HOA Woes

Whoa, HOA, whoa.  My goodness are these just scams of companies.  In the closing papers for our house, there was a fee for HOA docs.  I provided most of the docs to my realtor, who passed them along to the buyers.  Apparently, I was missing the most recent financials.  So the closing company got that one sheet for the buyers.  $193.  Holy stink.  That's outlandish.  The transfer fee for us leaving and the new buyers now being responsible for the HOA fee?  $275.  FOR WHAT?????  What a racket.

I have never really been a big fan of HOAs.  And it continues to amaze me that more and more neighborhoods are built with these governing bodies.  We are abdicating personal relationships with our neighbors for a ruling body that tells us what we can and cannot do with our property.  All so that my neighbor doesn't ruin my property value.  A faceless, soul-less group whose sole purpose is to enforce rules based upon some group's idea of what makes a desirable neighborhood.

And what is more enfuriating than someone telling me what I can or cannot do with my property, whether my property conforms to their sense of beautiful or not?  They don't hold themselves to those same standards.  They don't necessarily maintain common grounds to the same standards they hold homeowners, maintenance has gone entirely too long before being addressed.  And the letters they send out to homeowners take such an aggressive and hostile tone.

I will be glad to be done with this nonsense.