Why wouldn't it be legal? Reminds me of those 'non-profit' charter schools where the 'school' entity pays huge rent and/or other admin type costs to a very much for-profit entity controlled by the same people. So they set the price at what they want and extract what they can.
The homes in this neighborhood are fairly average single-family homes, ~$400k, roughly the median home price in the US now. There's no shared roof or walls that would be the HOAs responsibility. There's no community pool. Does not appear to be gated. Only expense as far as I can tell is the periodically repaving street, salting, perhaps some gardening -- $2500/mo, even $1250/mo is not supported by those expenses.
Who is the developer? What is their financial situation? Did they take on debt to finance development when rates were near 0% when this development was built ~2020, now that debt has come due but rates are > 5%, and they cannot pay, so they figure they can up the HOA to drop the property prices, evict the homeowners, then drop the HOA again and resell the houses for a profit to shore up their balance sheet?
The board is shooting themselves in the foot here. You raise fees enough then no one will be able to afford living there. If no one is able to afford it, then the board is exacerbating the problem they’re attempting to solve in the first place with the fee increase, which is legal collection fees from delinquent owners.
Is there oil underneath or will this be a good place to build a datacenter? This is obviously intentional. The foreclosed properties will be sold for the price of the debt, probably back to the developer.
What the hell is the story behind this? $2500 a month for the HOA when it used to be $150? This won’t end well for the board or the developer. You mess with someone’s home then you get a nice in-person visit.
> SHERRILLS FORD, N.C. — Homeowners in Catawba County said they could face foreclosure or bankruptcy as HOA fees are set to rise from $1,250 to $2,500 a month.
The HOA is meeting Monday night to raise the dues.
The concern from homeowners is that liens will be put on their homes, and they could face bankruptcy or foreclosure.
READ MORE: Magnolia Cove homeowners face massive jump in monthly HOA dues
“It’s ridiculous,” said Diana Brokaw, a homeowner.
Brokaw still can’t believe she and the other 22 homeowners in Magnolia Cove are facing a sixfold increase in HOA fees by the first of the year.
“Who has $90,000 extra a year to pay for fees that you’re just told are going to happen,” she said.
Brokaw isn’t alone. Down the street, Jill Menson and her husband bought their home believing it would be their last. She said the homeowner’s fee five years ago was $158, but it shot up to more than $1,200 this summer with a $10,000 assessment. Now the couple is facing fees of $2,500 a month.
“We are going to be forced out with nowhere to go, because no one is going to get a dime for their houses even if we put them on the market,” Menson said.
According to an email from the Magnolia Cove HOA Board of Directors, “The increase is mainly driven by the Association’s legal and collection costs from owner accounts that haven’t been paid. Owners who stay current help bring those costs down over time.”
The North Carolina Attorney General told Channel 9 that there are no statutes that limit how much an HOA can charge in fees, but boards must comply with their governing documents. The homeowners say the developer, who owns the majority of the houses, controls the HOA.
“It’s not right,” Menson said. “Nobody is helping us. We’re not getting any help from the government agencies. No one is helping us.”
Those homeowners said the meeting Monday night will be held over Zoom, and they can’t ask questions of the board. The HOA said homeowners could submit questions ahead of time. The deadline was Friday.
On Monday, the HOA voted to raise fees from $1,250 to $2,500.
Many people ask Action 9 attorney Jason Stoogenke about their rights when it comes to HOAs.
It can be hard to win a fight with your board.
Stoogenke said if you have an issue:
Try to get the support of your neighbors. Strength in numbers.
Try meeting with the board as a group, not by yourself.
You may have to wait for elections and vote in new board members
The initial copy of this story stated that HOA fees were originally proposed to rise to $7,500 a month. The HOA voted to raise fees to $2,500 a month during Monday night’s meeting, after this story first aired.
It's not that hard in the USA. If you don't like driving or have some pseudomoral dilemma over that, I don't know what to tell you. It's hardly a downside.
For those saying dissolve the HOA or don't buy in an HOA. FTA: The developer, who owns the majority of the houses controls the HOA.
It is not easy to buy a house in the US that is not controlled by an HOA. A lot of houses are in an HOA and you really have to go out of your way to avoid it. If you're looking in a suburb, exurb, it's 100% going to be an HOA. It's by design:
HOAs are tightly connected to racial segregation, racially restrictive housing, and redlining. Read up on those and it will make you sick to your stomach.
Controlling what homeowners can do to the exterior of their houses has been the main theme of many HOAs. Combined with this, racist policies and architectural uniformity were historically intertwined. They were both done for the same reason: protecting property values.
Are you angry yet?
Some HOAs do OK and are kind of like a collective: They form their own street cleaning, street light installation and electricity bills, snow plow, garbage pickup, lawn mowing all for a deeply discounted monthly fee of sometimes just a few $10s a month.
I feel nowadays it’s the opposite. I’m willing to pay a premium for a house that is not within an HOA.
A house being part of an HOA decreases its value to me.
> Read the article. The HOA was a few hundred a month. Now it's 10x as much.
Read my comment, I specifically mentioned about not getting a house with an HOA in the first place. Again, if you chose a house that's in a HOA, it's on you.
> This is beyond predatory.
Of course, they're predatory, what did you think was it about? It's always someone with a power trip sitting on their boards. For a "HN contrarian", you sure get upset about a logical argument.
People could vote to weaken HOAs so that people could have a way to leave HOAs when they are not providing value to home owners. We don't have to let corporate owners of residential property or landlords that do not live in their properties have any HOA voting rights. HOAs are currently used by builders to control homeowners.
This should flip to the HOA being used by residents to control builders and landlords. Builders would stop using HOAs if they could not control them, just like it used to be when houses were built just fine without HOAs.
Voting for billionaire conspiracies is more important to a lot of people than voting for themselves.
What terms justify "absurd" rent? Where do you draw the line? Doesn't the fact that YOU would need to deem it absurd mean the terms aren't reasonable to you?
You should work with neighbors to control the HOA board. That means running candidates and getting them elected. Depending on how corrupt the builder is this can be hard to do and may take legal action (suing to enforce the HOA governing rules).
But on its face it seems suicidal to cause the home owners to go bankrupt and leave your properties. Unless of course you'd like to tear down the development and build a big fat datacenter on it (the only building that is going on these days) which would net a profit. As grifts go it would kind of amazingly evil you get as much money as you can out of making your homeowners broke followed by selling the land out of foreclosure to build a data center on it and making a profit on that too.
They don't have voting power nor the power to air grievances in the HOA meetings.
States need to step in and pass laws against this. Georgia recently passed laws to prohibit what HOAs can do and how much they can charge. It also made them register with the state and remain in good standing to be able to collect dues at all. Other states need to follow suit.
> The homeowners say the developer, who owns the majority of the houses, controls the HOA.
It's a 51% attack in real life.
That's a cool hack, but of course, that's going to be legal isn't it?
Why wouldn't it be legal? Reminds me of those 'non-profit' charter schools where the 'school' entity pays huge rent and/or other admin type costs to a very much for-profit entity controlled by the same people. So they set the price at what they want and extract what they can.
Something doesn't add up here.
https://www.terravistarealty.com/search/NC/Sherrills-Ford/45...
The homes in this neighborhood are fairly average single-family homes, ~$400k, roughly the median home price in the US now. There's no shared roof or walls that would be the HOAs responsibility. There's no community pool. Does not appear to be gated. Only expense as far as I can tell is the periodically repaving street, salting, perhaps some gardening -- $2500/mo, even $1250/mo is not supported by those expenses.
Who is the developer? What is their financial situation? Did they take on debt to finance development when rates were near 0% when this development was built ~2020, now that debt has come due but rates are > 5%, and they cannot pay, so they figure they can up the HOA to drop the property prices, evict the homeowners, then drop the HOA again and resell the houses for a profit to shore up their balance sheet?
The board is shooting themselves in the foot here. You raise fees enough then no one will be able to afford living there. If no one is able to afford it, then the board is exacerbating the problem they’re attempting to solve in the first place with the fee increase, which is legal collection fees from delinquent owners.
Is there oil underneath or will this be a good place to build a datacenter? This is obviously intentional. The foreclosed properties will be sold for the price of the debt, probably back to the developer.
Can the board load the houses with fees to get them for essentially free, then turn around, drop the fees, and sell them?
Pro Tip:
Always tick the "No HOA" box on Zillow when searching for homes.
What the hell is the story behind this? $2500 a month for the HOA when it used to be $150? This won’t end well for the board or the developer. You mess with someone’s home then you get a nice in-person visit.
If you click on one of the related articles it says that they wanted to raise it to $7500 but "compromised" on $2500. So it's actually a bargain!
[dead]
WSOC-TV Eyewitness News Charlotte
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> SHERRILLS FORD, N.C. — Homeowners in Catawba County said they could face foreclosure or bankruptcy as HOA fees are set to rise from $1,250 to $2,500 a month.
The HOA is meeting Monday night to raise the dues.
The concern from homeowners is that liens will be put on their homes, and they could face bankruptcy or foreclosure.
READ MORE: Magnolia Cove homeowners face massive jump in monthly HOA dues “It’s ridiculous,” said Diana Brokaw, a homeowner.
Brokaw still can’t believe she and the other 22 homeowners in Magnolia Cove are facing a sixfold increase in HOA fees by the first of the year.
“Who has $90,000 extra a year to pay for fees that you’re just told are going to happen,” she said.
Brokaw isn’t alone. Down the street, Jill Menson and her husband bought their home believing it would be their last. She said the homeowner’s fee five years ago was $158, but it shot up to more than $1,200 this summer with a $10,000 assessment. Now the couple is facing fees of $2,500 a month.
“We are going to be forced out with nowhere to go, because no one is going to get a dime for their houses even if we put them on the market,” Menson said.
According to an email from the Magnolia Cove HOA Board of Directors, “The increase is mainly driven by the Association’s legal and collection costs from owner accounts that haven’t been paid. Owners who stay current help bring those costs down over time.”
The North Carolina Attorney General told Channel 9 that there are no statutes that limit how much an HOA can charge in fees, but boards must comply with their governing documents. The homeowners say the developer, who owns the majority of the houses, controls the HOA.
“It’s not right,” Menson said. “Nobody is helping us. We’re not getting any help from the government agencies. No one is helping us.”
Those homeowners said the meeting Monday night will be held over Zoom, and they can’t ask questions of the board. The HOA said homeowners could submit questions ahead of time. The deadline was Friday.
On Monday, the HOA voted to raise fees from $1,250 to $2,500.
Many people ask Action 9 attorney Jason Stoogenke about their rights when it comes to HOAs.
It can be hard to win a fight with your board.
Stoogenke said if you have an issue:
Try to get the support of your neighbors. Strength in numbers. Try meeting with the board as a group, not by yourself. You may have to wait for elections and vote in new board members The initial copy of this story stated that HOA fees were originally proposed to rise to $7,500 a month. The HOA voted to raise fees to $2,500 a month during Monday night’s meeting, after this story first aired.
Thank you, this was very helpful to me! Hopefully it will be helpful to many other people as well.
cant you leave the association? don't be associated no more
You can but the property can't. Look up covenants that run with the land.
You can only leave by selling your house which is what they did yes.
No one will buy your property when they see the HOA monthly dues are that high.
Freddie and Fannie won't even underwrite loans if the HOA dues are that high. That takes 70% of home buyers out of the market.
With no buyers and no ability to pay the HOA dues, homes go into foreclosure and the HOA gets to take possession of the homes.
This is beyond evil and states need to outlaw this behavior.
Honestly, there's got to be something illegal about this. It's basically theft:
1. Get control of 51% of a HOA.
2. Raise the fees to an unaffordable level. Trap 49% of the homeowners, and foreclose on their "debt."
3. Get control of the other 49% of the properties, basically for free.
4. (speculating) Dissolve the HOA, and return its "assets" to the "owners" (you), so you get all the fees you "paid" back.
Leave the city and don't buy into an HOA.
It's not that hard in the USA. If you don't like driving or have some pseudomoral dilemma over that, I don't know what to tell you. It's hardly a downside.
For those saying dissolve the HOA or don't buy in an HOA. FTA: The developer, who owns the majority of the houses controls the HOA.
It is not easy to buy a house in the US that is not controlled by an HOA. A lot of houses are in an HOA and you really have to go out of your way to avoid it. If you're looking in a suburb, exurb, it's 100% going to be an HOA. It's by design:
HOAs are tightly connected to racial segregation, racially restrictive housing, and redlining. Read up on those and it will make you sick to your stomach.
Controlling what homeowners can do to the exterior of their houses has been the main theme of many HOAs. Combined with this, racist policies and architectural uniformity were historically intertwined. They were both done for the same reason: protecting property values.
Are you angry yet?
Some HOAs do OK and are kind of like a collective: They form their own street cleaning, street light installation and electricity bills, snow plow, garbage pickup, lawn mowing all for a deeply discounted monthly fee of sometimes just a few $10s a month.
I feel nowadays it’s the opposite. I’m willing to pay a premium for a house that is not within an HOA. A house being part of an HOA decreases its value to me.
Honestly, if you bought a house that was part of a HOA, it's on you. Like, what did you think was going to happen?
Read the article. The HOA was a few hundred a month. Now it's 10x as much.
Apparently the developer owns half the homes and has voting power.
This isn't the homeowners' faults. This is beyond predatory.
This shit needs to be illegal, and the company doing this needs to pay.
A Subscription service increases its price ? Oh no how can that happen.
Exactly, they aren't ready to admit their poor decisions have consequences.
> Read the article. The HOA was a few hundred a month. Now it's 10x as much.
Read my comment, I specifically mentioned about not getting a house with an HOA in the first place. Again, if you chose a house that's in a HOA, it's on you.
> This is beyond predatory.
Of course, they're predatory, what did you think was it about? It's always someone with a power trip sitting on their boards. For a "HN contrarian", you sure get upset about a logical argument.
People could vote to weaken HOAs so that people could have a way to leave HOAs when they are not providing value to home owners. We don't have to let corporate owners of residential property or landlords that do not live in their properties have any HOA voting rights. HOAs are currently used by builders to control homeowners.
This should flip to the HOA being used by residents to control builders and landlords. Builders would stop using HOAs if they could not control them, just like it used to be when houses were built just fine without HOAs.
Voting for billionaire conspiracies is more important to a lot of people than voting for themselves.
[dead]
You will own nothing, ever, you'll just pay increasingly absurd rent to different people.
that's okay with me if the terms are agreeable
What terms justify "absurd" rent? Where do you draw the line? Doesn't the fact that YOU would need to deem it absurd mean the terms aren't reasonable to you?
might be in a situation where i need to pay absurd rent
[dead]
You should work with neighbors to control the HOA board. That means running candidates and getting them elected. Depending on how corrupt the builder is this can be hard to do and may take legal action (suing to enforce the HOA governing rules).
But on its face it seems suicidal to cause the home owners to go bankrupt and leave your properties. Unless of course you'd like to tear down the development and build a big fat datacenter on it (the only building that is going on these days) which would net a profit. As grifts go it would kind of amazingly evil you get as much money as you can out of making your homeowners broke followed by selling the land out of foreclosure to build a data center on it and making a profit on that too.
They don't have voting power nor the power to air grievances in the HOA meetings.
States need to step in and pass laws against this. Georgia recently passed laws to prohibit what HOAs can do and how much they can charge. It also made them register with the state and remain in good standing to be able to collect dues at all. Other states need to follow suit.