*Updated* MN advancing law that would ban the requirement of HOAs for new developments. Iowa does the opposite.

[legi]

I don't mind HOAs. They can be very beneficial if there is good leadership, which can be a hit or miss.

What I despise is when a neighborhood has an HOA, then a new person moves into this neighborhood and proceeds to break HOA rules. Why the **** did you decide to move into an HOA neighborhood if you don't want to follow established rules? Move somewhere else.

 

[KennyPratt42]

If you want a new home in the DSM area you will have an HOA. It is not optional.

Is this relatively new? I looked at some new construction in Clive in the last 5 years that didn't have an HOA.

 

[alarson]

Private roads and sewers are a terrible option IMO. HOAs are not contract managers, they don't know how to diagnose and scope sewer problems, etc. Leave it to the professionals.

On one hand, I agree, on the other hand I see this as cities answer to unsustainable development practices that tend to hit cities decades down the road as the tax base from lower density single family neighborhoods often does not generate the tax revenue to cover for its own maintenance. Cities doing this see this as a way to put the burden back on those neighborhoods

 

[TrailCy]

Is this relatively new? I looked at some new construction in Clive in the last 5 years that didn't have an HOA.

What subdivisions?

 

[KennyPratt42]

What subdivisions?

I can't tell you what the specific subdivision name was, we looked at a lot of houses in the Clive, West Des Moines, and eastern Waukee area in that time frame. Most weren't new construction, but the one or we two we looked at in Clive didn't have an HOA (we looked at one new construction in Waukee that did have an HOA).

 

[cybychoice]

My neighborhood has an HOA and while they are aggressive in selectively enforcing covenants against signs they don't like - they are absolutely toothless in going after homeowners who made changes to drainage that caused repeat flooding to a neighbor. Also useless in going after the municapality for failing to maintain a drainage area that is backing up and causing property damage/settling to multiple homes.

I do not give a single **** about whether my neighbor's RV sits on the driveway for 24 vs 72 hours but that's where these people spend their time and energy. Get rid of HOAs.

See I have small kids and I can’t see past the neighbors big *ss RV which means people driving past from the west can’t see my driveway. I’m always outside with my kids but everyone knows it doesn’t take long for a determined toddler to get away from a parent. I wish the HOA would enforce no parking your twice a year used items in your driveway or on the streets. Don’t give a **** about your house color or your landscaping but the RV is a safety issue. It’s not even just there for a couple days before and after a trip, the damn thing never leaves their driveway.

 

[CYdTracked]

I'd never buy a home that is part of a HOA. Too many Karens in this world that want to be the HOA police that I probably would not play nice with.

The small townhome complex across the street from me has a HOA and creates a lot of nuisances for the neighbors. The biggest one is they don't allow any parking on their private street so if they don't have room to fit all their vehicles in the garage and driveway they just park them in front of our houses. That's fine if they move them regularly but there always seems to be at least 1 owner that has some POS car they don't drive that sits on the street for weeks. Right now our biggest battle is 1 that has a family of contractors that have multiple work trucks and work trailers that sometimes will drop a trailer in the street right behind someone's drive so while it not only makes the curve they part it on more dangerous to see around but the drive they park it behind is harder to back out of with less street space too. We don't have local police in Grimes, they contract through Polk County Sherrif so if you want any kind of parking ordinance enforced you have to go through them not the city and they aren't exactly diligent about enforcing it even if someone calls it in. One of our neighbors apparently called in the big trailer they dropped that sat for over a week this winter and they finally came out to check on it and said something to the owners and since then they have been better about not parking their trucks and trailers on the street as much. The other annoying thing is when they clear the private street they dump a lot of the snow onto my property across the street instead of piling it somewhere within the HOA. It's not a huge deal I guess but annoying because I always have a pile that takes awhile to melt down then all the salt and crap they put down that they scraped up makes a spot in that part of the grass curbing that doesn't look as good as the rest of my yard.

The 1 eye sore this HOA also had recently was they had about 9 dead Ash trees they should have cut down sooner. They finally cut all but 1 down one year and left over a foot of stump without grinding them so they started to sprouts new shoots. We knew someone that was moving out of one of the units and she said the HOA apparently only budgeted to cut 8 of the 9 down and selected a tree service that didn't do stump grinding. She was not happy about it because she had 2 stumps growing in her yard that she wish weren't there when she had her unit on the market. Sounded like they don't make a lot of the decisions as a whole and just a few people that have lived the longest hold all the power for that kind of stuff. Over a year later they finally cut the last dead tree down and ground down all the stumps.

 

[coolerifyoudid]

Weird question, but do people have community pools without HOAs? I don't have one in my subdivision, but I'm just curious about that would work.

Are there property managers that require dues for maintenance, insurance, etc? I started trying to figure out how a non-HOA pool would be possible, and the number of roadblocks I came up with were plentiful. I feel like I'm overlooking an obvious solution.

 

[FriendlySpartan]

I would never live in an house that was subject to a HOA. Imagine paying all that money for a home only to have an arbitrary gov body tell you what you can and can’t do to it. Absolute insanity

 

[TrailCy]

Weird question, but do people have community pools without HOAs? I don't have one in my subdivision, but I'm just curious about that would work.

Are there property managers that require dues for maintenance, insurance, etc? I started trying to figure out how a non-HOA pool would be possible, and the number of roadblocks I came up with were plentiful. I feel like I'm overlooking an obvious solution.

The law doesn't prohibit HOAs, it prohibits mandating HOAs. If a development has a pool they certainly can have an HOA if they want.

 

[BCClone]

Weird question, but do people have community pools without HOAs? I don't have one in my subdivision, but I'm just curious about that would work.

Are there property managers that require dues for maintenance, insurance, etc? I started trying to figure out how a non-HOA pool would be possible, and the number of roadblocks I came up with were plentiful. I feel like I'm overlooking an obvious solution.

A pond. A pond is your solution.

 

[Gunnerclone]

HOAs are just another way to make housing unaffordable.

And to block trans, gay people etc. being able to move in to a neighborhood. Pubes want to test all of this stuff in court.

 

[CY88CE11]

I used to work for one of the suburbs of DSM, and I wanted to clarify something. Just having an HOA doesn't necessarily mean there's a board, dues, etc. The automatic creation of an HOA is for the purposes of assigning 1/X ownership of common properties (mostly detention basis) in case future maintenance is needed. If Iowa were to outlaw that practice, I'm not sure what the proposed alternative would be. If you force cities to manage the basins, everyone in the city is now responsible for the maintenance through increased taxes.

 

[somecyguy]

Your point is valid, and if that was the only reason for HOAs, I doubt anyone would have an issue with them. Banning them isn't the solution, but curtailing their power should be. The fact that an HOA can legally take your home if you don't pay fines is an absurd abuse of power.

 

[HarryClone]

HOAs are just another way to make housing unaffordable.

I lived in an HOA for ~5 years and multiple times the board (all three of its members!) voted to increase monthly dues with the only cited reason being that other nearby HOAs had done so. Not because of increased insurance, not because snow removal cost more... just because others did too. And as you might've guessed, the perk of being a Board member was waiving the monthly dues.

Moved about a year ago and I'm much happier doing my own yard work and putting that ~$2,000/year toward home improvement, mortgage and Ames Lager.

 

[BCClone]

I lived in an HOA for ~5 years and multiple times the board (all three of its members!) voted to increase monthly dues with the only cited reason being that other nearby HOAs had done so. Not because of increased insurance, not because snow removal cost more... just because others did too. And as you might've guessed, the perk of being a Board member was waiving the monthly dues.

Moved about a year ago and I'm much happier doing my own yard work and putting that ~$2,000/year toward home improvement, mortgage and Ames Lager.

That sounds like the county courthouse wage committees. Each office appoints someone (you think they will appoint someone who won’t want to give big raises?), then those people pull several counties from around them and say either we are behind them and need to equalize that and then give them X amount also. So the next county group that meets says, did you hear such and such gave Y (which is X plus the difference but they only look at the percentage bump total) so they run with Y. In the end you see the employees pulling some pretty solid increases due to stupid reasoning.

 

[Mr Janny]

I'd never buy a home that is part of a HOA. Too many Karens in this world that want to be the HOA police that I probably would not play nice with.

The small townhome complex across the street from me has a HOA and creates a lot of nuisances for the neighbors. The biggest one is they don't allow any parking on their private street so if they don't have room to fit all their vehicles in the garage and driveway they just park them in front of our houses. That's fine if they move them regularly but there always seems to be at least 1 owner that has some POS car they don't drive that sits on the street for weeks. Right now our biggest battle is 1 that has a family of contractors that have multiple work trucks and work trailers that sometimes will drop a trailer in the street right behind someone's drive so while it not only makes the curve they part it on more dangerous to see around but the drive they park it behind is harder to back out of with less street space too. We don't have local police in Grimes, they contract through Polk County Sherrif so if you want any kind of parking ordinance enforced you have to go through them not the city and they aren't exactly diligent about enforcing it even if someone calls it in. One of our neighbors apparently called in the big trailer they dropped that sat for over a week this winter and they finally came out to check on it and said something to the owners and since then they have been better about not parking their trucks and trailers on the street as much. The other annoying thing is when they clear the private street they dump a lot of the snow onto my property across the street instead of piling it somewhere within the HOA. It's not a huge deal I guess but annoying because I always have a pile that takes awhile to melt down then all the salt and crap they put down that they scraped up makes a spot in that part of the grass curbing that doesn't look as good as the rest of my yard.

The 1 eye sore this HOA also had recently was they had about 9 dead Ash trees they should have cut down sooner. They finally cut all but 1 down one year and left over a foot of stump without grinding them so they started to sprouts new shoots. We knew someone that was moving out of one of the units and she said the HOA apparently only budgeted to cut 8 of the 9 down and selected a tree service that didn't do stump grinding. She was not happy about it because she had 2 stumps growing in her yard that she wish weren't there when she had her unit on the market. Sounded like they don't make a lot of the decisions as a whole and just a few people that have lived the longest hold all the power for that kind of stuff. Over a year later they finally cut the last dead tree down and ground down all the stumps.

Are you sure you're not an HOA fan? Because the kinds of problems that you're describing here are exactly what a person in support of forming an HOA would be holding up as reasons to create one.

Not trying to call you out, but it seems like you are looking to add rules to the neighborhood which would regulate street parking, snow removal and tree maintenance. Those are 100% things that could be controlled if you were in an HOA

 

[coolerifyoudid]

The law doesn't prohibit HOAs, it prohibits mandating HOAs. If a development has a pool they certainly can have an HOA if they want.

I understand. I just had a side question regarding HOAs and pools.

 

[TrailCy]

I used to work for one of the suburbs of DSM, and I wanted to clarify something. Just having an HOA doesn't necessarily mean there's a board, dues, etc. The automatic creation of an HOA is for the purposes of assigning 1/X ownership of common properties (mostly detention basis) in case future maintenance is needed. If Iowa were to outlaw that practice, I'm not sure what the proposed alternative would be. If you force cities to manage the basins, everyone in the city is now responsible for the maintenance through increased taxes.

Storm water runoff eventually gets to a public water body, so it does affect everyone in a community. I'm not sure MN can handle this issue but Iowa cannot. Before you mention " high property taxes" I'll remind you my property taxes in MN are 50% *lower* percentage-wise than my house in Iowa.

 

[CycloneSpinning]

I used to work for one of the suburbs of DSM, and I wanted to clarify something. Just having an HOA doesn't necessarily mean there's a board, dues, etc. The automatic creation of an HOA is for the purposes of assigning 1/X ownership of common properties (mostly detention basis) in case future maintenance is needed. If Iowa were to outlaw that practice, I'm not sure what the proposed alternative would be. If you force cities to manage the basins, everyone in the city is now responsible for the maintenance through increased taxes.

Cities should 100% be responsible for this…for ownership, maintenance, and repairs of such land. What you’re suggesting (I think) is that there could be land that is the HOA’s responsibility, but there is no one set up to maintain that land…and no funds to do it. Then if there is a problem, all members of the HOA would be approached with a bill for repairs. No way. Let the city do it. That’s what property taxes are for…that’s why city managers have jobs. If they need to raise taxes, so be it.