[Music] would you want to live like this do you want somebody telling you that you can't have your artificial vegetation in your yard to make your yard look look better look pretty oh dear outad never mind yeah I bet you don't want that this is another installment of my never bu series and in this video I'm going to tell you reasons why you should never buy a home that's in an HOA so let's get started okay before I dive into this I do want to say that the reason why I make these videos and I
say never buy is to make you aware of the downfalls the potential downfalls of what could happen if you were to buy a certain type of house or a condo or a manufactured home I'm here to tell you you should never buy anything I'm getting a lot of comments lately of people saying oh so you're telling us we should never buy and we should just rent or live at home with our parents for the rest of our lives I'm not saying that I make these videos to help educate you to prepare you for what to
look for when you're buying a home when you're looking at purchasing a home or a condo or if you're going to buy home in an HOA you need to be aware of all the things at negative and positive so that's why I make these videos again is to help you the consumer make a good Ed educated decision on your real estate purchase so anyway just wanted to get that little explanation out of the way let's get into the reasons why you should never buy a home in an HOA but again no hate to HOAs just
pointing some issues out the first reason is is the excessive bees and assessments now Florida has been seeing this issue a lot in the past year or two and most of these reasons are stemming from that collapse that happened of the cide condominium building back in June of 2021 where unfortunately 98 people perish Florida has now put in a state law that's requiring any Condo building that's older than 30 years old toer than three stories they have to go through inspections and now these HOAs have to build up their reserves to prepare for these inspections
and potential repairs that are going to need to be made so now homeowners in these condos are being slapped with these assessments for tens of thousands of dollars here's a little news clip of a gentleman that lives in South Florida and listen to what he been hit with as far as his assessment fees Howard conit never thought he'd be in this situation at 79 years old we can't afford it we can't afford it we're going to go broke conits and his wife Sheila have lived in their two-bedroom two bath Williams island condo for 10 years
the retired couple had their financial future all planned out elevator modernization that was until they were recently hit with a special assessment the total assessment for the apartment we're sitting in is what what approximately $224,000 homeowners in Florida's condo owners in Florida's they are facing really trying times right now and I think a lot of them are trying to sell their condos because they can't afford it I mean think about it mostly retired people are buying condos in Florida and they're on a fixed income who can afford those assessments and these Rising assessment rates they're
just not affecting Florida they are happening around the country take a look at Colorado there's a commun in Colorado that just slapped their residents with a $144,000 assessment fee for new roofs the thing is not everybody in the community is going to be getting a new roof the reason why they're charging people $144,000 is because the money is actually going to build the reserves to help cover the insurance so apparently the roofs in this community have hail damage some of them do need to be repaired and then they have to also prepare for future repairs
when it happens again so what they're doing is they're building reserves to help cover the difference of what the insurance companies won't cover so this is a big issue and you've heard me talk about this a lot about the insurance rates and you know people losing their homeowners insurance because they have a damaged roof and the insurance company doesn't want to cover them anymore so this is impacting the HOAs like immensely and which is why the HOA monthly fees and these assessments keep going up because they have to find a way to be able to
pay for it so they're passing it on to the homeowners so this is a reason right here I'm sorry I there one reason I would not want to own a home in an HOA the next reason is restrictive rules regulations and those power hungry HOA board members okay no shade to the HOA members not every HOA is like that but there's been a lot of stories recently about how these HOAs can get a little bit on their high horse and think that they can just rule the world let me take a step back I know
I said I would never buy home in an HOA but I listen I have to confess here I do own or did own two properties that were in HOA communities one of them I just sold recently another one I still own it's a rental vacation home that we own now when we talk about restrictive rules and regulations yeah I have a problem with that and this is a reason this is my opinion my feeling my experience but this this is the reason the next house that I buy I do not want to be in an
HOA because sometimes these rules and regulations do get they get a little out of hand I encountered my own potential violation and a property that I owned it was a rental property where I got a notice you can see it right here I got an email from the HOA saying that my tenants lawn chairs were leaning against the side of the house and they needed to be removed they needed to be either in the back of the house or put into the garage but the problem at the time is I was building a deck on
the back of the house all the building materials were all laying in the backyard so my tenants had to move their chairs and they just moved them onto the side of the house it was temporary because the deck was only going to take a couple of days to be built so when I got that email from the HOA I responded quickly and explained to them like I'm building a deck which oh by the way you guys knew that because you had to approve the all the plans for my deck to be built you knew this
was happening yet here they go they take a picture and they sent it to me and they said you you got to get these chairs out by a certain date or I was going to be fined well guess what um you knew that I'm building a deck and the materials are all back there and where else would you like them to be put because the garage was too tight there was no room in there for my tenants because they had to fit their cars and the garbage cans and all the other things so fortunately it
did work out because the deck was completed just in time before that deadline but if it wasn't oh believe me I would have gone back to them and just asked for a little bit of an extension a little bit of grace period but like so things like that they do get a little nutty I understand the purpose of the rules and regulations that they want to keep the community looking nice and neat pristine and I'm all for that I'm all for that but when you're driving around you're taking pictures it's just and you're you know
showing like fix this problem or you know you're going to be fin I I no no thank you I mean we even had issues and you heard me talk about this before with garbage cans the garbage cans not being put back into the house like within two seconds of the garbage being picked up and I had a big problem with that because like my tenants they worked all day are you serious you're going to give me a hard time and they did notify me about that too that the garbage cans weren't put back right away
and I hear this a lot in other communities where people were getting slapped at $250 fines because the garbage cans weren't put away right after pickup are you like serious I mean yeah it's a little excessive I'm sorry but take a look at this example here what this guy has just gone through with his HOA my HVAC guy came by today to take a look at my units he said Matt why do you have those grasses around the units I said the HOA requires me to have something around those units to guard them from the
street so people can't see them he said you can't have those around that unit mess up the back pressure on them blower motors tear up your units so yeah this guy was told by his HOA that he needed to cover those AC units with ornamental grass you know the tall grass that you see in landscaping and you see in yards it looks all pretty and everything but you come to find out uh that's not a good thing to put near your AC unit and it could potentially damage it I understand you want to make things
look nice and pretty but make sure you know you understand uh what could potentially happen if that's even a good idea to put those the ornamental grass around the AC units yeah it just it drives me nuts it drives me nuts with these restrictions and regulations if you're not into that I would be very leery about buying a home in an HOA now getting back to the topic of the power hungry HOA board members take a look at what happened with this guy because of his truck being too loud the HOA liter literally left me
a fine they said they could put a lean on my house if I don't pay this fine so yeah this guy was threatened a lean they're going to put a lean on his house this is common this has happened a lot around the country I did a video about this a while ago where HOA boards were foreclosing on people's homes if they didn't pay uh any of the fines if they missed their fee payments yeah there was a story I I spoke about where there was a gentleman who was in the Air Force he had
to serve he had to go overseas for like 15 months and only to find out when he came back he had $2,500 in missed payments of his HOA fees they foreclosed on his property and and they took over his house are you kidding me fortunately state legislators are stepping up they're trying to put laws into place to stop these HOA boards from being so excessive with their rules and taking over people's properties if they don't pay their fees in some states if an HOA is going to foreclose on a home that does take precedent over
the mortgage so you could be paying your mortgage payments on time and you have no issue with the bank but you haven't paid the HOA fees oh yeah they can pour clothes on your home fortunately like I said Thank God a lot of states are stepping up to take that control away from these HOA boards it's completely unfair it is ridiculous and yeah another reason why no thank you I wouldn't buy a house and within an HOA like I said I know I have one in an ho away right now um that'll be the last
time I'm going to have one I don't want to worry about that stuff another reason is the limited privacy so did you know they can enter your property at any time like the the property that I own that's in an HOA they want to go in and check to make sure that my thermostat is set to a certain temperature in the winter time to prevent pipes from freezing okay I I understand that but I mean I have people that live nearby I can have them report back to them they have the right to enter your
property I was not happy about that had I known about that that they had the right to do that yeah I don't I don't know if I would have bought that property yeah I'm not crazy about that they do have the right and going back to like you're limited on the freedom of what you can do on in your home if you want to decorate things outside you know put flags up you want to do like certain plantings in your Landscaping there too much involved in your life and and what you're doing uh yeah no
thank you another reason is the impact on property values a study was done back in 2019 and it showed that homes that are within an HOA community property values tend to increase slower than those homes that are not in an HOA community and I think the reason being is is that people do not want to buy a home so quickly that where you're going to have rules and regulations and more importantly that monthly HOA fee that you're paying every month and you can't even write that off at least you can write off your your interest
on your mortgage you can Mur for property taxes you can't write off the HOA fees and if you're living in a community where the monthly fees are pretty excessive you know like in Florida there are some places where they're $1,000 or more a month that could definitely turn people off and then therefore impact the value of the home because people are not going to be more apt to make an offer on the home or so say if it's a seller's market you may not get as many offers on a home in an HOA than you
do on a home that's not in an HOA I'm not saying that the value don't increase at all they do it's just not as much as if you were to have a home that's not in an HOA that's something else I would be taking into consideration if you're going to be buying a home in an HOA and again that's a reason that I would not want to buy a home in an HOA sorry again I want to just reiterate that this is all information to help you make a good educated decision I'm not telling you
never buy in an HOA if you need to buy a home in an HOA it's like a lot of these HOA communi and these new builds they're popping up all over the place please do the due diligence and read the ccrs ccrs is known as covenants conditions and restrictions know what the rules and regulations are it's all going to be spelled out in the CCR so if you want to fully understand that of what you can and cannot do that's the first thing you're going to be reading the other thing you need to do is
always read the financial reports read the minutes from prior HOA meetings to see what's going on what's happening in the community Community what are some pressing issues in the community also take a look at what the future assessments could be find out if there's any future assessments also take a look to see how much the HOA fees have gone up year overy year so you can prepare yourself for that increase if one is going to happen after you move in you're prepared of how much to budget for to be able to pay that increase in
fees not saying never just giving you the cons of this do what you will with this information but I highly recommend that you always do your due diligence and read all of the documents the bylaws the ccrs the financials all the things before you sign those papers at the closing table hey if you want to know what type of homes you should just never buy watch us right here very informative you're going to learn a lot from it thank you so much for watching me today to get your dose of real estate reality my name
is Jackie Baker and I will see you next time
