They’re already opt-in: you opt-in when you choose to buy a home with an HOA

Also you can’t “ban HOAs.” It’s a contract you agree to when buying a house

A thousand times YES

Never understood how they gained traction in the US you pride yourselves on freedom and land protection but then allow some curtain twitcher to dictate how you use the land you paid for.

HOAs are great for enforcing Jim Crow laws privately, since the government can't do it anymore. Fuck HOAs

No they shouldn't be banned. You don't want to line in one? Fine don't live there. No one is forcing you to buy there. Let those who want to live there, well... Leave them alone if that's what they want. What does it matter to anyone else?

Please note I'm not trying to attack the op. My comments are meant for anyone trying to ban them.

For those that live in an hoa and have a bad board, go run for office and get the idiots voted out. Either that or move. Probably cheaper to run for office and then fix the problems.

Yes

You can have community orgs that don't make you pay fees as a condition of owning your home.

A lot of things an hoa covers is already covered by the township here so I'm unsure why you'd join one. But they're also not as common here because of that. I know some neighbors tried ages ago and something like 80 percent told those prone to screw off.

Yes. When we bought our first house we were told the HOA was optional. The day after closing they showed up and told us we were part of it. We needed to start paying our dues, and we needed a copy of the rules. That was $140 for a photo copy of a photo copy of a photo copy at least 13 times over. It was totally illegible.

My elderly grand mother was visiting, so we moved our car to the visitor spot so she could be parked in front of the house. We were towed.

My car had a flat, we were towed because the car appeared to be abandoned.

Everything about it was a nightmare. Shortly before we moved we found out the president no longer lived in the area, and was embezzling. He was reelected after that was revealed to the rest if the neighborhood, but no one was allowed to see the votes.

I have a likely rather unique viewpoint as someone who's HOA just had their whole board resign and be replaced after a scandal came out proving they weren't legitimate:

Ours basically only maintains the local park & roads & lights and negotiates fair rates for trash pickup and fuel deliveries for everyone, sort of like how a union can get better wages (if it's just for this purpose it's called a collective btw)

Why doesn't the city, you may ask? We're in unincorporated county land: there is no city to do maintenance work on these things, so without it things would be.... Worse, here

Though in most places yeah, they shouldn't exist

Currently live in an HOA that won't even let people put up actual privacy fences around their back yards so every fucking dog for 8 houses in either direction can see each other when they go outside and bark non-stop. So yea, fuck HOAs.

I think I can offer some perspective as someone who works in the real estate industry and is on an HOA BOD.

Of the hundreds of clients I've worked with, only 1 ever wanted an HOA, because he didn't have one and it was awful. We're talking fences laid on the ground, grass several feet high, vehicles parked all over the front lawn, the entire yard front and back being used as a landfill, you name it.

HOAs are essentially the smallest form of government. The HOA carries the force of law. This also tends to attract the worst people for the job. Think about it; who's going to take time out of their day to volunteer on behalf of the community? People who want power over others.

People are petty as fuck. One person receives one citation and they become salty and begin seeking out and reporting every single violation they can find, which just makes it awful to live in.

Could we ban HOAs from being included in house sales, and every time it's sold the new owners have to opt in?

That would completely invalidate the purpose of the HOA.

Yes, definitely. They’re just bullies trying to rebrand themselves.

Absolutely.

Conceptually great idea but they have people involved and people suck.

Yes.

HOAs, at base, are there because the municipality the development is being built in doesn’t want to pay for anything. Not paying is part of the deal worked with developers that now has inertial momentum to it such that it’s baked into just about every new development.

Houses, people, and taxes are added to the municipality with as little responsibility as possible. It’s a great deal, for them.

The grift is this. Normally, sidewalks, parks, and snow management fall to the city, town, or village governments. With HOAs, the town government gets to say it’s not our responsibility, let that neighborhood manage itself. We don’t want to pay for another park or police the snow, so build your houses within our borders, but leave us out of it. The town grows, has enough people to attract new business, but adds less new costs and responsibility than they otherwise would.

So now the people are managing themselves and the only enforcement on it is the risk of losing your house (having it sold out from under you to pay random fees), depending on how Karen the people in the HOA happen to be.

Example. You’re alone in the world. You get sick and end up in an extended hospital stay, let’s say 62 days. It’s a GI problem and you had an ileus. Your lawn isn’t mowed for the duration. You finally get a taxi ride home and find you’ve been fined $1000 a day for 6 weeks because your lawn isn’t mowed. Alongside the incredible medical bills, you can’t pay this. A lien is placed on your home.

That this scenario is even possible with HOAs is very wrong.

An HOA makes perfect sense in a condo scenario because people share walls and the HOA deals with building management. But with single family homes, absolutely not. At that point, it’s no longer a single family home but a condo, just not one that shares walls.

I like my HOA, but I live in a condo building. We all pitch in to keep the roof repaired and the common areas cleaned, and the few rules just make life tolerable in such a confined space (quiet hours, for example). I can't imagine what good an HOA does for single-family homes.

if you cant even decide what color your house is, you dont own it.

youre LARPing as a home owner while a Kouncil of Karens could evict you from the house you supposedly own.

I think a small community being able to have say in who moves in, asking contract term violators to leave in exceptional cases, while still being liable for discriminatory actions, can be a good thing. However, being able to fine members and repossess their property? That should be 100,000,000% illegal.

I’m surprised nobody has mentioned it yet, but HOAs are a holdover of practices to keep minorities from moving into neighborhoods. They still are sets of discriminatory practices, reinventing themselves in pettier ways.

Tl;dr fuck HOAs.

Imagine Bob is a city construction worker with a work vehicle. He and his wife both park in the driveway, so he has to park the work vehicle on the street. The HOA digs up a rule to keep slapping fines on his vehicle because Bob is “making the neighborhood unsightly,” aka neighbor Jane doesn’t want to live in a “blue-collar” neighborhood.

for regular ass house on a regular ass street, yes. exceptions are made for condominiums, apartment complexes and gated communities.

Yes.

Waiting for the inevitable showdown over having hens in your backyard. Instant solution to the egg problem.

I think we should just aggressively limit their authority. Essentially saying you can't make a contract that exceeds our defined limits. If you do, the entire contract is void, not just the parts that cross the line. Let's put them on eggshells so they don't lose what little authority we allow them to have. I live in a suburb with no HOA. Really missing city community though.

HOAs can be really good things but have all the same problems as regular democracies, mainly voter apathy. If the members of the HOA don't keep informed about the issues in the neighborhood, don't attend meetings, and don't vote, then you very quickly end up with a few assholes gaining power and doing whatever they want.

Most of the suggestions I see in the comments would also render HOAs powerless and essentially pointless.

Should HOAs be banned?

That's an easy one:

YES!!!

I think they have the potential to be good if they were way more democratic, but they're never run that way.

When I lived in a townhouse that was part of an HOA that had some nice things going for it. There were a couple tennis courts, a swimming pool, a communal garden, a club house thing you can pay to use, they regularly mowed the front yards and trimmed the front hedges and they would periodically repaint the fronts of the houses. However, while I was living there, the head of the HOA was a douche that kept misusing funds.

The house my sister lives in has an HOA that does literally nothing except bitch residents to upkeep their lawn.

Banned? No. Regulated to rein in power? Yes.

My HOA has mellowed a bit over the years. Nowadays, 27 years after the subdivision was built, they negotiate for decent landscaping service, and make sure people don't leave trash and junk cars in their yard, that's about it. I'm happy enough with how they operate. I don't own a lawn mower or a rake.

Some HOAs are run like mini fiefdoms, though.

Most HOAs are run by assholes.

But when run properly they keep neighborhoods clean and safe.

I mean I highly dislike them but also feel like many people like them for the exact reasons I dislike them.