A Forum for Past, Current, and Future Members

Your house in a homeowners association (HOA) is managed by your untrained and inexperienced neighbors. I know: I was a board member, and I had no training or experience. It is a "learn as you go" process with the important responsibility of other people's money attached to it. Are your checking accounts, savings accounts, IRA accounts, 401(k) accounts, and credit cards managed by your untrained, inexperienced neighbors, too? If not, why not? You have already blindly trusted more money to your untrained neighbor. This neighbor can cost you THOUSANDS of dollars with wasteful spending, often preceded with some point of pride they are unwilling to let go.

Municipal and state governments are failing their constituents with the perpetuation of this system of "housing choice:" the results of these failures can be seen on this web site and countless others. The end-result is that these HOAs are run by untrained homeowners accountable to no one, whose authority and power run unchecked and unchallenged. HOAs have created a new industry to support them, one that is entirely self-serving, self-promoting, and unnecessary: property managers, lawyers who only accept Associations as clients (follow the money), and various trade groups whose full-time jobs are to lobby state senators and assemblypeople to pass laws that benefit the HOA industry over the individual homeowner.

My now well-founded distrust of HOAs began in 1996 when someone I know ran for the Edgewater Isle board of directors. She won one of the 3 seats in that election, but that Board dabbled in some creative math and other monkey business to keep her off the board and their cohort on.

Multiple Associations, Multiple Messes, Lots of Fighting

Every homeowner at Edgewater Isle is mandated to belong to multiple associations. A homeowner will own in either Edgewater Isle North or Edgewater Isle South, and must also become a member of Edgewater Isle Master. It makes it that much more fun (and costly) for the homeowners when the respective Boards of Directors can't even get along and sue each other, which happened at Edgewater Isle: Edgewater Master Association sued Edgewater Isle North Association. (You can't make this stuff up.) If they can't get along with each other, do you think they'll get along with homeowners?

Experiences at Edgewater Isle are no more or less egregious than violations that occur in other homeowners associations. The problems all sound similar:

Why do countless people who don't know each other experience the same problems with their HOAs?

Board members, who like to remind everyone they are "volunteers," are nonetheless compensated behind the scenes. They will spend your money on a lawyer like there's no tomorrow. A board member's problems are fixed long before yours are. And some of them get stuff for free: construction work in their kitchens, free lawns, and coffee and pastries from Starbucks at every meeting (called "office supplies"), to name a few. Read here about the goings-on in this association, and know that this stuff and more happens every day in every homeowners association.

Watch your Board of Directors, and don't believe everything they say at face value. Question and research what they say. Remember, they are untrained volunteers who (likely) have no experience in the management of a homeowners association, and it's your money they're spending.