Did you not see the Monday thru Friday nonsense . Or the 9 to 5 , that means a working couple will have to pay a lawn service . Many people only have the weekend for lawn chores.
Forget reasonable .
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Yep, when I worked it was generally 7-6 at the earliest. Eat and then cut the grass maybe starting 7:30 or 8:00. I would have had to take time off to cut the grass. We have quiet hours after 10 but thatâs about it and if I shut the garage door I can still work. Yeah no way would I want an HOA.
When I lived in Florida yearâs ago I had a friend who worked at a used car lot he showed me a trade they took in it I donât remember what it was other than an lt was a old raged out beater that was chopped down to make it into a pick up the guy that traded it said he lived in a HOA neighborhood were they could not have a PU but since it was a car it was OK I knew the neighborhood & it was very upscale go figure.
Same principle but not near as nice he took a saw & cut the top right behind the front seat & put a piece of plywood for the back of the cab with a cut out for the back window & used a piece of plastic for the window & lined what was passed to be the bed with plywood slapped a brush paint on & called it done. In the same neighborhood the only way you could have a boat or small trailer was in the backyard with a privacy fence so it could not be seen from the street one of the houseâs did not have enough room on the sideâs to drive to the back so they took out the back of the garage & put in garage door & made it a drive thru
Some well-used pickup trucks can look pretty beat up. Others look pristine. I had a friend whoâs pickup truck was covered in mud nearly all the time. But that can apply to cars too. Seems the upscale neighbhood rule â if there is one â is that vehicles, either cars, suvs, or pickups, parked within sight of the public right of way should be well maintained & presentable. Me, I have too many other things to spend my attân on, no time to worry about neighborâs landscape architecture.
That is why I like where I live in the woodâs no one can see what I do unless they are at my house.
Back to the point, why would somebody in their right mind buy a Regal or Impala at $30,000 when they could buy a better Accord or Sonata at much, much less?
Lower price, lower cost to own, better resale value and on the rare occasions I need to move a load of mulch or a big screen I can rent a U Haul.
This reminds me of back in the "70âs when the Detroit Big 3 surrendered the Compact market to the imports because they were too lazy and cheap to make the investment to be competitive and itâs just sickening.
If Honda, Toyota and Nissan can build cars here and make a profit, thereâs absolutely no reason the Big 3 canât do the same and when the appetite for overpriced luxury SUVâs and luxury Pickups eventually burns out, theyâre going to find themselves is the same situation as back in the 70âs.
Tariffs on imports and running to the Government for bailouts.
Thereâs absolutely no reason why the Big 3 canât make a world class quality sedan at a competituve price and if they donât decide to do so, well so long.
Tom Silva (This Old House general contractor) always says about his work: âthe money is in the detailsâ. I think the same applies to vehicle design. If the manufacture doesnât pay attention to the details, adopts the attitude âdonât sweat the small stuffâ, the result will always be theyâll fall behind the companies that do sweat the small stuff.
Well gee in 1960 Ford had the compact Falcon and then later the Fairlane plus the full sized Fords, 2 dr, 4 dr, station wagon, and even the Ranchero. Seems like they had a full line. And GM had the compact Corvair, three grades of full sized same as Ford and all the other models plus the El Cameno. Not to mention Buick and the Skylark and Riviera in additon to the full line up, plus Pontiac and Olds. And of course the whole Ford Mercury line same way. I just donât remember enough of Plymouth and DeSoto and Chrysler, etc. But all the imports had was a small car. So who really was spending money on car models?? Thatâs all I want to see now is a full line up.
Iâm just saying in the old days youâd go down to the Ford/Merc dealer when the new models came in and could find what you wanted. Small car, Thunderbird, wagon, convertible, three trim lines of Fords, and if you wanted more, there was Mercury with 2 or 3 different trims. Then you could always go to Lincoln if Mercury wasnât enough. Now the choice is 5 or 6 different sized SUVs or a truck, with a few other odd balls thrown in. Of course they were smart enough to keep Mustang. I just think it is a long term big big mistake. Cars used to be exciting and people bought. If they arenât exciting you wonât buy until you have to.
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Theyâre not all bad, but the problem is that even the âbestâ ones like Disneyâs planned community âCelebrationâ can be sold to a private equity fund which steals all the equity from the communal properties, neglects exterior maintenance until rot and termites destroy the buildings, and then secretly takes out millions of dollars in loans against the community for even more of a cash grab which it then tells the homeowners to pay off for them.
By that standard, just being told I couldnât mow the lawn on Saturday doesnât sound so bad. 
I didnât know they sold it. We visited there a number of times and Iâm trying to remember the movie that it reminded me of. Stepford Wives, or Children of the Corn, or something like that. Seemed like they werenât real people in real houses but hypnotized or robots. Iâm being a little cruel but I did get a different vibe from the place. A little too programmed for me but hey they had good ice cream.
They believe (right or wrong) that those pickup trucks lower their property values. In reality, itâs just a way to make it harder for working class people to move into the neighborhood.
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+1
A lot of the regulations imposed by HOAs are essentially the work of local busybodies who are attempting to control many aspects of the lives of the other residents.
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Not around here. HOAâs homes have better resale value. People who live there like the concept.
Iâve seen HOAâs that are not too unreasonable. Some are ludicrous. But some make sense. Youâll actually find that many HOAâs rules have made it into towns laws.
No putting appliances in the yard.
No parking of business trucks on the street.
No overgrowth.
We looked at buying a winter home in Hilton Head. They are probably the worse. Everyone has to have the EXACT SAME MAIL BOX.
My mother lives in an HOA community with a typical HOA. That means they will rigorously enforce their stupid rules if you come to them and ask permission to do something, but if you just do it they donât say a word. She followed the rules and asked for a variance to install a 4 foot fence for her dog - 3â is the HOA limit. They gave her no end of crap and made her go around to all of her neighbors and get them to sign a letter saying they were OK with it. Meanwhile, one of those neighbors put up an 8 foot privacy fence without asking, and itâs still there 20 years later.
But HOAs can be a good thing if theyâre run right. Another of her neighbors is into old cars. Not nice, classic cars, but old junkers that havenât run since the Reagan administration and which are now in various stages of decomposition amongst the weeds on his property - and understand that this neighborhood is full of million-dollar houses, but itâs also full of âthis is my property and I can do whatever I want with itâ attitudes.
To an extent I sympathize with that viewpoint, but on the other hand, when what you do with your property negatively impacts mine by bringing the property values down or just forcing me to live next door to a junk yard, we have a problem, and thatâs the kind of problem a good HOA can solve. The trouble starts when you get the little power-hungry martinets on the boards and they start running roughshod over the neighborhood, but that can be alleviated by other people stepping up to run for the board.
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My mother lived in a neighborhood that didnât have an HOA, but it did have local rules about what color youâre supposed to paint your townhouse, what kind of siding youâre allowed to use, etc. Her townhouse was on the far end of a cul-de-sac, the last of four adjoined townhouses with the open side facing away from all the other houses. In order to see the open side of the house, youâd have to either trespass or be in the neighboring apartment complex.
Rather than ask for permission, we decided to put vinyl siding on that side of the house. We put all the seams facing the same way, where someone looking from the front yard wouldnât see them. Nobody ever mentioned it.
The worst thing that ever happened is that we got an angry letter from a neighbor who didnât like looking at my motherâs RV parked in the driveway.
There are many New England towns like that. Only earthy natural tones for paint. All buildings must be of the older New England style. You should see what a McDonalds or KFC looks like in these towns.
I have noticed that the bored, middle aged wives of relatively wealthy and busy husbands are often âencouragedâ to become involved in such community organizations by husbands hoping to share their grief.
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Momâs HOA was big into earth tones, but⊠They specifically defined âearth tonesâ as âcolors that exist in nature.â So when they were giving my folks guff about whether or not they could do grade-level entry for handicap accessibility (dad was in a wheelchair) dad explained that under the ADA they could do anything they wanted for accessibility purposes and the HOA had no leg to stand on.
The HOA then threatened to take him to court over it, which delighted him because he loved beating idiots up in court, but mom instead just pointed out that parrots exist in nature, and so does shiny metallic gold and silver, and if they kept it up with the anti-handicap BS, the house would be visible from orbit.
They dropped the matter. 
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