I am so amazed at how much power HOA have. I can agree to some rules and homes are somewhat better kept in neighborhoods with HOA but I can't stand being told what I can and can't do with my property. My neighborhood is well kept and we do not have an HOA. I guess I'm lucky. I still cannot believe some of the posts I read on here that people have to get HOA approval to put a pool in their own backyard!!! This is absolutely mind blowing to me!! Anyways, rant over.
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I totally understand where you're coming from as I grew up in NY and I had never heard of an HOA prior to coming to the west. But I would like to offer a counter-point since I LOVE living in an HOA (full disclosure - I'm the vice president of our HOA board).
Everyone that moves into an HOA signs a legally binding contract called the "Covenants, Conditions & Restrictions" or CC&R's. So, if a home buyer chooses to live in an HOA, then, before buying, they should obtain a copy of the CC&R's and read it (in fact, real estate agents are required to provide potential home buyers with the CC&R's prior to entering into contract). If you feel you can't abide by the CC&R's, then it makes no sense to buy the home. CC&R's protect the value of the community property (common spaces, playgrounds, community pools, etc) and individual homes by enforcing restrictions and requiring each homeowner to abide by a set of commonly adopted and approved community standards. These standards are not "imposed" by an arbitrary body but are typically developed and enacted by the entire community. All changes and updates are required to be approved by a vote of the entire community and the HOA Board is composed entirely of community homeowners. So, in essence, nothing happens in the community without the approval of the homeowners themselves. While it seems like that might take away some "rights" you have to your property, in essence the restrictions are typically fairly light & easy to abide by, only apply to community property or parts of your property that are visible to the community and are things most people consider common sense anyway (like not having a half-assembled car up on blocks in your front yard).
For example, my neighbor's son decided he was going to help out his parents and trim the trees on their property for them. When he was done, he left his landscape trailer, full of tree debris, parked in their driveway for over three weeks. Our CC&Rs clearly flag that as a violation and, while we let it go for 3 weeks, we could not let it go indefinitely. The homeowner was notified of the unsightly infraction and, without any threats of fines being leveled (which we were well within our rights as a community to impose), the trailer was gone the very next day. So, in this case, the CC&R's did what they were supposed to do. If we lived in a neighborhood with no HOA, then that neighbor of mine could have easily left that ugly trailer in the front of his property indefinitely and there would be no recourse.
In another example, the CC&R's clearly state that all homeowners must keep their front yards rocked. There are two homes in our community where the front yards (dating back to the original homebuyers) were never rocked. Rocking a yard is a good thing here because of dust and water erosion, but it is expensive (several thousand dollars to add landscape rocks to a large front yard). Because we understand the financial burden that is, the Board has allowed those yards to go un-rocked but we are looking at ways of using our HOA's savings (we all pay a monthly HOA fee) to help-out those homeowners. My yard is rocked; it cost a lot of money. Now I could be ticked off that those neighbors of mine are getting "helped out" when I did not, especially using HOA funds that I partially pay into. But I choose to look at it this way - their yards are ugly and that ugliness lowers the value of my property. Water erosion when it rains sends barrels full of debris into other people's yards and the common street we all share because those fronts are not rocked. So this is a community issue that we're all happy to work on because it affects everyone. Again, if we did not have an HOA, everyone around those two homes would have absolutely no recourse in fixing the problem and would have to live with neighbors not keeping up their properties.
Now I do agree that there are HOA's that go a bit overboard in their CC&R's and you could always land in a community with a "Gestapo-minded" board president who walks around the neighborhood looking for trouble. That does happen and is annoying but is taken care of by the board election process. I happen to live in a 12 home community, so we all know each other and we rarely have to bring things up at community meetings. Larger HOAs (like ones with 50 or more homes) tend to be more restrictive to live in and it's harder (or, I should say, takes more effort) to get involved in the HOA but it's not impossible.
One interesting area of HOA laws is that most states (especially here in AZ) have adopted what are called "solar access laws" which effectively strip HOAs of any ability to impede a homeowner from installing either solar electric or solar heating systems (roof-top or land-based). This was done specifically to make it easier for homeowners to install solar without legal hang-ups from restrictive CC&Rs. I happen to agree with solar access laws in general but I know many "older" HOA community boards that hate them. Unfortunately for some, there's no analogue to access-laws for pool installations (although in our CC&R's there no direct restriction on pools just a requirement for sign-off from the architectural review committee to make sure you're not installing a 72-ft water slide that is 3 stories high).
Sorry for the long counter-point, but I hope I was able to at least demonstrate that there is some value to being in an HOA. But I do understand that HOA's are not for everyone and I know enough people that hate their HOA boards because of some of the personalities on them. So, if we ever moved, I would always do lots of homework prior to buying a home in an HOA.
, so how promising are the floor cleaning system seen in the pictures? I've seen several with it around the forum but down here where I'm from I can't say they are very popular. Looks like an awesome build!
