOA neighborhood, an idiot planted bamboo which invaded the whole neighborhood. It took us thousands of dollars each to control it, we could never eradicated it.