They are far from ubiquitous here. You’ll typically find HOAs in new housing developments.
Most (single family) homes in the US leave the owner beholden only to governments. Some places are “unincorporated” and don’t even have a municipal government at all.
HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.
My best friend just bought an HOA home against my advice, but he’s terrified of doing anything with tools despite my offers to teach him. Of the dozen or so friends and family members I know who bought a home in the past decade he is the only one who was not actively repulsed by the idea of buying a home with an HOA.
What? This is completely wrong. HOAs do not maintain your home for you, that’s wild that you think that’s the reason for HOAs. I live in an HOA and they don’t do anything besides make sure everyone’s house is presentable (like no missing fence pickets) and upkeep the HOA center + pool.
It’s for the opposite of what that person said. It’s for the people who also want their neighbors to maintain their property. Whether that’s through hiring contractors or doing it themselves.
many towns pretty much require builders to make them so they don’t have to pay for the local infrastructure like roads and fire hydrants and they can require flood management and such.
Some places are “unincorporated” and don’t even have a municipal government at all.
The way you phrased that sort of implies municipal-government things just don’t get done in unincorporated places, but that’s not the case. Instead, it’s just that the county government handles everything directly. And of course, everywhere in the US is part of a county. (Except Louisiana, I guess, where they’re called “parishes” instead. And maybe Native American reservations too, IDK?)
HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.
There are two major purposes of HOAs:
To handle maintenance of shared or collectively-owned property, such as exteriors and common areas of condominium buildings, neighborhood swimming pools, private streets, etc.
As the last tactic of segregation: once de-jure segregation was abolished (1917), property owners switched to using racist CC&Rs (deed restrictions) to keep out minorities. The first HOAs (at least for single-family house neighborhoods with little or no shared property) were created to enforce those restrictions. Even after those were ruled unenforceable (1948), HOAs remained popular as a means of creating ostensibly non-racist rules and then selectively enforcing them to harass non-white residents.
And I hate to break it to some of the folks in this thread who think their HOA is innocuous and is just there to make sure everybody’s single-family house is presentable: if it isn’t reason #1, then it is reason #2. You were just too innocent to realize it.
Local governments encouraging them in order to shirk their responsibilities (e.g. they don’t have to maintain the street if it’s private), as @HubertManne mentioned, is also recently a thing.
Still, those reasons are both very new, and thus don’t apply to the vast majority of HOAs.
I own a home in an unincorporated area that also has an HOA, but ours is only for 3 things:
Yearly fire inspections (California)
Negotiating with the local trash company for service cost
Negotiating with the local propane company for lower cost
My super anti-government neighbors are still working to dissolve it, but it doesn’t even have any rules that aren’t “see county laws and fire code”, they just don’t like the $50/year fee
They are far from ubiquitous here. You’ll typically find HOAs in new housing developments.
Most (single family) homes in the US leave the owner beholden only to governments. Some places are “unincorporated” and don’t even have a municipal government at all.
HOAs exist to serve a specific subset of the population who want to own a single family home but lack the ability or willingness to do major maintenance.
My best friend just bought an HOA home against my advice, but he’s terrified of doing anything with tools despite my offers to teach him. Of the dozen or so friends and family members I know who bought a home in the past decade he is the only one who was not actively repulsed by the idea of buying a home with an HOA.
What? This is completely wrong. HOAs do not maintain your home for you, that’s wild that you think that’s the reason for HOAs. I live in an HOA and they don’t do anything besides make sure everyone’s house is presentable (like no missing fence pickets) and upkeep the HOA center + pool.
It’s for the opposite of what that person said. It’s for the people who also want their neighbors to maintain their property. Whether that’s through hiring contractors or doing it themselves.
many towns pretty much require builders to make them so they don’t have to pay for the local infrastructure like roads and fire hydrants and they can require flood management and such.
There are some that do, but usually they’re retirement communities. Your HOA dues pay for lawncare and clearing snow.
The way you phrased that sort of implies municipal-government things just don’t get done in unincorporated places, but that’s not the case. Instead, it’s just that the county government handles everything directly. And of course, everywhere in the US is part of a county. (Except Louisiana, I guess, where they’re called “parishes” instead. And maybe Native American reservations too, IDK?)
There are two major purposes of HOAs:
To handle maintenance of shared or collectively-owned property, such as exteriors and common areas of condominium buildings, neighborhood swimming pools, private streets, etc.
As the last tactic of segregation: once de-jure segregation was abolished (1917), property owners switched to using racist CC&Rs (deed restrictions) to keep out minorities. The first HOAs (at least for single-family house neighborhoods with little or no shared property) were created to enforce those restrictions. Even after those were ruled unenforceable (1948), HOAs remained popular as a means of creating ostensibly non-racist rules and then selectively enforcing them to harass non-white residents.
And I hate to break it to some of the folks in this thread who think their HOA is innocuous and is just there to make sure everybody’s single-family house is presentable: if it isn’t reason #1, then it is reason #2. You were just too innocent to realize it.
There’s actually a #3 that has become common in the last ~20 years: provide the developer with a continuing revenue stream via HOA fees.
Local governments encouraging them in order to shirk their responsibilities (e.g. they don’t have to maintain the street if it’s private), as @HubertManne mentioned, is also recently a thing.
Still, those reasons are both very new, and thus don’t apply to the vast majority of HOAs.
I own a home in an unincorporated area that also has an HOA, but ours is only for 3 things:
Yearly fire inspections (California)
Negotiating with the local trash company for service cost
Negotiating with the local propane company for lower cost
My super anti-government neighbors are still working to dissolve it, but it doesn’t even have any rules that aren’t “see county laws and fire code”, they just don’t like the $50/year fee
I’m aware my experience isn’t the norm, though