Homeowners Share Their Horrific HOA Stories

There’s no denying that people want to have a simple and peaceful life. However, no life is perfect because mean people exist.

The people from the Reddit Community shared their rollercoaster lives with their Home Owners Association. You might want to check them out!

1. Lone Tree

My Dad owned a house in an HOA about 15 years ago.   

It was nothing noteworthy until the vice president moved and sold her home. HOA required all front yards to have one tree; hers didn't the entire time she lived there. 

Sold the house, the new owner was fined for not having the required tree. She was a single mom who had just gotten divorced, so it's not like she had money for a full-grown tree. 

When my dad moved, he said that killed HOAs for him.

[deleted]

My house flooded 2 months after I bought it. HOA got involved and blamed my kids for putting toys down the toilet (they are too old for that). I spoke to neighbors and found out 5 houses in a row had flooded.

We all got together and demanded an investigation by an independent plumber. Long story short, our HOA owns the sewage and water lines under all the houses that connect to city water. 

They had not been repaired for years or flushed out, and were made of a material that eroded underground, it backflowed raw sewage into the 5 houses affected and flooded the grassy areas with sewage.

All my neighbors are senior citizens. The HOA admitted responsibility and held an emergency meeting to repair the damage. 

My house was done last, and I agreed with that because the other ladies are 70+ and wheelchair-bound or disabled, I'm under 40.

By the time my house was done, the sewage had been wiped up from the tile floor and treated with fungal chemicals, but the mold was growing in the master shower, and the carpet was destroyed. 

They had to replace brand new carpet in bedrooms, drywall, paint new drywall a color I chose, and re-tile my whole shower. When the old shower tile was torn out, the plumbing wasn't to code, so that was done too. They spent about $15k on my house alone.

I also told the HOA never to accuse my kids again.

MissMyndantin

I had a tiny tree in my yard that was showing signs of dying (it is hard to get stuff growing here in the Vegas heat..especially if you don't water it lol). 

HOA told me to pull up the dead tree or I would be fined. It was so flimsy I was able to cut it down with a handsaw. 

Got rid of the tree and the HOA sent me a letter to replace it or I would be fined??!! 

It was my decision to plant a tree there in the first place. How are they going to force me to keep a tree there now??

lifestyleoperator

My grandfather lived in a small community of one-story townhouses. There was a lady that we called the 'traffic Nazi'. There was literally one street that ran a block down the community and she was outside every time that we came to visit grandpa. 

She would run you down, yell at you, and threaten to call the cops if you went one mile over the speed limit. Walked around everyday trying to find little infractions to fine everyone with. Never saw her have visitors, probably just a coincidence.

For real though, she was SUPER impressive at judging your speed. 21mph? You're getting yelled at. 20mph? You're getting a sneer, but no yelling. 15mph or less? Wouldn't call it a smile, but the nicest expression I ever saw her make. 

25mph? Calling the cops who would have to come out, but couldn't give a ticket because there was no proof.

the_planes_walker

A friend of mine lived in an HOA neighborhood, but because this house had been in the family for generations before the neighborhood was even there really, they weren't part of the HOA, they never had to join. 

The HOA only formed a few years ago, but didn't realize that my friend, let's call him Bob, hadn't even been told about the HOA. Bob is single and travels a lot, but he comes home one day to find a total of $13,000 in fines for his house being the wrong color, his deck being unapproved, and a bunch of other BS. 

So Bob outright refuses to even acknowledge the fines, and just has the post office return to the sender.

 A few months later he comes home to see that his deck has been demolished and his house repainted. 

Apparently, the HOA had granted itself the right to correct any violations of exterior appearance upon failure to pay the relevant fines. Unlucky for the HOA, Bob happens to be a former lawyer.

He quit the practice a few years prior to help the family business, but Bob still knows how to lawyer. Bob sues the HOA, and the HOA smugly thinks it's a clear-cut case in their favor. Bob only had to say a few words in his statement, most of which was "I'm not frickin part of the HOA!" 

The HOA ended up admitting liability and had to pay a bunch of fees, and ended up disbanding 

Korlac11

I’m in one that was never turned over to the homeowners. The declarant has elected his family as board members. Since he has a large number of lots that are not occupied, he maintains voting control.

We have never received a copy of the books (which is illegal).  

Our HOA fees are considerably higher than other HOAs in the area. We have no reasonable explanation of where the money is going. My guess is that it’s being embezzled.

My state has no oversight of HOAs - so this cluster continues with little recourse for the homeowners.

contradictingpoint

I think it funny how everyone wants more rules and to have more 'community'. This is what an HOA is supposed to be. But in practice, you're paying for someone to tell you what to do with your own crap, and that gets really annoying.

My horror story is I see really nice houses for sale for a lot less than what they're worth and stay on the market for over a year because they're in an HOA, despite the initial buying of that land being extremely marked up and they have special rules that make a house more expensive to build there. 

All in all, a waste of money and a headache. I get to hear all about it from my brother-in-law, who built his forever home in one.

ochemimmunohem

My parents bought a house in a now HOA neighborhood but they were one of the first residents in the neighborhood. When they first moved in there were no other houses around them. 

Now it is a full neighborhood. 

My dad built a really nice patio out back with a pergola a few summers ago and a week later one of the neighbors came over, whom my dad had never met, and told him that it violated the HOA. 

My dad basically told him to go pound sand. My dad is a carpenter and the patio/pergola looks great, not trashy or makeshift in any way. The neighbor was just being a nosy HOA douchebag with nothing better to do. 

Nothing more came of it either. No fines, no letters, nothing.

[deleted]

I moved into a condo with an HOA about six months ago and just had my first real encounter with the HOA. They mailed me a letter warning me that I needed to remove my lawn chair from my balcony because it was partially folded up. 

Apparently, this meant I was using the balcony as a storage space which is not allowed. 

I guess it's correct, I was storing the chair I planned to use on the balcony when the weather got better... on the balcony. 

It was folded to keep the seat from getting dirty in the meantime.

[deleted]

When I was still living with my mom, I bought a boat. I always kept it at my dad’s unless I was going to take it out the next day. Well, one day I left it in the overflow parking and came out to a note saying I could not park it there. 

So my mom did some digging and found out that I could. It just couldn’t stay for more than 72 hours. Which it never did.   

So we printed the part of the HOA rules that states that on pink paper and put it on my boat. 

As we were putting said paper on the boat one of the HOA people walked by and mentioned that it could not be parked there. Well needless to say we proved her wrong right then and there. 

Was so glad when we moved out of there.

Likeaninjaturtle

At our old neighborhood, there was a section of the road that made a 90-degree turn, went straight for 3 houses, and then made another 90-degree turn. As you can imagine, it was quite dangerous if you were going above the speed limit.

One day, a stupid 16-year-old went 40 when she should have been going at 20, and ended up flipping her car at that spot. Her keys were promptly taken away from her.

  A couple of years after my family moved out, we heard through the grapevine that a woman had started advocating for speed bumps, as our neighborhood had a lot of kids.  

 She used the above event as evidence. 

As it turned out, the head of the HOA was this girl's mom. Speed Bump Woman was told "Oh, we don't talk about that here," when she brought it up.

Don't know what happened after that. At least the HOA in our current neighborhood consists of a bunch of old people who could care less what goes on.

I_Ace_English

I own a condominium, apartment-style individually owned units for those that aren’t familiar. I could regale you with so much craziness. The HOA itself is terrible, but even worse seems to be the management companies they hire. I’ll recount my first interaction with them.

I first became engaged when they slapped us with a $10,000 special assessment fee soon after I moved in. Went to the meeting and it seriously felt like I was on Jerry Springer. To this day I’m still unclear on what are facts vs speculations, but at least some of it was very much real. 

The night before this meeting, some angry neighbor types had brought in the cops and a news organization to publicly arrest and shame the building manager and assistant (staff members for the management company hired by the board) over a large chunk of missing money. 

Now the manager seemed like she was maybe into some crap, but this poor assistant was a woman in her 60s that had always been very kind and helpful to me and didn’t directly even do the budgets. 

She teared up afterwards telling me how it was the worst experience of her life, being strip searched and treated like a degenerate in jail. She quickly quit and moved to a new city.

Back to that night, there is a faction of homeowners out for even more blood. Reveling in the arrests and convinced that not just both the staff, but the board members themselves must be prosecuted as well. 

The claims made were mainly that the management company had been making unsavory deals with contractors, leading to overcharging for work that was often inadequate. The building was out of money and out of code.

The books weren’t kept well. Money was certainly mishandled, but the extent of the malice was unclear. In addition, some strange events happened such as a homeowner having new appliances swapped with old appliances immediately after purchase. 

Aka his property was stolen and something of lesser value was put in its place. But this whole meeting was a crazy, off-the-wall screaming match full of many other accusations and personal attacks. 

The board, clearly overwhelmed by the whole situation, didn’t have adequate evidence to prove their innocence and they had to play the unfortunate role of being the bridge between the management company and the homeowners. I don’t personally think they were in on it, but some did. 

They were accused of getting kickbacks and personal favors, with one member having claims made against her that she didn’t have to pay for her parking spot. 

She spoke up, at this point very distressed, about how not only yes is she paying for her spot and has multiple times shown the accusers evidence of that, but that these nosy “do-gooder” crapholes were verbally harassing her every chance they got. 

She shared stories of the awful things people said to her and broke down in front of everyone about not feeling safe or welcome in her own home, all while actively trying to fix it through her role on the board. In the end, the building manager’s whole family was tied to sketchy themes, and the charges stuck. 

Unfortunately, we were left footing the bill of getting our building into shape.

Every meeting is a crap show, but that one was definitely the worst. We are now onto our third management company after a few years there after the second left, I’ve been told because our building was so difficult to work with. I’ve personally been affected by it multiple times. 

There is one neighbor in particular (not even on the board... I’m sure she would be if she could get the votes) who is incredibly antagonistic and yells over every single talking point in the meeting as others are trying to speak. It’s pretty unbearable. Would be nice if we all actually had an equal voice, but multiple times they have caved to her demands because she is louder and meaner.

It seems necessary for condominium living, but the fiasco that I’ve experienced here has really shown how awful it can be. Part of our problem seems to be that the board members have other responsibilities, this isn’t their job. 

It seems really hard to manage something on this scale well as a volunteer and unfortunately where I live also very difficult to hire good management to delegate to without being scammed or mistreated.

Honey_Bear_Dont_Care

My old townhouse I rented was in historical Old Town Alexandria, so any repairs to places like that were tricky b/c many of the homes there are historical or some crap. 

HOAs are witchier than usual.

Raw sewage backed up in the bottom floor bathroom and flooded the hallway and one bedroom. It didn't come out of the toilet, it came out of a drain in the floor of the laundry room. He thought it was just dirty water until we saw actual crap.

HOA tried to blame me and my roommates. Turned out tree roots had grown into the ancient sewer line and when a very heavy rain storm soaked the ground that weekend...well crap piled up, literally. HOA was irate when they found out this was something they had to pay for.

When it came time for us to renew our rental agreement with the townhouse owner, who lived out of state, the HOA kicked up such a fuss, misrepresenting how it happened and basically causing such a stink by trying to act like the damage was our fault, the owner wouldn't renew our lease even though we'd been renting from her for years. 

We were the ones who had to coordinate with the plumbers and contracts fixing the townhouse, we did all the work to get the townhouse back in shape and sterilized b/c the owner couldn't.

Witch us on the HOA's say-so with 3 weeks notice and it's hard as heck to find housing in that area, especially on short notice. So I just moved away entirely b/c by that point I loathed the DC area and everything in it.

gambitgrl

My cat got a fine for getting outside ($200) and another $200 fine because he supposedly took a sh*t right in front of the HOA manager while she took a picture of him and I wasn't there to clean it up plus another $200 because he wasn't leashed. 

I called it triple jeopardy, never paid and moved out 3 months later.

[deleted]

Our HOA was all over us if the grass grew over a few inches tall and when someone hit our mailbox but couldn’t care less about our next-door neighbors letting their pit bulls loose (one of them took a dump in our garage and the other finally bit somebody after attacking their dog). 

Take note that it happened even though we had four kids 10 and under who could no longer play in our front yard.

[deleted]

Mine is still happening.

I live in a huuuge association (1 mile by half a mile, thousands of houses and apartments). Generally, things are great, but after Hurricane Irma messed up all our crap, the association turned a field near my house into a holding area for storm debris. 

It soon became a dump. 

Local contractors/handymen found out, and we had mattresses, barbecues, bicycles, toilets, and everything else you’d normally take to the faraway dump if you didn’t have one suddenly 20 miles closer and free - you just had to do it at night when the security guards were patrolling elsewhere.

99% of the garbage is now gone, and security is posted there 24/7, but the field is still bare and full of things too small to clean easily - broken glass, nails from all the fences that were there, etc.

I’m still pissed and the association still has its’ head up its’ ass about what it’s going to do.

[deleted]

Not as much of a horror story, but a dumb rule I can’t get over.

There is a rule in my neighborhood that I can’t park on the street between 12 am and 6 am. This bothers me for multiple reasons. Number 1 being nobody is driving on the street at that time so I am not in anyone’s way if I park on the street at night. 

2) During the day people are parked on the street while they’re being used, so we’re actually in people’s way. So this rule forces me to either 1) Have to wait for my parents to get home, causing me to have to stay up late just to move it across the driveway because they won’t, or 

2) park it outside my neighborhood in a field and leave it vulnerable to theft and having to walk all the way outside of my neighborhood and back in any time I want to come or go.

Also, my garage is full of extra furniture because my parents don’t want to pay for a storage unit so I can’t park it there

I also just can’t park in the driveway and have them later park across it because they like to have their spots, and I’m too lazy to move their cars when I need to go.

CaptainAmericasBeard

I don't know if it was HOA or more like an individual private thing for the area, but when I was younger, my mom bought a piece of property in a little subdivision of our town. 

We were going to buy a house that was already built and plop it on the land (like a doublewide trailer, which in my opinion can be a very lovely home). The group sent my mom a letter with a whole set of rules including no trailers.

The house had to be a certain size (no smaller), could not be prebuilt and moved to the property, had no more than 5 animals in the house (that included small animals like fish), and quite a few others. 

All of this was a problem since our plans to live on the property were pretty much trashed and we had 6 animals including my goldfish. 

In the end, my mom just sold it without ever having done anything with it rather than deal with all the nitpicky rules.

We later bought a house in a small community far out of town. The organization that was made up of all the homeowners out there wouldn't allow us to be members until we paid off the mortgage. 

But they were happy to tell us when the grass around the house was getting too high. Which was honestly silly because we lived in the middle of nowhere, nobody was allowed down the road unless they lived there or were visiting someone specifically.

Most of the land was dirt/rock with hardly any grass popping up between the rocks. 

Really more like just weeds than grass.

breentee

HOA attempted to hold a "secret" community meeting, where they'd vote on turning the large field and walking path everyone used for recreation into an RV park. It was "secret" because they basically told no one and put up the required notice in a place where no one would see.

As you can probably guess, most of the board-owned RVs.

Thankfully a few neighbors took notice and started knocking on doors. A crowd showed up and the proposal was starkly shot down. 

Freaking dirtbags.

CloudsOntheBrain

They wouldn’t let me add an acre of land onto my property. My neighbor owned 100 acres of land and was letting me buy an acre from him to add onto the 4 acres of land I already had. 

Since you can not build anything on 1 acre the HOA was refusing the purchase.

However, when some lawyer said it was ok they let me buy the acre. 

I think they just wanted to waste our time.

TheCactusClub

The condo association wanted to renovate the pool and pitched the cost they were moving forward with. There were a lot of developers in the building and they noticed that it was about 4 times the cost it should have been. 

Association says tough cookies, things get fun. People writing notices of what's going on with the association, the association is writing emails about it, and lots of sniping back and forth.

Then one day I was in the lobby waiting for someone to show up and the head of the association and one of the people calling them out ran into each other and they had to immediately get separated by security because they were about to start throwing punches.

thugloofio

I have three. Two about me, one about my neighbor.

I moved into a new construction neighborhood after picking out all the bells and whistles for the dream house.

About two years after I moved in, the garbage truck managed to destroy the garbage can somehow. The sanitation company replaced it, but in the time between the trash account being set up and the mishap the sanitation company changed the color and style of cans they provided.

My HOA told me that my garbage can was unauthorized and could not be left on the street on trash day because it was visually distracting.

I went to the city sanitation and explained what was going on, and they told me that they didn't maintain the old stock of cans and they had switched over to the new ones when the old ones ran out.

So I had to take a letter from them back to the HOA, who would not budge and told me that I needed to have the same kind of can as everybody else.

Everybody had their can in the same place on the same side of each house when it wasn't trash day.

So I ended up having to put the new can in the back yard and wheel it around the house at the exact moment that the trash truck showed up, and immediately wheel it back to the back yard.

I had to make special arrangements with work to be able to do this every Monday.

The second (context: I had the house built in 2002) I had a 1998 Chevy SUV, which was four years old. I received a letter from the HOA that said my vehicle, (which didn't have a single dent, scratch, or paint blemish and was washed and tire dressing applied weekly) was an eyesore and couldn't be parked in my driveway.

The letter referred to it being disabled/junker. Granted, I lived in a neighborhood of Mercedes, BMW, and Range Rovers but it definitely wasn't in the class of junk.

So I had to park my truck in the garage and every time I needed to leave I had to play musical cars with my (then) wife.

The third was for my neighbor. His lawnmower stopped running, so he hired somebody to come in and do his lawn until he was able to get it fixed or get a new one. He hired somebody, who did the absolutely normal parking of the truck on the street while they were doing the lawn. (It was just one guy) the HOA shows up, and demands the lawn mowing service not park on the street- but instead, park OUTSIDE THE COMMUNITY because his work truck and trailer "detracted from the classy and elegant stature of the community"

They called the police when he refused.

I ended up selling the house and moving out because there were 14 million other stupid reasons all revolving around the HOA-

I bought a house and while I was looking I absolutely, positively refused to look at a house that had anything to do with an HOA.

Toobatheviking

Not an official HOA, but the management at my trailer park was very upset with me. Why? I was simply exploiting a loophole. We are technically only allowed two pets per household, and I had 8 chickens. 

I was able to get away with this for so long (3-4 years), that I thought no one would ever notice. But if they did, I had a plan. Reading the lease rules, I came to the conclusion that my chickens were technical "livestock", and being that there was no rule listed against livestock on the property, I went ahead and got them anyway.

Fast forward to about eight months ago, and my manager discovered my coop. She had a very heated argument with me, but I kept my cool and explained to her that I was not breaking any rules. She left after about a half hour of shouting and general unruliness. 

Around a week later, at around 10:00 p.m., I heard my chickens panicking (being louder than usual). I assume that an animal is trying to get into the coop, as we have a stray/feral cat problem, and it has happened before, so I retrieve my shotgun and go out the back door and around the back of the house. 

And what do I find? None other than my manager, as well as the park's landscaping guy, tried to pry the roof off my coop and stuff my chickens into waiting animal carriers. I rack the shotgun, getting their attention, and watch them promptly run out the front gate.

Nightmarish behavior on her part, but I waited a week to see if anything else would happen, and when nothing did, I decided to let it go. She learned her lesson, and so did I: don't leave your chickens in plain sight!

Afraid-Drawing-9730

HOA of my neighborhood tried to tell me that my house needed to be added on to because houses need to be at least 1800 sq ft in the neighborhood. My house is 1750 sq ft. HOA was started in 2004.

My house was built in 1989. My family took the HOA to court, to make a long story short, the HOA had to back down, cuz their rules didn’t exist until AFTER the house was built. 

So, the HOA rules do not apply to my house. 

AmaranthRosenrot

I slipped in my driveway and fell and broke my femur near my hip and couldn't get up. I was lying in my driveway calling for help for about 30 minutes and I could hear people walking past but nobody stopped for quite a while. 

I eventually asked someone to call an ambulance as my phone was in my car out of reach and got taken care of.   

Spent a few days in the hospital and when I got home I had a letter from my HOA saying I was in violation for sleeping in my driveway in the middle of the day. 

So the people who walked by and definitely heard me call for help and didn't stop were from the HOA or reported me to them.

Zonerdrone

Everyone had to drag their trash bins down a hill to a curb where the garbage truck would pick it up. People would be slow to get their bins back after pick up. 

So the HOA dragged all the bins to the other side of the neighborhood and threw them in a pile in a random patch of public grass. 

So we pay these people to be childishly petty and antagonize us?

And their "punishment" only created more of an eyesore than bins uniformly lined up on a curb.

FireteamAccount

A gorgeous vintage wooden sled that has been in our family for at least 100 years was laid out one winter by my family. 

The most unfortunate event happened.

We received a letter informing us that since firewood is not allowed in front yards, we had to remove the pile from our yard.

Loose-Possession-68

My wife and I bought our condo almost 6 years ago and the guy we bought it from had owned it for less than a year. When we closed he said he had never got a key to the neighborhood pool when he bought the place from the previous owner but he was old so didn’t care and was never gonna use it. 

We said no big deal, we will just ask for a new one. Well, the HoA wants us to pay $300 for a “new” key because we had “lost” our old one and it’s some fraud prevention measure to stop people from selling their pool keys or something. 

We had told them immediately after moving in we never got a key and after 6 years they refuse to get us a new one. 

We just pick the lock and go anyway but if it was an issue I’d be furious at the ridiculousness of making us pay into the HOA to maintain this pool when we never got access to it even though it wasn’t our fault and probably not even the fault of the guy before us.

Manly_Mangos

Drones were used to make sure no one was growing vegetables in their backyards.

No parking along the street in front of your house.

Garbage cans had to be brought in within 15 minutes of pickup, though that was a different time each week.

My neighbor was sued (and lost) after replacing their old windows. The new frames were the "wrong shade of eggshell cream."

EhlersDanlosSucks

My home is in a rural and unincorporated area, so the HOA is a stand-in for local government in many ways. They maintain the parks and roads and local business permits with more power than you'd expect. They also care very little about weeds or trimming trees.

There is a lovely local lake with a small food cart as the only business. The owners had consistently refused to do boat or paddleboard rentals for about 10 years.

I attended a community meeting to submit a request for a permit to open a paddle board and paddle boat rental business. I laid out the costs and return on investments as part of the required process of making my case. 

How it wouldn't require any additional land than what was already set aside for commercial purposes.

It was rejected out of hand and rather forcefully. I again laid out how similar businesses had done well in other areas. I was told to come back to next month's meeting.

The next month I found the head of the board had partnered with the food cart to rent paddleboards. My business proposal was rejected as redundant.

Edit: The food cart owner was the son of the head of the HOA, in case you were wondering how he convinced the guy to partner up.

LostDogBoulderUtah

50 years ago a former owner planted two citrus trees too close to the property line. Neighbors didn't mind because they were happy to get free fruit.

Two years after we bought the place the HOA sent us a warning letter that we need to trim back both trees. But they don't send the warning in winter or spring. No, they wait until it's triple-digit weather (104 F / 40 C).

Nobody had complained about our trees. Some new electees to the board had gotten snoopy and overzealous.

So I head out back with a ladder and a manual saw in the early morning. The overhanging limbs violated the fine print so it had to be done. After the temperature heated up to 90 F I called it quits, then started up early Sunday for another round. The project wasn't done yet because it required too much sawing.

Sent an email to the board with a progress photo and assured them the work would continue to progress on Saturday and Sunday mornings until it was completed, but had to be spread over several weeks for (a) safety reasons, and (b) because the trash pickup bins would only hold so much.

Got an officious reply Monday afternoon insisting the board had always been diligent about this and it was up to me to finish the job pronto, since I had created the problem.

Wrote back with a second photo: a close-up of twenty years of growth rings on one of the branches. Added a note that we'd only owned the home for two years. Asked whether the board would assume liability for any injuries sustained if we rushed the job to come into immediate compliance.

They gave us six weeks. Finished the work in three.

doublestitch

We live in a historic district so the HOA is super strict about the exterior of our homes. Our patio door was warped so we spent forever trying to find the exact same style/color antique door to replace it. 

As soon as we did they got pissed we didn’t get it approved first. The only way you would even know we swapped it was if you were watching it happen.

ttrimmers

At the start of COVID-19, our 8-home HOA treasurer just… stopped collecting dues. No invoices, no reminders, nothing. It’s a three-year term that’s almost up, so there’s no telling what’s going to happen when/if they change treasurers. Nobody seems to mind, or even really talk about it. 

Everyone just seems to enjoy the extra $125 a quarter in their bank account, and there’s plenty in the HOA account to cover the expenses and insurance for years to come.

It’s me. I’m the treasurer.

HydroRyan

When I was married, we bought a house in a new construction neighborhood. When buying the home, we were informed that the developer would have full control of the HOA including funds until the neighborhood was done being built, at which time the homeowners would take control. 

We thought it wasn't that big of a deal, just be patient for a year or so. 

Well, the developer keeps buying acreage adjoining the neighborhood to expand it. Six years later the neighborhood is still expanding with the developer in charge of the HOA. Potholed streets, weeds, overgrowth, a dilapidated pool, etc not to mention the probable misuse (stealing) of funds.

startinearly

Not a horror story but we had a snowstorm that dumped about 6 feet of snow on us overnight. It was garbage day that morning, so our full dumpster was sitting at the road waiting to be picked up, completely covered in snow (as was everything else) and no one could get to their garbage cans. 

The snowstorm turned into an ice storm which took everything outside hostage. 6 inches of solid ice on everything, cementing the dumpster in place. The next day, the ice and snow melted just enough to see the lids, but they were still buried. 

Trash pickup was delayed because they couldn’t get the trucks through the snow because the HOA didn’t include plowing our community’s streets.

The next morning, we got a notice emailed to us about how our garbage had been sitting out for 3 days and that it needed to be moved immediately or we would pay a fine. They literally did nothing positive at all, ever. 

Total thievery.

Mellopiex

I got six separate notices for a parked RV in front of someone else's garage.

It wasn't my RV. It wasn't my garage.

It was parked in front of the owner's house for about 2 hours while he loaded it up prior to a camping trip.

The best part is that they photographed the violation and it's clearly someone else's stuff in front of someone else's house.

thecasualchemist

Not particularly a horror story, but we were at the community pool at the same time as our HOA president. His grandkids were splashing people, spitting at each other and screaming. 

Meanwhile, me my husband (25 and 27) brought 6 friends with us, which we had cleared with our neighbor, the HOA VP.   

The president came up to us and started drilling us about who is a resident and accusing us of not being property owners. 

I firmly reminded him that we are the VP's neighbor, who knows us quite well and has told said President about how we are friendly and respectful neighbors. He just huffed, walked away, and continued to scowl at us for an hour as we just sat in the pool and quietly chatted.

cruisegal224

As I bought my condo the hoa went from small local to corp management. And they are a bear to get anything done. They pay booklets out with bold cap lettering to pay on time. 

When I send my check (I refuse auto withdrawal ) I remind them of how threatening this language is and to stop using it. 

The following year it was reworded to state: “Please pay by —(date). 

It works sometimes on the blowback side

[deleted]

This one is actually really small but I use it as my example just to show how stupid they can be for no discernable reason.

In high school, my friend's parents were older and retired. They bought a new home and the dad was so excited to spend the entire summer landscaping. 

He put one of those little fountain features in the backyard.  It was bean-shaped. 

Their HOA made him take it out and replace it with an oval-shaped fountain pool. 

Only oval-shaped pools were allowed.

itsjustmo_

This isn’t even remotely close to what other people have to deal with, but my MIL died suddenly. We quickly found out she had not one, but two different HOAs. They had some portal to pay fees, but we obviously didn’t have access to it. 

Neither would answer their phones or return messages, outside of the very first one when I let them know the situation and they told me they’d get back to me about how we could pay. 

They kept sending overdue notices for months, with late fees, and we couldn’t get it cleared up until we got the realtor involved when we got it ready enough to sell. We had complete strangers in the neighborhood trying to help us contact them. 

How can you have TWO HOAs?!

twixt_hersheets

My place got flooded twice by my neighbors… the first time, the neighbor next to me had a hot water heater failure (accidental). The second time, the psycho lady who lives above me left her sink running (negligent).

In both instances, I had to put the claims through MY insurance and also pay my deductible because there was a fine print in the HOA contract that we couldn’t go against our neighbors.

The first incident was about 10k in damages (mainly flooring). The second incident was 20k in damages (flooring, electrical, Sheetrock, countertops, etc).

To top it off, our homeowners' insurance company (State Farm) dropped us after the second incident even though neither incident was our fault.

MrMisanthrope411

I had to get aggressive towards the HOA hag-nazi that used to stalk our old neighborhood. The HOA kept harassing me for vehicles parking on my lawn while I was on business trips, and I had to remind them that they weren't my vehicle, and I can't control what others do when I'm not home. 

Then, they continued sending me fines for "unkempt property" because my neighbor's lawn crew wouldn't mow the incline between our properties, which was technically not even my property. 

Another time I got a fine for "letting in too many people in the community pool." There were RFID cards for entering the pool area, except I never actually got mine and didn't want to touch that band-aid urine swamp. I was always calling and fighting these morons.

One summer, I had enough of the poor drainage issue. These ant-hill cookie-cutter sardine-can crap-built neighborhoods are typically excavated out without much thought in terms of proper drainage. It's a very common problem that the developer ignores and lets the homeowners deal with. 

I got sick of my backyard turning into mud every time it rained, and the water would build up against our foundation. So I built a short retaining wall on one side, and graded the side against my house and extended the patio bricks out to help keep the water from pooling up.

It was a weekend project with some simple rented equipment and two buddies helping out. No permit needed, and I made sure it didn't violate any of the 10-billion rules in the HOA handbook. It turned out looking beautiful and improved drainage so much that the grass grew better in our yard and our neighbor's yard.

A few weeks later I noticed someone walking around in my backyard looking in my windows. It was the angry HOA narc, some retired woman who would walk around and inspect everyone's property to send complaints to Berkshire Hathaway. 

I walked outside and asked her what she was doing. She said, "I can be here, I'm with the HOA." No, you are trespassing, lady, get off my property. She started rattling off all the violations. I had enough, so said, "Look, you can either get off my property, or I'll remove you from it." 

She gave me this nasty scrumpled-up frown and said she'd call the police. I said, "Oh, I'd hate for you to do that and not have a reason, give me a sec." I went inside, opened the nearest window, and racked an (empty) shotgun. 

She left in a hurry. I called B-H and asked if they condoned people trespassing on my property without asking for permission or stating a reason. They said "Absolutely not, we'll address this with [narc]. She should not be doing that." A few weeks later I saw the narc going through my neighbor's yard. 

We moved not too long after that.

[deleted]

They planted random trees in front of everyone's house.

Fast forward 20 years and about 1/3 are crab apples that start splitting at about 3-4 feet off the ground.

HOA now says trees have to have 6ft of clearance and that they aren't responsible for what trees you have, oh, and if it dies in the process, you're required to get a new tree planted of their choosing.

All in all something like 60 trees died and had to be replanted for no reason at all.

bingowings66

Received an email/vm/letter stating I needed to turn on the outside water spigot in the rear of my unit.

I’m an end unit and the front spigot is shared with my neighbor and for every day I don't turn it on it will be a $30 fine. 

I don't have a rear spigot.

FantasticPear

A close family member of mine is trying to build a home in a resort community. SUUPER strict HOA-type community. Fine whatever, except he has special needs. He's in a wheelchair because he's paralyzed, therefore he needs a custom home. Resort said no problem. 

Their builder gave him plans and none of it was actually good. Like they maybe complied with some ADA laws but never bothered to look at it to see if it's actually functional for a wheelchair user.

It's not.

Family member asks to bring his own architect, they say no. He reads by laws and CCRs or whatever they are, showing he's allowed his own architect. They allow.  

 Architect presents plans, they say no to one thing. 

He reads up and finds it is allowed. They allow but say no to something else. Back and forth for months with them being so nit-picky.

All because being in a wheelchair means your house will look a little different from the neighborhood.

As an example of what might be different and look different from the neighborhood: wider doors for the chair to get through.

There's no evidence to show that they are not being ableists. Also, no evidence to show that they are not just a holes.

Staplesmartly