Why I wont join a homeowners association

Painting an odd color can reduce your home value, again this is all personal preference, but just think would you really want to live next a house that you see all the time that is bright orange or something? Some people will not care, just as if you were to buy a place and they had really odd colors on their walls, however, if you have neutral normal type colors it will appeal to more and therefore be easier to sell. Being some one recently in the market to sell and buy, I personally have experienced this.

Here are some others:
Here are some actions that can help you and your neighbors maintain your property values:
1. Pay your mortgage and homeowner association dues on time.
2. Keep your home painted and in good repair. Paint your home a color that compliments the architectural theme of the neighborhood or blends with the paint colors of the other homes in the neighborhood.
3. Keep your roof in good repair.
4. Do not leave junk lying around the outside your home. Purchase a shed or other storage container to organize your gardening pots, tools, tires, etc. If items are worn or broken, dispose of them through your trash pick-up or take them to the dump or a recycle center instead of leaving them discarded around the outside of your home.
5. Make sure your grass and shrubs are trimmed and neat. Keep weeds pulled and the grass mowed a healthy height for the type of grass. Overgrown landscapes are habitats for rodents, snakes, and other pests. Overgrown shrubs and trees also provide hiding spaces for criminals.
6. Do not leave your trash and recycling containers out after pick-up. Besides being a visual distraction, they can become road hazards. Try to arrange for someone to return the containers from the roadsides if you cannot. Be a good neighbor and bring another neighbor's containers in as an act of kindness, especially if your neighbor is in ill health or physically frail.
7. Manage the parking of your family cars in a neat and orderly manner on your own property. However, parking your cars on your lawn destroys your lawn and can contribute to a decrease in the value of the neighborhood. Try not park in the road in front of your neighbor’s home except for special circumstances. Some neighborhoods have ordinances against parking in the street.
8. Keep toys and recreational items stored neatly in the garage, carport, or backyard. Teach your children to put away their toys after use and not leave them lying about the yard. If you have a boat or recreational vehicle, park it in an approved designated area in the neighborhood.

good info just if you are interested - http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/document_cd053

I got an HOA rules violation warning because the cushions on my wrought iron outdoor furniture were not "approved," even though the same color flowers in my neighbor's front yard are apparently acceptable. Rather than spend $100,000 on legal fees, I decided to put my cushions in the garage and only use them on weekends when the HOA ticket writer is not on the prowl.

HOA rules like that are on the borderline of stupid, IMO.

My parents neighborhood is like this. My father got a 'warning' for having a car parked 1/2" on the grass on the edge of our driveway, where my parents like to stack two side-by-side as the driveway widens out in the front.

Someone had to literally walk up our driveway and spy on it in order to even see this. HOAs are basically little power trips for small people who don't have **** else going on, and that's about it.

Cycloptichorn

Thank goodness I live in a neighborhood that has an association - but we did not have to sign anything. We pay dues to keep the common areas by the lake and the front pillars at the entrance neat and nice. Our money also goes to neighborhood picnic and garage sales and Easter Egg hunts. I love this neighborhood.

We have the occasional person that will paint their house a turquoise with purple shutters - but I figure that is what makes it an interesting place. We have a few older people that have a hard time keeping their yards clean, but we pitch in and take turns doing it. No one seems to sweat the small stuff. The ones that do, sell pretty quickly and find one that has that type of association. I am sure there are more gripers - on both sides actually - but ...I never hear about it.

I remain skeptical. Real estate agents always say that the three most important attributes of a property are "location, location, and location." It's not "location, color, and location." If a house is in a great location and priced competitively, there will always be buyers, no matter what color the neighbors have painted their house. Most buyers, in my experience, will go ahead and buy the place next door to the orange house and then complain about it incessantly, the same way that people who move next to an airport always complain about the noise or people who move next to a rendering plant complain about the smell.

As for myself, I don't think I'd mind that much. I once lived about a block from an old frame house that had been painted in horizontal stripes of increasingly darker shades of purple, from a light lavender near the bottom to a deep, royal purple at the top. I thought it was magnificent, and I made it a point to drive past that house so that I could take in its splendor. I don't know what the next-door neighbors thought, but I thought it was grand.

Well, I have had the task of trying to screen out f0r a client a neighbor's violently purple house, a tall one at that. Chamaecyparis (Lombardy cypress) were the solution, but a few years would have to go by. On the other hand, the client did buy the house.

If one of location descriptors is "next to the big purple house" or something similar, there will definitely be people who will say "the location's not good".

You can buy a house and paint it, but you usually can't buy a house and paint the house next door.

Different things matter to different people. Homeowners' associations are a great option for some, not so much for others.

I wouldn't be able to live in most of the associations in this region as they tend to have rules against clothes being out to dry, and outdoor clothes drying is important to me. I quite like some of the other rules I've read in those communities (especially the ones about where motor homes/boats etc are parked/stored).

Excuse me, I meant leylandii cypress.

See, that's my point: people will always buy the property next to the purple house if it meets their other criteria. They'll just complain constantly about living next door to a purple house once they move in.

My own anecdotal experience re: house color:

The previous owners of this house painted it a gawdawful color and I'm eternally grateful. It's a great house but the color was a huge turnoff for all the potential buyers until us (lots of cars slowing down for a look and then speeding off), and when it was showed to us the real estate agent went right to the prominently displayed paint chips (bland, unassuming colors) and the large, pleading note from the sellers saying that they'd already contracted with the painters and the house would be repainted (in the bland, unassuming colors) soon! Very soon!

The house had been on the market for a very long time at that point and we ended up paying significantly less than the original asking price. And the new paint job was thrown in to boot, though I didn't actually mind the original color that much.

We got in just before the paint, and there was a flurry of interest -- too late, hah! -- as soon as the painters set up their ladders.

I have a similar experience from the other side.

We decorated the interior of our first house with bold colors. Then we had to offer a "redecorating allowance" when we sold.

So painting your own house oddly can reduce its value; I'm not sure it affects the neighbor's houses nearly as much, though.

Not nearly as much, but it'd still bring things down via comparables. If our house sold for 20% less than its asking price because of its color, that affects the value/ selling price of comparables in the area (no matter what color they are). Depends a lot on how many comparables there are though (if it's one of the only comparables, that'd have more of an effect than if it is one of 25 comparables). (Could I fit any more "comparables" into this post?)

Before I retired in 2002, I was the Architectural Administrator for 3,000 homes and 21 homeowner associations with over 10,000 people, and one of the top-rated homeowner associations in California.

The rules are there to protect the property values of ALL of the homeowners. There are smart rules and dumb rules. We did smart rules and focused on helping homeowners achieve the best results by providing research information and personal help. Many of our rules were to reduce stress between homeowners, which they appreciated. In the fourteen years I worked there, we only had one lawsuit and the owner settled in favor of our rules after I privately convinced him of a solution.

Most homeowner associations are going to have to change some of their rules due to energy and climate change pressures. It will be interesting to see how smart they are about the necessary changes.

BBB

Hey Cyclo, the entire state of California has a leash law, and only in designated areas is one allowed to let the dogs run loose. It's a good restriction from my point of view and I actually have a dog.

I also live in a gated community by choice. I like that there is a guard and a gate to keep the area more private, I like living safer, I like a quiet neighborhood and I like that my neighbors have to keep their junk invisible.

My daughter's teacher has a beautiful old cottage beach house and she restored it nicely to accentuate this particular style. When her next door neighbor sold their beach cottage to a young couple, they gutted the house and rebuild one of these modern concrete boxes from property line to property line. It's really atrocious and I would be just as heartbroken as the teacher to have such an ugly monstrosity next door.

Although I do believe that everyone has the right to build, paint and live
as they want, for me personally, I prefer the more aesthetic approach.

Well, to each his own. I probably would be building the ultramodern concrete box myself.

Cycloptichorn

I know you would

I'm not saying it is the most important, but a factor. And it depends so much on the community. A higher up scale community with an odd ball house next to you with have a much greater impact than a different mixed sort of neighborhood.

Just remember you can always change things about a house you buy - but you can't change the neighbors.

So here is a case where it did affect the property value - thank goodness to your benefit!

I can't find the story, but I remember reading this in the paper a few years ago...

An Hispanic woman in Miami was told she couldn't paint her house some bright color, so she ask for and received samples of every color she could use....and used all of them on her house.

Actually it was pretty nice, all the colors were pastels, and like a victorian house, she used some of the colors in small places, and it all looked coordinated, albeit very festive.

And a hispanic author, Sandra Cisneros, I think is her name, got imbroiled in a bruhaha in San Antonio's historic district re painting her house purple. I don't remember how that came out - it was somewhere between five and ten years ago.

On the modern house built to the lot lines, I'm a little dumbfounded.. are there no setback lines in (was it?) San Diego? Does the fire department not care? In Venice, which has very small lot sizes, there were regular zoning rules as well as Coastal Zone land use rules, so that buildings within various neighborhoods had certain possible "envelopes" - in our area of Venice (there were several districts) there was an insistence on "articulation" (no boxes), height limitations, and certainly setback lines, and, as I mentioned before, no cosmetic rules. All of that was worked out in a whole bunch of totally hairy community meetings.