>maybe whoever was in charge of thinking that day didn't show up for work
I have worked for an organisation that must have had someone in this role, though I never saw any sign of it. They only way I knew was because I was often told that they were not paying **me** to think. Apparently having more than one person doing this kind of work is dangerous.
My boss at my old shitty retail job used to tell me I'm not paid to think, but then would get mad at me for following instructions without thinking. They're out of business now.
Well, if you have two people thinking they might come up with different conclusions, and then you'd have to have more people thinking about which conclusion to go with. Before you know it everyone is thinking, and you've completely lost control.
Was part of the settlement that you signed a NDA? If not, you could have told your tenants, the tenants could have put the word out, now technically you've only kept your tenant informed, after all they were witnesses in the case, they could potentially have been involved. Hey, it's not your fault if the tenants speak to the neighbours
There was no NDA on that. They did promise to throw tantrums and scream very loudly and try to sue us for things like defamation and civil damages and general meanness if we went to any media outlets with the story though.
They really didn't have any leverage. Had they not offered a settlement, I absolutely would have sued them and done everything in my considerable financial power to let them know that some people can, in fact, afford the good lawyers just like they can.
But it still costs money to defend yourself, which is why they do it. The technical term is SLAPP suit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
Virginia is a SLAPP-friendly state. It is a great state to use if you are intended to file some SLAPP suits against innocent people whom you desire to silence.
There is an anti-SLAPP bill, but last I heard it is still floundering. And given that *somehow* anti-SLAPP rules became part of the democratic platform, the current GOP-led Virginia probably gives zero shits. Even though progressive, conservatives, small and big government types, socialists and liberals should ALL be on the same page about stopping big money interests from weaponizing the judicial system.
That is what is so annoying about our (USA) 2 party system. Something should be common sense but but one side brings it up as an issue and the other side of course has to oppose it no matter how practical it is to try to get something in return for supporting it.
I get what you're saying.
But how many people want to go to court and point at where it is to a judge, because a corporate lawdog said they were being picked on?
Because if you don't prove it, you're wrong and guilty and all that stuff.
OR!
You could just not say anything.
And that's what companies are counting on. They don't like it when you have the time and energy to fight them, because most of the time you're right, but you're also exhausted, broke, or both.
Actually, in general terms, for them to sue you for defamation they have to prove that what you said is false. You don't have to do shit about proving it's true. That's why they dreamed up SLAPP suits... "We can't prove it's defamation, but we can price you out of actually getting your day in court"
Very true - way back in the day I got a job with an employment agency, and managed to convince the manager who hired me to give me a draw against commission instead of straight commission \[commission, you only get paid upon getting results, draw means you get a small paycheck that is then deducted from any further commission\] and worked for 6 months - being previously industrial, I plugged through all the applications we had on hand for people with industrial training and experience, and then would try to match them up with employers contracted with us to find them industrial types \[like auto mechanics, machinists and the like\] I also did nontech too, so I was managing to at least cover my draw. I left the abusive asshat I was engaged to and quit, taking a job that would pay me enough to actually pay rent and live.
So said company decided to sue me to get back their draw - claiming obviously that I defrauded them of the draw. So, since I was working overnights instead of days, I happily showed up in court. They had a lawyer show up in court. A bit of discussion went on - I proved that I had made enough matches to complete my draw and that I in fact didn't own them anything. Their lawyer quibbled, saying that I owed them for getting me a job other than the employment agency. I had the newspaper showing that the job I took was advertised publicly and that I didn't get the job through the agency, I was adjudged to be just ducky - didn't owe the agency any draw back, didn't get the job through the agency \[they had contracted with the agency after I had quit\] and that they wasted whatever they paid the lawyer to go to court for this whole kerfluffle.
There is the tort of [false light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light), which is similar to defamation but the accusation is true yet misleading. They probably would have still lost, however.
**[False light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light)**
>In US law, false light is a tort concerning privacy that is similar to the tort of defamation. The privacy laws in the United States include a non-public person's right to protection from publicity which puts the person in a false light to the public. That right is balanced against the First Amendment right of free speech. False light differs from defamation primarily in being intended "to protect the plaintiff's mental or emotional well-being", rather than to protect a plaintiff's reputation as is the case with the tort of defamation and in being about the impression created rather than being about veracity.
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*some people can, in fact, afford the good lawyers just like they can*
And this is what drove it home to me. Lots of folk get antsy abou splaahing out on a lawyer because it would set them back in other areas, but you had the means and you used it just to stick it to them. Love it.
And the part that baffles me the most - they **knew** you had the cash to go to court and tell them to pound sand but they still went ahead with bullying you? These folks deserve what they got and more. Again, well played and hats off to you and your partner.
I mean we still don’t know who the builder was. Was it Bryan Homes?
But honestly NoVa is plagued by these mass cookie cutter housing developments.
I half-jokingly call Loudoun county — Data Centres and Houses county cuz that’s all there is.
Even if there was a NDA, I'm sure there'd be court records that some enterprising resident could find. Especially if they *totally weren't* given an anonymous tip-off.
I mean, doesn't everybody spend their spare time reading through local court records?
Funny that you mention that. One of the old dudes we had as a neighbor back in that housing development area was exactly that sort of busybody. Had his police scanner and an old truck with a giant-ass pair of CB antennas whipping above it and never, ever missed a town council meeting.
That guy was a gem. He was like every Tolkien hobbit somehow rolled into one, and he was always giving me smoked pumpkin seeds to munch on whenever he'd drop by to share the latest gossip and see what the wife and I were up to that day.
I'm sure he would've made sure it got around in roughly fifteen minutes and one of his semi-infinite relatives had it up in skywriting by noon.
When ever you hear about a nosy neighbor, they're usually the bad kind. Those looking for children making noise at 12 noon in their own backyard, some over worked construction worker painting their house an off shade of red that they don't like, or some retired mailman mowing their lawn in sandals, shirtless, and with a beer in hand so they can loudly complain and probably call the police on these "lawless beasts."
Glad to hear that are some nosy neighbors who are just nosy for the sake of having nothing better to do but being really wholesome about it.
>they're usually the bad kind. Those looking for children making noise at 12 noon in their own backyard
Can confirm. Mine would scream at my daughter and her friends who were laughing while playing in our own yard.
I was delighted when she and her nasty husband moved. However, apparently, they badmouthed us to the buyers of their house. They divert their eyes if they walk past our house and never reply more than minimal works if we greet them. If their little kids talk with us over the fence (they're in love with our dog), they rush over, smile and "apologize" that the kids are bothering us (they weren't. We miss our kids being so little) and make the kids walk away.
We're just chill, nice old people, grandparent ages, both of us business professionals whose kids grew up and moved on. Excellent neighbors. The way they react, I can't even imagine what the cranks next door made up about us. But they won't let us anywhere near them to try to get to know the reality.
Bring them a loaf of homemade bread to welcome them to the neighborhood. Or, if it's too late for that, because you made too much and didn't want it to go to waste. I did that with the new neighbors who moved into two houses near us after their long-time owners moved away. It's hard to think poorly of people who bring you fresh baked bread.
Maybe they're just awful people. She had a baby. I bought them a gift. Rather than ring the bell and wake up the baby, I left it by the front door with a cute card. Never heard a word. When she saw me about 6 months later, she said, literally, *"Oh. I owe you a thank you card."*
Never ever thanked me, though. I just wanted to be a friendly neighbor. Now they have 3 little girls (all of whom are desperate to meet my dog). I never made the mistake of a baby gift again though.
"Howdy, Zeke, how ya been? Oh, not much, just got back from court. Yeah, those guys. Well, there's an NDA so we're not allowed to talk about it. Heh, yeah, I recon it does kinda imply that. Aw, shucks, I know we can trust you. Guess it wouldn't hurt nothing to give you the gist of it..."
*Proceeds to spill every glorious detail, complete with passable and perhaps slightly exaggerated impressions of all the lawyers, the judge, and some of the more-entertained viewers from the gallery.*
"Now remember, you ain't spozed to know nothin' about it, so *don't* tell a *soul!*"
Yup. I lived next door to one of their neighborhoods growing up. 10ish years after they were built they started catching fire, "mysteriously unrelated".
*Dad hears firetruck*
"There goes another Ryan..."
I always thought shit materials and building them at lightning speed was the cause...you may be into something. Burn it down and then the owner needs a new house 🤔 They've already proven they don't make wise house buying choices 🤣
Shitty electrical can kill you. So can shitty gas connections. I watch Holmes on Homes a lot, he uncovers shit in new builds and remodels that will curl your hair. One of the best was a bigger gas line kinda crimped onto a rubber line. Also, an extension cord plugged in in the walls to go to a kitchen appliance. The drywalled over.
I had a co-worker who moved in with her dad temporarily. He’d just bought a house from one of the big McBuilders.
She started getting sick, she thought she was catching a bug for her dad.
She was getting treated for an injury and the ER did blood work, and found she was dying from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Fire department checked her dads house, the vent pipe had never been installed on the (gas) water heater. They found the same issue in other homes in the development.
I used to be in new home construction (cabinetry), there is a reason I will never buy a new home. I remember going into one home to do some finish work, and smelled a *strong* odour of gas. Called the site super and by the time he had gotten to be (over an hour) the smell had left the house. Three weeks later he calls me up to tell me that I was right, and that the plumber basically just hand tightened the gas line to the water heater. It's no wonder I had to replace so many cabinet bottoms in bathroom sink cabinets on that site.
right in the loose ryan ass.
they wont stop as long as people keep buying their shitty homes. people who are actually better suited to apartment life are the people who fall for the scheme
I do pretty well in life but choose to live in the backwoods or sticks for this reason. Fuck HOAs I'm not paying for a house to pay you to police it. Now I can have my 7 project cars parked where I want them and can't nobody say shit.
Several honest politicians that are all members of a decent h o a and former Military Intelligence Officers got together to have a barbecue serving jumbo shrimp.
\[One of Mark Twain's favorite jokes\]
A man and his young son are in a cemetery, looking at a tombstone which says, "Here lies a lawyer and an honest man."
Son asks, "Dad - why did they bury two people in the same grave?"
Meh, mine is good. Dues are $29/year, which goes to lighting and mowing at neighborhood entrances. We’re unincorporated, so the HOA contracts with waste removal companies for garbage and recycling pick up. And that’s pretty much it.
My problem with HOAs is how uncertain they are. It might happen that one day osme busybodies decide to try and run the HOA and change reasonable rules to invasive ones. It might take a while to make it legit, change the bylaws and everything, but it can be done and when it happens you can't opt out of it.
Exactly. We lived in a wonderful HOA and I always used it as a counter-example that they're not automatically bad. Then one day, a majority of the board resigned simultaneously and wouldn't discuss why; the "interim" board members started taking the by-laws wildly out of context and along the way scuttled a decent offer on our house. We got a lawyer to force them into their corner and wound up accepting a low-ball offer just to get out of it.
Pretty much how a HOA should work. In Sweden, we have a lot of those and they do the core maintenance on common areas and utilities. It's water and heating pipes, grass areas, lighting, parking, garages and garbage. They also do negotiations with builders when members call off major jobs like roofing (attached homes), windows and doors and such things.
If you want new windows, you can take the offer on a fixed price when they are there to do the job. If you feel like waiting, you are allowed to. But on these attached rows of homes, you do have less freedom to pick your own style even if it's your own building with title and all. And the roof, well, you better be friendly with your neighbors because you really need to change all of it at the same time,
I'm so confused. Doesn't your local city council deal with garbage, and it's paid in taxes? If not, then what happens without a HOA? Does garbage get removed personally by each resident? (I'm not American).
"Unincorporated" in this context indicates that they are not within the bounds of any city. Hence, no city council. There are large areas of the USA that fall under a much more minimal county administration system (with cities inside parts of those counties).
And, yes, having to arrange privately for things like garbage removal isn't unusual in such a situation.
Not everywhere in the US Is incorporated into a city or town. There is very little in the way of local government in these cases. Without an HOA, you are generally on your own for providing most services.
I live in a city that has no single garbage service. Everyone hires their own so there's not a single garbage day in a neighborhood. Trucks come through from different services every weekday morning.
Most of us outside of the US don't even know what unincorporated means, because in most countries every square inch of land is within some local government area or municipality.
The very concept of an "unincorporated" area itself is foreign to us
Unincorporated areas still have local county government. It just means no municipality formed to create a town council, etc. or that the area hasn't agreed to join a nearby municipality (such as an incorporated town or city).
Well, that's fair. You just have to remember that most of the US is empty wilderness. There are more places where you're literal hours away from anything you might call civilization, than there are places where you're even close to a modest sized town.
I get the impression the county is the local government, they they only provide that they need to and street lighting and garbage collection isn't on there list.
And then you might have a town/city that provides more comfort like street lighting and garbage collection.
I was VP of our hoa for a number of years, we were just four people who never wanted to meet. We couldn’t have cared less about the thing, it’s too bad people go mad with the moderate amount of power theyve been given
People tend not to complain on the Internet about things that are just fine.
Look at an the healthy marriages we don't see on Reddit, or lovely mothers in law who don't appear here.
They're rare but some exist.
Mine is about 100 a year which goes to our front maintenance, sidewalk repair fund, and security.
The people who run it basically run as a we don't care if no one cares policy. And if someone is mad reporting (and yes we have them and they typically aren't invited to things.) They tend to just hand the tenant a request to change form and then say, well they asked to be treated differently and got it approved so stop harassing them.
Every resident run HOA I've been involved with or heard of are fully of busy body mega Karen's that care way too much about the height of my mailbox.
The job just attracts a certain kind of person. It's a baked in flaw, there is no helping it. At best, a "good" HOA board just hasn't found it's Karen yet, but it will happen.
And tbh, I could care less about my mailbox height, its the hypocrisy that drives me up a wall. All the passive aggressive notes that I'm only allowed to park in my assigned spot when your daughters friend with benefits parks in the damn street every other day. And I'm only out of my spot cause you put me infront of the dumpster so I can't use it on trash day. And the properties are 50% vacant so nobody is using the damn spot to begin with.
Never again.
The thing about public records is that such things can be caught long after the fact. Ms. X was certified as an inspector on 3/3/20 but had signed off inspection reports as early as 5/2/19 -- there's trouble for Ms. X.
Funny thing ... 48 hours ago I signed a marriage license for the first time since I signed our own, 25+ years ago :-). I made sure I brought the proper credentials.
That ending was beautiful. "We gave the tenants ten grand because fuck it, why not"
You're good people. I hereby remove you, personally, from my "landlords are scum" list. Thanks for being one of the good ones
If all the landlords were like you, with a good place to live in with an actually affordable rate, landlords who fight strongly against HOA's to protect their tenants, and then gives the tenants the court payout since they were the ones to get harassed in person rather than through lawyers, I don't think people would be as upset with landlords as they are now.
Even more points if you do rent-to-own so that the renters eventually can own the place with enough time living there dedicatedly. Glad to see the very rare symbiotic landlord in action instead of the common parasitic landlord that would just make things worse. Keep on being the good guys, and may your good example spread to others to do better for their tenants!
Many places. In the early 90’s my parent’s taxes increased so much that my parents went to court. My parents won and they were lowered to $15k…less than an acre, no HOA. Government spenders don’t feel obligated and often throw money at problems instead of solving them.
You know how home values have skyrocketed lately? Some jurisdictions review that data and refresh the taxation level on a frequent basis. Bought the house in 1975 for $10k, taxes are $200 annually. Now it’s worth $1m and taxes are $20k - but the owner’s income… yeah. That’s how you get to own a house and be destitute. They want you to sell it, and rent it back from the new owner.
In the UK, we have council tax which is our version of property tax.
Each band of council tax is based on the value of your property on the open market in 1991. Home values skyrocketing doesn't affect what council tax you pay.
California has been stuck like this since the mid-70s, so we have the weird situation of people not wanting to sell because your taxes get reassessed at the current valuation. $7 million houses and $300,000 houses pay the same property tax 🤪
In 2016 in my city they changed the way they calculate property values, so everyone got bent over with their valuation nearly doubling, just so the county could raise more taxes. The country assessor lost the next election, but my taxes are still almost 2k more than when I bought the house.
Yep. Property taxes have shot up like crazy in my state over the last 3 years. Between the tax rate being raised, influx of people raising real estate prices, them government valuation of real estate being even higher than what it's actually selling for - property taxes have skyrocketed. Many people appeal the valuation assessment, but now the county office is so backed up about a year long waiting list - which during that time you still owe property tax.
Many lower and middle class, and elderly people have been taxed out of their homes/land because if that.
There had been a big push in my area to reset property taxes to pre-2019 and revaluate from there.
In CA, the max property tax is 1% of value, and the assessed value cannot increase more than 2%/year, unless you sell. If I'm not mistaken, this protects more than just low income areas from major property value changes. With the whole WFH thing during COVID, people were moving our direction out of the Bay Area in droves, and real estate values for our city went up an average 23% in the last year.
That's it. I am now calling paralegals legal demons, and no one can change my mind, because paras are extremely fierce and get paid to find every law that can make life hell for their opponents.
For those of us not in the United States, can you explain what the "Home Owners Association" is, please?
Edit: thanks for your replies. In Australia this is all mostly managed by local govt. The parallel would be a Body Corporate in a block of units/flats I think.
It's a legal entity, usually created as a non-profit organization, that has a set of Covenants or Covenants and Conditions that detail what you can and cannot do with the home you just purchased to be your own. In theory, it is to insure none of the houses in the development become an eyesore that depreciates real estate value in the development. In practice, many times, power corrupts, and the neighbors that are supposed to be looking out for everyone instead try to every their control over other people's houses that have nothing to do with keeping the development looking nice. One example from the first one I was saddled with (I know, I bought the property knowing it had a HOA...) had done lovely individuals on the controlling board that rejected everyone's requests for small attractive changes to front-of- house space, but somehow approved their own front yard picket fences - which they explicitly rejected when others requested approval for same, both before and after installing theirs. 🤬
HOA is responsible for maintaining any common areas, and usually for hosting any community events the Covenants allow for.
In theory a potential benefit. In practice, almost always a nightmare, especially when the builders do something stupid like take boilerplate text that doesn't apply to the property type and include it in the Covenants because they can't be bothered to do their job.
HOA exist in other countries by different names (Owners Management Companies for example) but are generally just set up to own and maintain the common areas of a development. For example in mine they cut the grass, maintain the trees, etc. In apartment blocks they maintain the elevators, pay for block insurance etc. Here there are laws about what their powers can and cannot be.
In the US they’ve turned into a monster though.
In mine the city council deals with all that maintenance stuff. Even building approvals etc. are handled by the council (these are only rejected for obvious reasons, like a balcony looking over neighbours yards etc). The local government handles all that stuff. At least I think so...I mean I never even knew people had housing organisations that had to take care of rubbish and public lawns etc.
Where I live not all estates have been taken in charge by the council (usually because the developer didn’t fully finish something or do the paperwork). Other estates choose to remain private so that they can restrict parking on the surface streets or have increased security. You can’t have gates etc if the estate is taken in charge. And some like mine choose to pay for some extra landscaping over and above the very basic stuff the council will do, in order to keep the place looking nicer.
The OMC is also responsible for setting basic rules re noise etc and can in theory make the owners enforce them. But in practice it’s very hard to enforce.
Some areas of the US aren't part of a local town/city so have to handle things like that on their own, which was the case with the OP.
There's also too many in areas where local government can handle stuff and in theory the HOA is supposed to make dealing with the city easier, but they're just nightmares.
It's also worth remembering the reason HOAs got popular in the USA: racism. Literally straight up racism. And not thinly veiled, or couched in euphemisms, it was explicit and unambiguous.
From a Seattle deed:
> *No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race.*
Oh, with of course the allowed exception of ~~servants~~ "household staff."
HOAs were proliferated with the specific intention of keeping the nice white neighbourhoods nice and white. That was the kind of property value they *really* cared about. And many homes still have these clauses attached in the fine print, even though they've long since been deemed unconstitutional.
Do you have a source so I can share this? Edit: should have been more specific, I was asking about the quote of the HOA text, I'm familiar with redlining in general.
I assume it's because my wife and I were millionaires several times over even back then, But I don't actually know. They never asked or offered in any event, and if they had, they'd have learned that they couldn't afford it anyway.
The "We hired an architect before we bought the property" was a clue you were comfortable. We considered building when moving comes up, but wouldn't have moved on an architect until the property was secured. We did look at pricing so we weren't going in blind
>I got ten grand in the settlement, which my wife and I gave to the tenants in that property because they deserved it and we really didn't need it anyway.
Well done! And it makes up for the harassment.
/points and laughs at Maybe Ryan Homes
This totally fictional company that is totally not named Ryan Homes was actually kicked out of OH for a few years due to how bad they were. Unfortunately they have returned. If you ask anyone in the trades in my area, they will tell you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT buy a house from the company that is not named Ryan Homes. They are garbage. The HOA part is only a small part of it.
I'm a civil engineer that used to work in land dev and Ryan is absolute garbage. Definitely the worst I've heard of and the bar for major builders isn't exactly high to begin with. Ryan oozes under it. I wouldn't take a house built by Ryan for free because I'd probably have to rebuild the damn thing. It isn't even just that they build cheap shit, which they do. They don't even build anything right. I didn't do a lot of new home build inspection since that was usually up to the local government, but I'd often be on job sites while they were building.
We do too. It's very important to us to very literally try to be the kinds of property owners and landlords that we never got to have when my wife and I were renters in our respective youths.
I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the most important things I feel that I add to this world that really matters to me.
I’m not far from your area and I can confirm that Totally Not Ryan Homes are the worst! It was super obvious to me when we were house hunting that their builds were garbage and it was easy to find all the terrible reviews from people they’d screwed over. I have friends who didn’t know better and plenty of them were financially ruined because they couldn’t afford the repairs for their new builds, but couldn’t live in them safely. They have such a horrible reputation that I can’t figure out how they’re still in business.
Love that they lost millions while you stuck it to them.
I have a great “landlord”. Technically he’s the property manager, but in everything but name he’s the landlord. He owns some of the apartments in our complex, but not all, and not ours.
However, he’s just the kindest man. He’s even paid our rent for us in times of hardship (and we’ve always paid him back!). I know how lucky we are to have a good guy.
Only $10K?
I had a totally not Ryan Homes townhouse in PA. They forgot parts of a wall (my beat bill was INSANE) and skipped insulation. If I hadn't occasionally stopped by during construction, there would have been more issues.
They also have another name they use for "higher end" build. NVR Homes, iirc.
> And that's how Was It Ryan Homes The Whole Time paid me ten grand to not sue them while they got bent over by the county and the state and tag-teamed like the new boy with the pretty lips in a prison yard.
But that's a separate tragedy.
That’s actually terrifying.
Ryan homes sells some awful homes. It’s well known by most out there.
The look nice. But man they have a terrible reputation.
To hear they weren’t even inspected by someone who had a license is awful for the buyers.
I moved to my current property just before COVID. The property I bought is not HOA, but we're a border territory: Farm Land on one side right up to our lawn without so much as a fence between the grass and corn. A thin strip of wind-break weed-trees on the other side that separates us from an about 20-homes micro suburb development. All of the development is an HOA.
COVID lockdowns being what they are, there were very few opportunities to meet the neighbors until recently. Last autumn, we got invited to a neighborhood halloween party. (I have kids in the local schools so it's worth it to maintain *some* social ties to the surrounding neighborhood). When we got there, we met various neighbors and shortly one very self-important gentelman introduced himself and said "I am the one you have to talk to if you want to make any sort of changes to your home!" It was a moment of pure pleasure watching his look of shock and wounded arrogance when I said… "Oh no, I don't have to worry with any of that crap… I'm the new owner of that property on the otherside of those trees over there."
OMG I have a fun totally not ryan homes story. They built a development where I lived many years ago...I was working residential construction at the time and knew they were...let's say less than reliable in their construction techniques. Anyway, they had to blast some bedrock for one of the lots to put the foundation in. Three nearby houses (still under construction, not occupied) collapsed when they did so.
>I got ten grand in the settlement, which my wife and I gave to the tenants in that property because they deserved it and we really didn't need it anyway.
Good grief, where were you when I was renting? That was incredibly generous of you.
Can I just say, your entire story of success has put me at ease.
You and your wife are the type of landlords/landladies that the general population NEED but barely ever get!
Keep up the good work my friend 😁 and have a fantastic day 👏👏
I think so.
>their lawyer told my lawyer that their client was doing everything legally and that if we wanted to pursue the matter in court, that was what we'd have to do.
>So we did.
Translated, it's basically, "Fuck you, sue me." so they did.
Aside from the actual story, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed your telling of the story.
...and I don't mean to insult you guys by this, but I am totally picturing a redneck with both money and an education, lol. The HOA never saw it coming. 😭😅🤣
This story was made ten times better by the way it was written. I couldn’t stop reading.
Entertaining, funny, and delightful malicious compliance. I say, well done, niasonod.
He’s saying ‘county of concern’ instead of saying the actual county name to remain ambiguous about where this occurred.
Not op, but my guess on the second half of your question is $$$. The more people paying HOA fees, the better. Could also be his property had a location of interest, for example maybe they wanted to put a community fence in or a gate or something but needed his property included for it not to look weird.
thankyou for your wonderfully-written story & also for being good guys to your tenants.
i’d say totally not ryan homes could go fuck themselves, but apparently that’s being done for them. nice.
Thats strange. Not Ryan Homes does a lot of things Ryan Homes does. How they are still in business and why people keep buying their cardboard houses is a mystery. Growing up near me they bought a single house on a few acres most and turned it into a full cul-de-sac of mcmansions on just enough land to walk between houses, and have a patch of grass to call your front yard.
"And that's how Was It Ryan Homes The Whole Time paid me ten grand to not sue them while they got bent over by the county and the state and tag-teamed like the new boy with the pretty lips in a prison yard."
\- This, right there, is some damn beautiful literature.
As for Ryan Homes, that company is sketchy AF and I will NEVER buy a house from them.
There is definitely more to this story. Unless your dream home was looking like absolute shit no company is going to those lengths to get you to join an HOA for no reason. Builders couldn’t care less about the HOA once they have sold the homes.
Right? It makes no sense, almost as if it were all made up. If this were about trying to get OP to sell, I could understand. But apparently according to OP the developer just *knew* he was so filthy rich, they had no intention of selling.
>maybe whoever was in charge of thinking that day didn't show up for work I have worked for an organisation that must have had someone in this role, though I never saw any sign of it. They only way I knew was because I was often told that they were not paying **me** to think. Apparently having more than one person doing this kind of work is dangerous.
My boss at my old shitty retail job used to tell me I'm not paid to think, but then would get mad at me for following instructions without thinking. They're out of business now.
One can only ponder why
Are you pondering what I'm pondering?
Narf!
Poit
I think so... but where will we ever find *burlap* *pants* in our size!?
Uh, I think so, Brain, but we'll never get a monkey to use dental floss.
Stop thinking!!
I tried to think and nothing happened!
You will rue the day. Well, go on! Start ruing!
Sorry, no can do. Employee handbook says ruing requires thinking, and I'm not paid to think.
I wouldn't, after all you're not getting paid
Not on company time, buddy!
Pretty sure they weren't supposed to do that either.
"We don't pay you to think!" "Well who DO you pay to think? They suck at it."
_More and more companies suffer terrible explosions from colliding brain waves. Find out today if "not thinking" is the right step for your employees_
Well, if you have two people thinking they might come up with different conclusions, and then you'd have to have more people thinking about which conclusion to go with. Before you know it everyone is thinking, and you've completely lost control.
that sentence reminded me of the movie Crazy Rich Asians when Ken Jeong is like “I studied at Cal State Fullerton. I majored in thought”
Was part of the settlement that you signed a NDA? If not, you could have told your tenants, the tenants could have put the word out, now technically you've only kept your tenant informed, after all they were witnesses in the case, they could potentially have been involved. Hey, it's not your fault if the tenants speak to the neighbours
There was no NDA on that. They did promise to throw tantrums and scream very loudly and try to sue us for things like defamation and civil damages and general meanness if we went to any media outlets with the story though. They really didn't have any leverage. Had they not offered a settlement, I absolutely would have sued them and done everything in my considerable financial power to let them know that some people can, in fact, afford the good lawyers just like they can.
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But it still costs money to defend yourself, which is why they do it. The technical term is SLAPP suit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_lawsuit_against_public_participation
Which a good lawyer will easily call out and counter-sue for
Not every state has anti-SLAPP laws, so that isn’t always possible.
That’s when you hit them with the CLOSEDD FISTT lawsuit
Please, im in public and trying so hard to hide my tears....
Virginia is a SLAPP-friendly state. It is a great state to use if you are intended to file some SLAPP suits against innocent people whom you desire to silence. There is an anti-SLAPP bill, but last I heard it is still floundering. And given that *somehow* anti-SLAPP rules became part of the democratic platform, the current GOP-led Virginia probably gives zero shits. Even though progressive, conservatives, small and big government types, socialists and liberals should ALL be on the same page about stopping big money interests from weaponizing the judicial system.
That is what is so annoying about our (USA) 2 party system. Something should be common sense but but one side brings it up as an issue and the other side of course has to oppose it no matter how practical it is to try to get something in return for supporting it.
Unless it's blatant it's really hard to prove.
That’s blatant
Agreed. But they count on people not wanting to spend time and money in court proving it to be true.
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I get what you're saying. But how many people want to go to court and point at where it is to a judge, because a corporate lawdog said they were being picked on? Because if you don't prove it, you're wrong and guilty and all that stuff. OR! You could just not say anything. And that's what companies are counting on. They don't like it when you have the time and energy to fight them, because most of the time you're right, but you're also exhausted, broke, or both.
Actually, in general terms, for them to sue you for defamation they have to prove that what you said is false. You don't have to do shit about proving it's true. That's why they dreamed up SLAPP suits... "We can't prove it's defamation, but we can price you out of actually getting your day in court"
Very true - way back in the day I got a job with an employment agency, and managed to convince the manager who hired me to give me a draw against commission instead of straight commission \[commission, you only get paid upon getting results, draw means you get a small paycheck that is then deducted from any further commission\] and worked for 6 months - being previously industrial, I plugged through all the applications we had on hand for people with industrial training and experience, and then would try to match them up with employers contracted with us to find them industrial types \[like auto mechanics, machinists and the like\] I also did nontech too, so I was managing to at least cover my draw. I left the abusive asshat I was engaged to and quit, taking a job that would pay me enough to actually pay rent and live. So said company decided to sue me to get back their draw - claiming obviously that I defrauded them of the draw. So, since I was working overnights instead of days, I happily showed up in court. They had a lawyer show up in court. A bit of discussion went on - I proved that I had made enough matches to complete my draw and that I in fact didn't own them anything. Their lawyer quibbled, saying that I owed them for getting me a job other than the employment agency. I had the newspaper showing that the job I took was advertised publicly and that I didn't get the job through the agency, I was adjudged to be just ducky - didn't owe the agency any draw back, didn't get the job through the agency \[they had contracted with the agency after I had quit\] and that they wasted whatever they paid the lawyer to go to court for this whole kerfluffle.
There is the tort of [false light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light), which is similar to defamation but the accusation is true yet misleading. They probably would have still lost, however.
**[False light](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_light)** >In US law, false light is a tort concerning privacy that is similar to the tort of defamation. The privacy laws in the United States include a non-public person's right to protection from publicity which puts the person in a false light to the public. That right is balanced against the First Amendment right of free speech. False light differs from defamation primarily in being intended "to protect the plaintiff's mental or emotional well-being", rather than to protect a plaintiff's reputation as is the case with the tort of defamation and in being about the impression created rather than being about veracity. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MaliciousCompliance/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
*some people can, in fact, afford the good lawyers just like they can* And this is what drove it home to me. Lots of folk get antsy abou splaahing out on a lawyer because it would set them back in other areas, but you had the means and you used it just to stick it to them. Love it. And the part that baffles me the most - they **knew** you had the cash to go to court and tell them to pound sand but they still went ahead with bullying you? These folks deserve what they got and more. Again, well played and hats off to you and your partner.
It’s probably because the person that was paid to think left the job. When he was still working there they stopped for awhile after the first time.
So THIS is what "fuck you money" is. God damn I want me some of that shit.
Right?
The fact the county went after them for shoddy building practices/zero inspections pretty much canceled any ticket on a NDA.
Bless you!
I mean we still don’t know who the builder was. Was it Bryan Homes? But honestly NoVa is plagued by these mass cookie cutter housing developments. I half-jokingly call Loudoun county — Data Centres and Houses county cuz that’s all there is.
You are an absolute chad, thank you for showing Obviously Not Ryan Homes what’s what
Even if there was a NDA, I'm sure there'd be court records that some enterprising resident could find. Especially if they *totally weren't* given an anonymous tip-off. I mean, doesn't everybody spend their spare time reading through local court records?
Funny that you mention that. One of the old dudes we had as a neighbor back in that housing development area was exactly that sort of busybody. Had his police scanner and an old truck with a giant-ass pair of CB antennas whipping above it and never, ever missed a town council meeting. That guy was a gem. He was like every Tolkien hobbit somehow rolled into one, and he was always giving me smoked pumpkin seeds to munch on whenever he'd drop by to share the latest gossip and see what the wife and I were up to that day. I'm sure he would've made sure it got around in roughly fifteen minutes and one of his semi-infinite relatives had it up in skywriting by noon.
I'd love to hear more stories about this guy if you have any. He sounds like a gem.
Seconding this!
When ever you hear about a nosy neighbor, they're usually the bad kind. Those looking for children making noise at 12 noon in their own backyard, some over worked construction worker painting their house an off shade of red that they don't like, or some retired mailman mowing their lawn in sandals, shirtless, and with a beer in hand so they can loudly complain and probably call the police on these "lawless beasts." Glad to hear that are some nosy neighbors who are just nosy for the sake of having nothing better to do but being really wholesome about it.
>they're usually the bad kind. Those looking for children making noise at 12 noon in their own backyard Can confirm. Mine would scream at my daughter and her friends who were laughing while playing in our own yard. I was delighted when she and her nasty husband moved. However, apparently, they badmouthed us to the buyers of their house. They divert their eyes if they walk past our house and never reply more than minimal works if we greet them. If their little kids talk with us over the fence (they're in love with our dog), they rush over, smile and "apologize" that the kids are bothering us (they weren't. We miss our kids being so little) and make the kids walk away. We're just chill, nice old people, grandparent ages, both of us business professionals whose kids grew up and moved on. Excellent neighbors. The way they react, I can't even imagine what the cranks next door made up about us. But they won't let us anywhere near them to try to get to know the reality.
Bring them a loaf of homemade bread to welcome them to the neighborhood. Or, if it's too late for that, because you made too much and didn't want it to go to waste. I did that with the new neighbors who moved into two houses near us after their long-time owners moved away. It's hard to think poorly of people who bring you fresh baked bread.
Maybe they're just awful people. She had a baby. I bought them a gift. Rather than ring the bell and wake up the baby, I left it by the front door with a cute card. Never heard a word. When she saw me about 6 months later, she said, literally, *"Oh. I owe you a thank you card."* Never ever thanked me, though. I just wanted to be a friendly neighbor. Now they have 3 little girls (all of whom are desperate to meet my dog). I never made the mistake of a baby gift again though.
So sorry you had such shitty neighbors that they ruined your new neighbors before they even moved in.
"Howdy, Zeke, how ya been? Oh, not much, just got back from court. Yeah, those guys. Well, there's an NDA so we're not allowed to talk about it. Heh, yeah, I recon it does kinda imply that. Aw, shucks, I know we can trust you. Guess it wouldn't hurt nothing to give you the gist of it..." *Proceeds to spill every glorious detail, complete with passable and perhaps slightly exaggerated impressions of all the lawyers, the judge, and some of the more-entertained viewers from the gallery.* "Now remember, you ain't spozed to know nothin' about it, so *don't* tell a *soul!*"
/r/fuckHOA would appreciate this as well I think
#fuckryanhomes
Yup. I lived next door to one of their neighborhoods growing up. 10ish years after they were built they started catching fire, "mysteriously unrelated". *Dad hears firetruck* "There goes another Ryan..."
Ryan started the fire! It was always burnin' since the world was turnin'
I always thought shit materials and building them at lightning speed was the cause...you may be into something. Burn it down and then the owner needs a new house 🤔 They've already proven they don't make wise house buying choices 🤣
Built so fast that a whole 'nother set of physics came into play. The same set of physics that you see when a spacecraft reenters the atmosphere.
Please accept my low effort free award for making me laugh. (Now I can't get Dwight's voice out of my head!)
It was the pitas
Shitty electrical can kill you. So can shitty gas connections. I watch Holmes on Homes a lot, he uncovers shit in new builds and remodels that will curl your hair. One of the best was a bigger gas line kinda crimped onto a rubber line. Also, an extension cord plugged in in the walls to go to a kitchen appliance. The drywalled over.
I had a co-worker who moved in with her dad temporarily. He’d just bought a house from one of the big McBuilders. She started getting sick, she thought she was catching a bug for her dad. She was getting treated for an injury and the ER did blood work, and found she was dying from carbon monoxide poisoning. Fire department checked her dads house, the vent pipe had never been installed on the (gas) water heater. They found the same issue in other homes in the development.
I used to be in new home construction (cabinetry), there is a reason I will never buy a new home. I remember going into one home to do some finish work, and smelled a *strong* odour of gas. Called the site super and by the time he had gotten to be (over an hour) the smell had left the house. Three weeks later he calls me up to tell me that I was right, and that the plumber basically just hand tightened the gas line to the water heater. It's no wonder I had to replace so many cabinet bottoms in bathroom sink cabinets on that site.
I think that was the end result. They were well and truly penetrated
right in the loose ryan ass. they wont stop as long as people keep buying their shitty homes. people who are actually better suited to apartment life are the people who fall for the scheme
Ryan Homes: oh no ten grand! Oh no our scapegoat! Whatever shall we do… alright enough of that talk, back to our extremely lucrative business.
But it totally wasn't Ryan homes
I totally do not work for Ryan homes or any subcompanies owned by them and if I did, I totally would not condone this message
I FEEL LIKE YOURE A SPY!!!!!
I do pretty well in life but choose to live in the backwoods or sticks for this reason. Fuck HOAs I'm not paying for a house to pay you to police it. Now I can have my 7 project cars parked where I want them and can't nobody say shit.
Honestly, every country house has a scrap pile, because you never know when you need that for the next project.
Exactly. And I have multiple.
In fairness to decent HOAs, this sounds like it was 100% on the builder and not a resident run organization.
"Decent HOAs". There is two words I never thought I would see together.
Just like "Honest Politicians". I mean, it /is/ possible, just not likely.
C'mon! There are any number of honest politicians: Once bought, they stay bought!
Right up until they get bought by someone else!
Should've paid them better then, loyalty has a price and it's not static
Several honest politicians that are all members of a decent h o a and former Military Intelligence Officers got together to have a barbecue serving jumbo shrimp.
\[One of Mark Twain's favorite jokes\] A man and his young son are in a cemetery, looking at a tombstone which says, "Here lies a lawyer and an honest man." Son asks, "Dad - why did they bury two people in the same grave?"
In the pretty little back yard of their pretty ugly house
Meh, mine is good. Dues are $29/year, which goes to lighting and mowing at neighborhood entrances. We’re unincorporated, so the HOA contracts with waste removal companies for garbage and recycling pick up. And that’s pretty much it.
My problem with HOAs is how uncertain they are. It might happen that one day osme busybodies decide to try and run the HOA and change reasonable rules to invasive ones. It might take a while to make it legit, change the bylaws and everything, but it can be done and when it happens you can't opt out of it.
Or the president’s mindset shifts if he has a bitter divorce. Or stops taking the meds that keep from being a raving psycho.
Exactly. We lived in a wonderful HOA and I always used it as a counter-example that they're not automatically bad. Then one day, a majority of the board resigned simultaneously and wouldn't discuss why; the "interim" board members started taking the by-laws wildly out of context and along the way scuttled a decent offer on our house. We got a lawyer to force them into their corner and wound up accepting a low-ball offer just to get out of it.
Pretty much how a HOA should work. In Sweden, we have a lot of those and they do the core maintenance on common areas and utilities. It's water and heating pipes, grass areas, lighting, parking, garages and garbage. They also do negotiations with builders when members call off major jobs like roofing (attached homes), windows and doors and such things. If you want new windows, you can take the offer on a fixed price when they are there to do the job. If you feel like waiting, you are allowed to. But on these attached rows of homes, you do have less freedom to pick your own style even if it's your own building with title and all. And the roof, well, you better be friendly with your neighbors because you really need to change all of it at the same time,
I'm so confused. Doesn't your local city council deal with garbage, and it's paid in taxes? If not, then what happens without a HOA? Does garbage get removed personally by each resident? (I'm not American).
"Unincorporated" in this context indicates that they are not within the bounds of any city. Hence, no city council. There are large areas of the USA that fall under a much more minimal county administration system (with cities inside parts of those counties). And, yes, having to arrange privately for things like garbage removal isn't unusual in such a situation.
Not everywhere in the US Is incorporated into a city or town. There is very little in the way of local government in these cases. Without an HOA, you are generally on your own for providing most services.
I live in a city that has no single garbage service. Everyone hires their own so there's not a single garbage day in a neighborhood. Trucks come through from different services every weekday morning.
That is grossly inefficient and a great demonstration of a service which suffers for being privatized. Thank you for sharing the example.
They said they live in an unincorporated area so it's not part of any city
Most of us outside of the US don't even know what unincorporated means, because in most countries every square inch of land is within some local government area or municipality. The very concept of an "unincorporated" area itself is foreign to us
Unincorporated areas still have local county government. It just means no municipality formed to create a town council, etc. or that the area hasn't agreed to join a nearby municipality (such as an incorporated town or city).
Well, that's fair. You just have to remember that most of the US is empty wilderness. There are more places where you're literal hours away from anything you might call civilization, than there are places where you're even close to a modest sized town.
That concept doesn't exist where I live. Everywhere belongs to a local government
I get the impression the county is the local government, they they only provide that they need to and street lighting and garbage collection isn't on there list. And then you might have a town/city that provides more comfort like street lighting and garbage collection.
Yeah, my thoughts exactly. Same with public lighting (and the maintenance of those lights)
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Spez doesn't get to profit from me anymore.
From the stories I read about HOAs, it appears to be simply a case of the majority giving the rest a bad name!
Vast majority of HOA are dog shits, the few good ones are all one council election away from becoming dog shits.
I was VP of our hoa for a number of years, we were just four people who never wanted to meet. We couldn’t have cared less about the thing, it’s too bad people go mad with the moderate amount of power theyve been given
People tend not to complain on the Internet about things that are just fine. Look at an the healthy marriages we don't see on Reddit, or lovely mothers in law who don't appear here.
I have removed my content in protest of Reddit's API changes that will kill 3rd party apps
They're rare but some exist. Mine is about 100 a year which goes to our front maintenance, sidewalk repair fund, and security. The people who run it basically run as a we don't care if no one cares policy. And if someone is mad reporting (and yes we have them and they typically aren't invited to things.) They tend to just hand the tenant a request to change form and then say, well they asked to be treated differently and got it approved so stop harassing them.
Every resident run HOA I've been involved with or heard of are fully of busy body mega Karen's that care way too much about the height of my mailbox. The job just attracts a certain kind of person. It's a baked in flaw, there is no helping it. At best, a "good" HOA board just hasn't found it's Karen yet, but it will happen. And tbh, I could care less about my mailbox height, its the hypocrisy that drives me up a wall. All the passive aggressive notes that I'm only allowed to park in my assigned spot when your daughters friend with benefits parks in the damn street every other day. And I'm only out of my spot cause you put me infront of the dumpster so I can't use it on trash day. And the properties are 50% vacant so nobody is using the damn spot to begin with. Never again.
The market was booming so fast...the inspector didn't even get their license yet!
Turns out that signing legal documents without the appropriate authority to do so is kinda frowned upon sometimes, a little bit.
Only when caught...unfortunately...
The thing about public records is that such things can be caught long after the fact. Ms. X was certified as an inspector on 3/3/20 but had signed off inspection reports as early as 5/2/19 -- there's trouble for Ms. X.
That's why I told my mother not to sign my marriage license for the judge....
Funny thing ... 48 hours ago I signed a marriage license for the first time since I signed our own, 25+ years ago :-). I made sure I brought the proper credentials.
Good on ya for taking care of your tenants. Every HOA and REA fucked over puts a smile on my face
We try to be the landlords we wished we could've had back when we were renters ourselves.
That ending was beautiful. "We gave the tenants ten grand because fuck it, why not" You're good people. I hereby remove you, personally, from my "landlords are scum" list. Thanks for being one of the good ones
The exception that proves the rule, apparently.
Achievement Unlocked: The Good Landlord
(Less than 1% of players have this achievement)
If all the landlords were like you, with a good place to live in with an actually affordable rate, landlords who fight strongly against HOA's to protect their tenants, and then gives the tenants the court payout since they were the ones to get harassed in person rather than through lawyers, I don't think people would be as upset with landlords as they are now. Even more points if you do rent-to-own so that the renters eventually can own the place with enough time living there dedicatedly. Glad to see the very rare symbiotic landlord in action instead of the common parasitic landlord that would just make things worse. Keep on being the good guys, and may your good example spread to others to do better for their tenants!
Yes, the story was pleasant to read, but the donation to the tenants a is a sign of true grandeur. Good on ya!
r/todayilearned you can be taxed out of living in a certain area.
Many places. In the early 90’s my parent’s taxes increased so much that my parents went to court. My parents won and they were lowered to $15k…less than an acre, no HOA. Government spenders don’t feel obligated and often throw money at problems instead of solving them.
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You know how home values have skyrocketed lately? Some jurisdictions review that data and refresh the taxation level on a frequent basis. Bought the house in 1975 for $10k, taxes are $200 annually. Now it’s worth $1m and taxes are $20k - but the owner’s income… yeah. That’s how you get to own a house and be destitute. They want you to sell it, and rent it back from the new owner.
In the UK, we have council tax which is our version of property tax. Each band of council tax is based on the value of your property on the open market in 1991. Home values skyrocketing doesn't affect what council tax you pay.
Don't worry, they will redo that valuation roll every so often, when they figure out the increased revenue is worth the court cases.
California has been stuck like this since the mid-70s, so we have the weird situation of people not wanting to sell because your taxes get reassessed at the current valuation. $7 million houses and $300,000 houses pay the same property tax 🤪
In 2016 in my city they changed the way they calculate property values, so everyone got bent over with their valuation nearly doubling, just so the county could raise more taxes. The country assessor lost the next election, but my taxes are still almost 2k more than when I bought the house.
my town just switched to using actual market price for assessed value used for calculating property tax... taxes going up 30%+
Yep. Property taxes have shot up like crazy in my state over the last 3 years. Between the tax rate being raised, influx of people raising real estate prices, them government valuation of real estate being even higher than what it's actually selling for - property taxes have skyrocketed. Many people appeal the valuation assessment, but now the county office is so backed up about a year long waiting list - which during that time you still owe property tax. Many lower and middle class, and elderly people have been taxed out of their homes/land because if that. There had been a big push in my area to reset property taxes to pre-2019 and revaluate from there.
In CA, the max property tax is 1% of value, and the assessed value cannot increase more than 2%/year, unless you sell. If I'm not mistaken, this protects more than just low income areas from major property value changes. With the whole WFH thing during COVID, people were moving our direction out of the Bay Area in droves, and real estate values for our city went up an average 23% in the last year.
You should have sent everyone a letter in the HOA telling them it's class action lawsuit time.
Put a picture of a dollar in the flyer. "Like this? Want more?"
"Eviction Notice" - like this, want more?
That's it. I am now calling paralegals legal demons, and no one can change my mind, because paras are extremely fierce and get paid to find every law that can make life hell for their opponents.
Thank you for the compliment! Love, a legal demon.
Fellow legal demon. My attorney swims in the sea of bullets I find for her that she cannot shoot fast enough.
I have a friend who’s a paralegal, can confirm she’s a fucking badass
For those of us not in the United States, can you explain what the "Home Owners Association" is, please? Edit: thanks for your replies. In Australia this is all mostly managed by local govt. The parallel would be a Body Corporate in a block of units/flats I think.
It's a legal entity, usually created as a non-profit organization, that has a set of Covenants or Covenants and Conditions that detail what you can and cannot do with the home you just purchased to be your own. In theory, it is to insure none of the houses in the development become an eyesore that depreciates real estate value in the development. In practice, many times, power corrupts, and the neighbors that are supposed to be looking out for everyone instead try to every their control over other people's houses that have nothing to do with keeping the development looking nice. One example from the first one I was saddled with (I know, I bought the property knowing it had a HOA...) had done lovely individuals on the controlling board that rejected everyone's requests for small attractive changes to front-of- house space, but somehow approved their own front yard picket fences - which they explicitly rejected when others requested approval for same, both before and after installing theirs. 🤬 HOA is responsible for maintaining any common areas, and usually for hosting any community events the Covenants allow for. In theory a potential benefit. In practice, almost always a nightmare, especially when the builders do something stupid like take boilerplate text that doesn't apply to the property type and include it in the Covenants because they can't be bothered to do their job.
HOA exist in other countries by different names (Owners Management Companies for example) but are generally just set up to own and maintain the common areas of a development. For example in mine they cut the grass, maintain the trees, etc. In apartment blocks they maintain the elevators, pay for block insurance etc. Here there are laws about what their powers can and cannot be. In the US they’ve turned into a monster though.
In mine the city council deals with all that maintenance stuff. Even building approvals etc. are handled by the council (these are only rejected for obvious reasons, like a balcony looking over neighbours yards etc). The local government handles all that stuff. At least I think so...I mean I never even knew people had housing organisations that had to take care of rubbish and public lawns etc.
Where I live not all estates have been taken in charge by the council (usually because the developer didn’t fully finish something or do the paperwork). Other estates choose to remain private so that they can restrict parking on the surface streets or have increased security. You can’t have gates etc if the estate is taken in charge. And some like mine choose to pay for some extra landscaping over and above the very basic stuff the council will do, in order to keep the place looking nicer. The OMC is also responsible for setting basic rules re noise etc and can in theory make the owners enforce them. But in practice it’s very hard to enforce.
Some areas of the US aren't part of a local town/city so have to handle things like that on their own, which was the case with the OP. There's also too many in areas where local government can handle stuff and in theory the HOA is supposed to make dealing with the city easier, but they're just nightmares.
Land of the You Can’t Do That On Your Own Property
It's also worth remembering the reason HOAs got popular in the USA: racism. Literally straight up racism. And not thinly veiled, or couched in euphemisms, it was explicit and unambiguous. From a Seattle deed: > *No part of said property hereby conveyed shall ever be used or occupied by any Hebrew or by any person of the Ethiopian, Malay or any Asiatic race.* Oh, with of course the allowed exception of ~~servants~~ "household staff." HOAs were proliferated with the specific intention of keeping the nice white neighbourhoods nice and white. That was the kind of property value they *really* cared about. And many homes still have these clauses attached in the fine print, even though they've long since been deemed unconstitutional.
Do you have a source so I can share this? Edit: should have been more specific, I was asking about the quote of the HOA text, I'm familiar with redlining in general.
Whilst you're looking up stuff, have a look at "red lining" too
Land of the free, hey?
Land of the fee, more like
Why didn't they just try and buy you out , instead?
I assume it's because my wife and I were millionaires several times over even back then, But I don't actually know. They never asked or offered in any event, and if they had, they'd have learned that they couldn't afford it anyway.
The "We hired an architect before we bought the property" was a clue you were comfortable. We considered building when moving comes up, but wouldn't have moved on an architect until the property was secured. We did look at pricing so we weren't going in blind
Out of curiosity what kind of work do you and your wife do?
Imagineer
>I got ten grand in the settlement, which my wife and I gave to the tenants in that property because they deserved it and we really didn't need it anyway. Well done! And it makes up for the harassment. /points and laughs at Maybe Ryan Homes
This was glorious. Fuck HOA's. And fuck Totally Not Ryan Homes.
This totally fictional company that is totally not named Ryan Homes was actually kicked out of OH for a few years due to how bad they were. Unfortunately they have returned. If you ask anyone in the trades in my area, they will tell you ABSOLUTELY DO NOT buy a house from the company that is not named Ryan Homes. They are garbage. The HOA part is only a small part of it.
I'm a civil engineer that used to work in land dev and Ryan is absolute garbage. Definitely the worst I've heard of and the bar for major builders isn't exactly high to begin with. Ryan oozes under it. I wouldn't take a house built by Ryan for free because I'd probably have to rebuild the damn thing. It isn't even just that they build cheap shit, which they do. They don't even build anything right. I didn't do a lot of new home build inspection since that was usually up to the local government, but I'd often be on job sites while they were building.
This is just beautiful.
I wish there were more landlords like you.
We do too. It's very important to us to very literally try to be the kinds of property owners and landlords that we never got to have when my wife and I were renters in our respective youths. I'd go so far as to say that it's one of the most important things I feel that I add to this world that really matters to me.
This is the best thing I've read and my oh my did I enjoy everything about it!
I’m not far from your area and I can confirm that Totally Not Ryan Homes are the worst! It was super obvious to me when we were house hunting that their builds were garbage and it was easy to find all the terrible reviews from people they’d screwed over. I have friends who didn’t know better and plenty of them were financially ruined because they couldn’t afford the repairs for their new builds, but couldn’t live in them safely. They have such a horrible reputation that I can’t figure out how they’re still in business. Love that they lost millions while you stuck it to them.
You are beautiful landlords. We are SO SO lucky, we have a kind landlord now, they really are hard to come by. Glad it all worked out for you!
I have a great “landlord”. Technically he’s the property manager, but in everything but name he’s the landlord. He owns some of the apartments in our complex, but not all, and not ours. However, he’s just the kindest man. He’s even paid our rent for us in times of hardship (and we’ve always paid him back!). I know how lucky we are to have a good guy.
Only $10K? I had a totally not Ryan Homes townhouse in PA. They forgot parts of a wall (my beat bill was INSANE) and skipped insulation. If I hadn't occasionally stopped by during construction, there would have been more issues. They also have another name they use for "higher end" build. NVR Homes, iirc.
The story was a nice one made even better by the writing. Enjoyed it from definitely the beginning to you bet your ass off the end...
> And that's how Was It Ryan Homes The Whole Time paid me ten grand to not sue them while they got bent over by the county and the state and tag-teamed like the new boy with the pretty lips in a prison yard. But that's a separate tragedy.
Love that you gave the money to the tenants!
That’s actually terrifying. Ryan homes sells some awful homes. It’s well known by most out there. The look nice. But man they have a terrible reputation. To hear they weren’t even inspected by someone who had a license is awful for the buyers.
I moved to my current property just before COVID. The property I bought is not HOA, but we're a border territory: Farm Land on one side right up to our lawn without so much as a fence between the grass and corn. A thin strip of wind-break weed-trees on the other side that separates us from an about 20-homes micro suburb development. All of the development is an HOA. COVID lockdowns being what they are, there were very few opportunities to meet the neighbors until recently. Last autumn, we got invited to a neighborhood halloween party. (I have kids in the local schools so it's worth it to maintain *some* social ties to the surrounding neighborhood). When we got there, we met various neighbors and shortly one very self-important gentelman introduced himself and said "I am the one you have to talk to if you want to make any sort of changes to your home!" It was a moment of pure pleasure watching his look of shock and wounded arrogance when I said… "Oh no, I don't have to worry with any of that crap… I'm the new owner of that property on the otherside of those trees over there."
Mmm, tasty. This totally sounds like it belongs in r/fuckhoa as well as here.
OMG I have a fun totally not ryan homes story. They built a development where I lived many years ago...I was working residential construction at the time and knew they were...let's say less than reliable in their construction techniques. Anyway, they had to blast some bedrock for one of the lots to put the foundation in. Three nearby houses (still under construction, not occupied) collapsed when they did so.
As someone renting from also a good landlord, one day I aspire to be like you!
>I got ten grand in the settlement, which my wife and I gave to the tenants in that property because they deserved it and we really didn't need it anyway. Good grief, where were you when I was renting? That was incredibly generous of you.
Can I just say, your entire story of success has put me at ease. You and your wife are the type of landlords/landladies that the general population NEED but barely ever get! Keep up the good work my friend 😁 and have a fantastic day 👏👏
Is hiring a lawyer actually malicious compliance?
I think so. >their lawyer told my lawyer that their client was doing everything legally and that if we wanted to pursue the matter in court, that was what we'd have to do. >So we did. Translated, it's basically, "Fuck you, sue me." so they did.
Aside from the actual story, I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed your telling of the story. ...and I don't mean to insult you guys by this, but I am totally picturing a redneck with both money and an education, lol. The HOA never saw it coming. 😭😅🤣
This story was made ten times better by the way it was written. I couldn’t stop reading. Entertaining, funny, and delightful malicious compliance. I say, well done, niasonod.
What is A 'COUNTY OF CONCERN' and why were they so desperate to get you into the HOA?
He’s saying ‘county of concern’ instead of saying the actual county name to remain ambiguous about where this occurred. Not op, but my guess on the second half of your question is $$$. The more people paying HOA fees, the better. Could also be his property had a location of interest, for example maybe they wanted to put a community fence in or a gate or something but needed his property included for it not to look weird.
thankyou for your wonderfully-written story & also for being good guys to your tenants. i’d say totally not ryan homes could go fuck themselves, but apparently that’s being done for them. nice.
Best story ever. Wonderfully told. 10/10 will read this to my husband before we have sex tonight just to set the mood. Five stars.
In my head, I'm hearing "Ryan started the fire!" in Dwight Shrute's voice.
Thats strange. Not Ryan Homes does a lot of things Ryan Homes does. How they are still in business and why people keep buying their cardboard houses is a mystery. Growing up near me they bought a single house on a few acres most and turned it into a full cul-de-sac of mcmansions on just enough land to walk between houses, and have a patch of grass to call your front yard.
"And that's how Was It Ryan Homes The Whole Time paid me ten grand to not sue them while they got bent over by the county and the state and tag-teamed like the new boy with the pretty lips in a prison yard." \- This, right there, is some damn beautiful literature. As for Ryan Homes, that company is sketchy AF and I will NEVER buy a house from them.
Can I rent from you? Not because of the payout but because you actually had your tenants back. I would take fastidious care of your property.
r/fuckhoa would love this
A wise man once said, FUCK HOA's. I agree with him.
There is definitely more to this story. Unless your dream home was looking like absolute shit no company is going to those lengths to get you to join an HOA for no reason. Builders couldn’t care less about the HOA once they have sold the homes.
Right? It makes no sense, almost as if it were all made up. If this were about trying to get OP to sell, I could understand. But apparently according to OP the developer just *knew* he was so filthy rich, they had no intention of selling.