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Love the House....but an HOA?
We are in contract on a house that we love in a fantastic neighborhood with great schools. We have cleared all contingencies except one - the HOA.
The realtor claims that this is a very benign HOA, and she's spoken with the HOA president and there are only 21 houses in the development so it's all very friendly. I get that may be how it is now, but what will it be like in 10 or 20 or 30 years? I just don't know if I can handle having to get sign-off from a committee every time I want to plant different flowers or if I want to put in vegetable beds in the back yard.
I was worried about this before we even put in a bid, but they would not give us the HOA docs prior to contract and I convinced myself that maybe it would be an HOA like my in-laws have: $20 a year and all it does is put out a newsletter. But now that I've read the documents, it clearly is more restrictive.
So what would you do? Walk away from a house that is perfect in every way except that there is an HOA? We aren't in a rush to move, but this house is really unique and there aren't many like it in the area where we'd want to be.
There's always something, isn't there? 
Re: Love the House....but an HOA?
I wouldn't walk away b/c of just an HOA. Around here, once you get above a certain price point, its hard to find a neighborhood without one.
For us, we paid close attention to the covenants. If they were too restrictive especially regarding parking commercial vehicles ( H owns a business) then we would walk.
I think you need to evaluate what specifically you don't like and go from there. I think there are good and bad things which an HOA. In our old neighborhood, it would have kept one neighbor from painting the house bright orange and another one from deciding to get goats.
GL
We live in a neighborhood with an HOA and now I wouldn't have it any other way. It is what makes our neighborhood one of the most desirable in our area.
i agree with pp. I would read the covenants and decide if you can live with them. They are not all the same - in mine I don't have to get approval for flowers or to plant vegetables in my back yard. That seems a bit extreme to me.
Very true! There really is a lot of good that comes along with the bad parts of an HOA. They enforce people keeping their yards maintained and things like that. We don't have to get approval for flowers though. Is the HOA really that strict? Ours is more like you need to trim the hedges, you cant have a basketball goal in the street, or don't paint your house purple and pink.
If it were just a keep your lawn mowed, don't paint your house pink HOA I wouldn't be this worried. But it seems that almost all the green space is actually common area maintained by a landscaper, which is why I think you need approval to plant different flowers. And what I thought was the backyard also appears to be "common area" although we'd have exclusive use to it, but we'd need sign-off to put in vegetable beds. I'm getting the sense that this neighborhood may cater to older people who don't want to do any yard maintenance at all - which is fine, but I don't know if it's the neighborhood I want to be in to raise my kids.
Thanks to everyone for thoughts - I'm really appreciating all of this!
I've lived in an HOA before and it was a good experience. They were mostly there just to make sure the property values stayed up. We never had any major problems with them except for them asking us to remove a tree we were going to get rid of anyway (had just bought the house and a tree in the front yard was obviously dead).
i'm going back into one now with my current purchase. this one is on a condo, but it's awesome.. they maintain 3 pools and spas for me, insure outside and some of the inside of the place and pay my water bill. other than that, again, just to keep up value of the place.
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I was HOA president of a neighborhood with 25 houses. I think you need to talk to the president yourself and talk to some of the neighbors. If things have always been pretty chill, then it becoming crazy strict overnight one day is pretty unlikely. Just make sure you're involved in/paying attention to the HOA so somebody crazy can't take over. In a neighborhood that small, every vote really does make a difference.
Also, I'm willing to bet you have the wrong idea about the yard care. HOA-provided yard care is one of the great blessings in life! You don't have to bother with the mundane maintenance tasks like mowing the lawn every week or putting out weed n feed or weeding your beds, but you get all the fun of planting whatever flowers appeal to you.
You do need to check and be sure that you own the land your house sits on. If you do, ultimately what they can say to you is limited, but if they own the land (like you saying the back yard is all common space), then they have more control. You really just need to talk to people first hand to get a better understanding before making this decision.
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Thinking of doing cosmetic updates to a dated home? These were our costs.
I wish our new neighborhood had one.
They can seem rigid, but believe me when you have a house on your street where they aren't caring for the property properly or have junk sitting out, an HOA rocks!
People who don't care for their homes and yards and/or who leave out junk, bring down a neighborhoods' value.
In this market full of foreclosures when people can buy nice homes for cheap, you get some people moving into otherwise well-kept neighborhoods who do not care about their properties the same ways as the current owners do and it shows.
For example, we just had a foreclosure sell on our street. The new owners do not care for it and they just installed a window air conditioner (not so bad) but instead of doing it properly, they stuffed the space around the AC with a yellow blanket and used the cardboard box of the AC's packaging (complete with a palm tree photo) facing the street to fill the windows' open space above the unit. It's awful!
I know that sounds snobby, but when you move into a nice neighborhood with decent home values, as a homeowner you will begin to care about this sort of thing. It matters. HOAs help out with this sort of thing.