HOA’s are legitimately the worst thing on earth. Prove us wrong (16 Photos)

1

They sent us a series of nasty notices to remove the dead tree in our front yard. The tree had lost all of its leaves and it was unsightly, apparently.

The catch is that they sent us this notice in November. You know, like, FALL. When perfectly healthy trees lose their leaves.

We pretended we didn’t understand which tree they were talking about until spring, when the tree magically came back to life.
– u/Phoencopterus

2

Fined multiple times and threatened with a lien by the HOA because we would not water our grass during a major, major drought season.

It was cheaper and easier to fight the HOA since the City AND State passed regulations banning constant watering and green grass. The City had Google like vans with cameras that’d be driving neighborhoods to catch violators and fine them.
– u/poisonivvy13

3

When we were privately renting in a townhome community the dumpster had video surveillance so that the HOA could fine anyone breaking the rules as far as what we were allowed to dump. One day both myself and SO get a bitchy call from our property manager alerting us that HOA has fined us $250 for illegal dumping, the property owner will have to pay it and we will have to reimburse him.

After racking our brains about what we could have possibly thrown out that wasn’t allowed, we decided to call up the HOA to see if we could see the video. They would either transfer us to someone else that would hang up, or their hours would change to where no one would answer the phone, or they’d promise to get the video to us the next day, etc. This went on for about 2 weeks.

Finally my SO got to see the video while I was at work. I texted him to find out what was on it and he said the video was of a middle aged asian lady throwing out a bunch of furniture. It was the stupid property owner’s freaking wife.
– u/silver_fawn

4

My HOA decided that my trim needed to be painted RIGHT NOW. Threatened a $100 a month fine if it wasn’t. The trouble is that it was January, and I live near Chicago.

As I was buying the paint, the salesperson keeps telling me that the paint won’t dry, it will just freeze, and fall off within 6 months. I was selling in the spring anyway, so I didn’t care. Painted the trim in a temperature of 7 degrees F.

Fuckers.
– u/Allthenamesaregone

5

HOA said there was a surplus of funds and sends out a survey to find out what people want the money spent on- swimming pool, basketball court, etc. A few months later we get a notice that they’re raising the dues because they need more money to afford all the new amenities we requested. The entire board was voted out the following year.
– u/transgander

6

I went away for a long weekend and left after work on Thursday. Late Friday afternoon, my water heater burst (in the attic of a three story home) and flooded my entire townhouse. When my neighbor got home from work he saw gallons of water running from underneath my garage door. When he realized I wasn’t home, he tried to find my phone number and when he couldn’t, he called the HOA to notify me. The lady that answered said that since it was “after business hours (it was 5:01 at this point), the matter would have to wait until Monday.” My wonderful neighbor ended up calling the non-emergent police line and they came and shut my water off from the street.

When I got home Sunday morning, my entire house was damaged and I could see my attic from my basement. After a massive panic attack and a frantic call to my insurance company, we started the process of repairs.

CON’T…

7

The cherry on top was that I needed to have a dumpster placed in my driveway and a moving pod to remove what was left of my furniture while they began drying out the house and I got a visit from the HOA. They didn’t like how “unsightly” my home had become and wanted these items removed from my driveway. I essentially told them that they could take their complaints and go fuck themselves with them.
– u/Dr_Bogart

8

Not mine but one of my good friends has a rather insane HOA. They actually used rented surveying equipment to determine that his clothesline was 1 inch taller than his fence and fined him several hundred dollars for some stupid “structure beyond the fence” rule they had.

Same HOA has someone walking around actually measuring the length of grass with a ruler and issuing warnings for mowing.
– [deleted]

9

OH WEE!!!! My good friend had a story.

Her and the husband moved into this gated community. She loves having a birdbath in her backyard…and she gardens a lot, so the decoration makes sense. Turns out her HOA figured out that she had said birdbath in her backyard. Apparently birdbath=lawn ornament, which was forbidden. She told them she would remove it. A week later she gets another message saying that it hasn’t been removed(it wasn’t). Obviously her and the husband put it together that the HOA is snooping in her backyard.

For a week, she spends her time outside sunbathing in the nude setting her trap. Sure enough an HOA narc opens the gate to their backyard and sees her in the nude.

Instant call to the police for privacy violations. The HOA gave up and let her have a birdbath.

She is now on the board of the HOA and they leave her alone.
– Flynn_lives

10

Not me but my sister. Her front door broke because some delivery people fucked up and she had it replaced. Apparently it was the wrong color according to the HOA and she would be fined $500 a week unless it’s corrected or REMOVED, because it’s totally fine to not have a front door in LA.
– unfeeling zeal

11

I wanted to tear out a bunch of evergreen bushes that ran alongside my house. We tore them out and were debating on whether to burn them on site or put them in a burn pile that I knew about 10 miles or so away.

I opted to just burn them right there. I have an open area next to my house that is about a 1 lot size. We put the bushes in the open, ran a garden hose out to the area in case it spread. Then I decided that I should get a burn permit. So I printed one off and took it to my fire station to be signed. I came back and put the burn permit on my steps and set the fire.

The bushes were fairly green so they didn’t want to burn aside from the initial flame up. I needed some accelerant. So I ran to the dollar store and grabbed some cheap lighter fluid. Came back and my buddy tells me that some HOA dick came by and told us that we couldn’t burn things. He said that he didn’t care and was calling the Fire Dept. About then, I hear the fire trucks getting closer. HOA dick pulls up to see what transpires between me and the Fire Dept. Fire truck pulls up, sees us doing every thing right, WITH A PERMIT. They turn off the lights and sirens and waved at us. HOA dick peels out and leaves. We all laugh.
– [deleted]

12

Not mine but a friends HOA.

Was watching a friends house / cat while she was away, left my car at her house, in her deeded spot, with a visitor tag on it, to drop her off at the airport, then went home to my house, slept, went to work, returned after work the next day to feed cat, check mail, and get my own car back.

NO CAR.

call her on vacation, she finds property mgmt phone, I call, they tell me it was towed as it had a flat tire.

$290 later, for tow, overnight storage, and a flat fix I had my car back.

FUCK THOSE ASSHOLES, the car wasn’t even there 24 hours, and it wasn’t flat when I parked it.
– u/mini4x

13

When we moved in we got permission to build a fence. They said cedar treated pine was fine. Well a neighbor didn’t like that and called HOA. We got an email shortly thereafter from HOA Pres that there were some concerns about our wood (ha) so he came by real quick to give it a good sniff to see if it was, in fact, not cedar.

He is now King Fence Sniffer.
– u/PadaWINE

14

My father in law’s condo corp has a shared pool. The old folks don’t like to share, so they have all kinds of silly rules, like no more than one guest per resident, residents only times alternating every hour, etc. My FIL can’t even take his own two grandkids for a swim because he’d exceed the number of allowed guests. So many rules the damn pool is usually empty.

Because the residents were still breaking the rules, they passed a new rule that if any resident was caught breaking the pool rules, they would close the pool to everyone for a week and post the offender’s name and reason for the closure on the community bulletin board.

Fucking children…
– u/DrunkenGolfer

15

They refused to let us have garage sales. My dad protested at a meeting, and the president said it was because they didn’t want “undesirables” in the neighborhood.

My dad said, “Oh so you mean anybody who isn’t white, right?”

And the president threw him out of the meeting.

We had a garage sale anyway.
– u/Sweet_Tangerine50

16

Everyone in our neighborhood received fines for leaving garage cans at the road.

It was trash day.