Man was being troubled by unfair fines from HOA — his one idea helped him and 20 other homeowners
Quite a few people might try to establish cordial relations with their neighbors and with the Homeowners' Association in their area. However, it could be much harder to keep things amicable in some cases. A man found himself in such a situation when he moved to a new house with his wife after marriage. He was fined on several instances and quite a few of them seemed unreasonable to him. So after receiving a double fine one day, the man decided to take matters into his own hands, per a Reddit post, where he goes by u/GFTRGC.
"This happened when my wife and I first got married; my grandfather had passed just a couple months before and left me a very sizeable inheritance with a note to make sure I use it smartly to start a good life for my wife and me," the man began. His father-in-law owned a real estate company, so they were able to get a foreclosed house and get it rehabbed. The couple bought the house and spent 90 days rehabbing it before they finally moved in. A couple of weeks later, a person claiming to be the HOA president knocked on the couple's door and asked for their landlord's contact information. The man informed the person that he owned the house. So they asked him to sign a contract and pay $90 "pro-rated for my dues."
It was a $30 per month park upkeep fee that everyone had to pay and the man agreed as the park was indeed well kept. They also asked him to sign a document that said he would follow HOA rules. He asked to read them first, but the person still persisted in signing it right then. "I refused and they told me that I had seven days to sign them and explained that they have the legal power to fine me if I do not turn in a signed copy within that time." The man had also realized that his contract had no information about an HOA. He also thought that a couple of rules were unreasonable, but signed them regardless. However, many incidents kept coming up where the man was unfairly fined. The president also told him he had a "history of being a troublemaker" in one instance.
The man was done at one point and decided to take action. "I started looking into HOA laws and regulations regarding fines and how to protest them because I felt like this was clearly abuse. I find that the law states that you must be notified of an HOA 10 days prior to closing on a house and must be served with the HOA rules within 45 days of purchase, or you are not subject to being forced to participate in the HOA." He was eventually able to find out that the HOA also hadn't been registered and had no legal rights to collect fines. The man had $540 in pending fines and decided to get together with his neighbors to speak up against the HOA. He and 20 other neighbors ended up filing a case against the association. The president and vice president tried to get a lawyer of their own, but it didn't work out for them.
"Eventually it went to court, where the judge looked at everything and mandated that they pay $21,000 ($1000 per homeowner), plus attorney and court fees, which were like another $2000 for a total of $23,000 in damages." The man moved out some time later and both the president and vice president sold their houses because everyone "hated" them after the incident. People applauded the man for taking action in the comments section of the post. u/jcmeyer5 wrote, "I wouldn’t have signed to begin with, but you made the best of a bad situation." u/liarandathief commented, "Beautiful. I was expecting all the aggrieved neighbors to form their own HOA and start handing out fines."