Nonsense, the terms of the HOA are plain language that a 10 year old could read. Or at least mine are...
All 37 pages of them... but it isn't a hard read... and for a purchase running into the six figures, take the two hours and read them, it won't kill you...
Shoot, for a vehicle purchase I take my time and read everything I'm signing, front and back. It takes about 2 hours, but I'm spending $50K+ dollars, 2 hours is worth making sure I know what I'm signing. I found an $8K mistake once.:)
F&I guys are human... or scum, take your pick, it was a mistake in their favor.:)
I would suggest that something is wrong with your HOA, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know what state you're in or the rules there.
In my HOA, they don't get to "make up rules", the rules are written in black and white, I got a complete copy at the closing of my house, those are the rules, period.
To change even a single rule requires a vote of all the homeowners in my HOA (245 of them), and 75% must vote FOR the change.
Period.
One of those changes can be to dissolve the HOA, also taking 75% of the homeowners, but that can be done as well.
BTW, I'm not allowed to have an above ground pool either, but that is clearly written into the deed restrictions, as is the rules on what color you can paint your front door, etc.
BTW, would you REALLY want your neighbor to paint his/her house pink? Without a HOA, there is little to stop them.
In response, they decided to stop accepting my H.O.A. dues payments so they could turn around and sue me for not paying them.
No, you're causing the problem, you aren't sending the money where they are asking you to send it.
The two issues aren't related, you don't get to decide to send the money somewhere else because of a separate dispute.
You're going to lose that battle.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've been sued and I've sued other people, always with the use of legal council and what you THINK should happen and what DOES happen don't always match.
When I bought my place I had to sign that I had received a copy of the HOA rules as part of two foot high stack of paperwork to sign. I remember seeing in there that I am legally required to present the rules to any person I later sold the unit to. So what happens this fails to happen? I suspect that this varies greatly from state to state.
The Title Company shouldn't allow it to close without making sure it is there. They are providing an insurance policy on the title, so they will research it and will find those restrictions.
It shouldn't close without the disclosure, it probably would fall back on the title company at that point, but I'm not a lawyer.
Frankly, in any real estate transaction involving a property worth enough to be in a HOA, there should be professionals involved who won't let this happen. That is what they are paid for.
I had no deed restrictions. So the house was never in the HOA, from what people are telling me, and that the HOA must have only existed for those houses that joined the airstrip, though I get HOA notices from the HOA that I'm not a member of.
Laws DO vary state to state, some use titles rather than deeds for example...
In Texas, it all comes down to the deed, if there is no deed restriction, the HOA likely has zero power.
Of course it comes down to whom wants to sue whom, and then the courts figure it out, which usually means the lawyers get all the money.:)
You're on constructive notice concerning deed restrictions. If you fail to research the bylaws and regulations springing out those restrictions, it's on you -- the HOA will likely win the suit that they bring against you.
Well first off, if you have a half-way decent Realtor, you know there is a HOA before you even put in an offer on the house.
Second, you get notice before closing that there is a HOA.
Finally, you have to sign a document at closing saying that you agree to the HOA rules.
It is rather hard to miss, you have to be really, really asleep at the wheel to miss it.
HOAs are evil, in that they are perfectly constructed to set neighbor against neighbor. We would be better off without them.
Nonsense... They are there to promote the neighborhood and protect property values...
They prevent the neighbors from painting their front door pink, installing window air-conditioners, etc.
In my case, last year there was a renter on my street who parked a boat on the street (on a trailer). It was oversized and really caused a problem trying to drive on the street. This was NOT a friendly neighbor, we tried knocking on the door, only to get rude looks and a "we can park it where we want" reply.
So, the HOA got involved, who were also ignored... until they got the police dept to come out and knock on the door... that got it it moved...:)
They moved out about 2 months later, thankfully...
While I don't like having to get approvals to do things like replace the roof, I do like that everyone else has to so they can't just put up "whatever".
Since the average home value on my street is about $400k, I'd prefer not to have ignorant people think that pink is a good color for a house. Without a HOA, there is just about nothing to stop them from doing just that.
The Soviet Union fell peacefully and dissolved into new, mostly stable and democratic governments. Well, stableish, democraticish. About the best the world could hope for, really.
No, it was horrible and should never have happened...
But no one wants to hear it...
What SHOULD have happened was at the end of WWII we should have rearmed and reequipped the Germans and turned on Russia and removed Stalin, who was just as bad, if not worse than Hitler.
Look at Germany today? Imagine if Russia today was just like Germany?
Now THAT would be better... and we had the chance to do it, we had the nuclear bomb, Russia did not, and we blew it.
We could have skipped the entire cold war, and a lot of nasty stuff that happened since, so before you say "oh but more people would have died", my reply is that those deaths would have prevented many others along with a lot of suffering in the past 70 years.
The world would be a very different place. Consider that if we had gone into Russia, China's civil war might have ended differently, with the communists losing...
Patton was right. He was maybe a little crazy, not very diplomatic, but he was right...
It isn't free in that the money could have been used to lower my taxes.
Thus it isn't free at all.
The sunlight shining on all of us is free. The air around us is free. The dirt we're standing on is free.
Your thoughts are free, your love for your family is free.
Fiber optic cables are anything but free.
---
Note: I'm not even suggesting this is a BAD way to spend money, perhaps it is a good thing. I'm simply pointing out that it did cost money and it wasn't free, the school just didn't write a check for it, but someone did, and that money came out of the economy from somewhere.
everything I know about Reagan is shit my dad said.
Perhaps your dad knows what he is talking about?
You might close the mouth and open the ears, you might learn something...
Reagan wasn't perfect, he was human like anyone else, but he did stare down the USSR with one hand and held out an olive branch with the other, giving Gorbachev something to take hold of.
The USSR was going bankrupt, Reagan unveiled program after program, from Star Wars (not real) to the Stealth Bomber (very real) and it made the Russians take note that they could not keep up and win a military solution, so perhaps peace was worth a try.
Yes, Reagan ran up a large debt doing it, but what would war have cost? It was cheap by comparison, and the really bad debts didn't come until Bush Jr and Obama anyway, we were fine up until Clinton's term ended.
---
It would also be worth a read of WWI and WWII history, as well as what really lead to those wars, which requires a study of history going back a few hundred years... and it is a shame that I find most people have no idea whatsoever about the history of humanity, then are surprised when we keep doing the same stuff.
So you DO believe in grand larceny from legally disarmed victims.
So I suppose that means you don't want a fire dept either?
There are some basic services that the government can do better than we can do on our own.
Building roads, providing for the national defense, staffing a fire dept, etc.
Health care I believe now falls into that category, and I say that as a conservative...
That being said, the way we have done it with ACA is about the worst possible way we could have gone about it, it was just an insurance company handout by the government, nothing more or less.
The problem is, who decides who leaves the human race and who stays?
You're looking for an easy answer to a problem that doesn't have one.
That being said, there are indeed people who need to leave the human race, I think most of us could agree on that.
Rapists, murderers, etc...
As you say, who makes that call? Complex problem that everyone wants a 15 second headline answer for, and such an answer doesn't exist.
My reason for being willing to kill Osama Bin Laden is simply that no one, not France, not Russia, not China, no one actually said we were wrong in blaming him. There were no protests over our killing of him either, not any that matter anyway.
It is sort of like the moon landings. I know we went to the moon for the simple reason that Russia didn't call us on it, and it wasn't fake-able in a way that would have tricked them, we can't get around the speed of radio or their ability to see where the transmissions are coming from.
I suppose you could claim they were in on it with us, but then that requires a different world view and that is another conversation.
If someone commits a premeditated crime, then they don't do so on the supposition that they will be caught and punished, they do so on the assumption that they will not be caught and will get away with it.
*watches the point fly over most of the poster's heads here*
Sigh... the entire point of executing them on TV is to make sure that people know that the chances of getting caught just went up.
When is the last time these criminals were caught and put in jail? I honestly have no idea because we never hear about it. Thus I think a lot of people, the criminals included, figure the chances of being caught are slim.
If you go out and start catching them, even just a few, and make it very, very public, many of them may make different choices.
So, the only reason you pay your taxes is because you wouldn't be convicted as a criminal if you didn't?
You're kidding me right?
No, not at all... The US Government spends $4 Trillion dollars on many things, a large number of which I don't agree with, such as wars that cannot be won.
It also spends a lot of money on wasteful things like the war on drugs and the war on poverty, neither of which have accomplished anything other than to make some people very rich and put a lot of people in prison.
I suppose you're happy to take advantage of the benefits of state society when it suits you but when it comes to actually paying for those benefits you'd rather not?
I have no problem with paying some taxes, such as my property taxes that pay for my local roads, city services, police, etc. I see the value there.
Ugh, typical freeloader.
That is the typical response of someone who doesn't actually understand how much of their tax money is wasted and how much better off we'd all be if taxes were cut in half tomorrow.
It always fascinates me that people can deal out death like its nothing. Do you ever stop and think that it could be your head on the chopping block someday?
Text on the Internet doesn't always convey views and emotions properly.
Rest assured I take it very seriously, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who shouldn't leave the human race. Would you have a problem killing Usama Bin Laden?
And you're right, I run the risk of having those tables turned... we aren't perfect...
I'll say that it is not because you worry that you will be executed but that you will lose your possessions / job / freedom. Once you've bought into the system then the system has ways to keep you invested.
You make a fair point... If I didn't use money as we know it, have a bank account, a house, etc... I might care less...
Yeah. Although I see it as whether they have the option to join the system again. If they're paying a mortgage and putting their kids through school then they have an interest in following the rules.
This is a problem with the current system. Once you're a felon, you're always one and it affects everything for the rest of your life.
Serving a year or two in prison, doesn't end it.
Personally, I think that once you've paid your debt to society, you should get a fresh start. After all, why are we letting you out of jail if you aren't safe now? Either you're ready to rejoin society or you're not.
It affects credit, the ability to get a job, etc... and we wonder why so many people out of prison end up back there, the world cuts off so many options.
The problem with that approach is that the system is run by people. And those people are flawed.
True, which is why I think the system needs reform.
If we are going to put someone in prison for 20 years, or even 2 years, then we need more than "beyond a reasonable doubt", we need, "beyond any doubt".
There is no greater crime than the government putting innocent people into prison, that would be horrible.
And it is even worse if you are a minority.
I wouldn't know, since I'm not one, but I believe you.
I will say that part of the problem is the system goes after blacks more than whites, I do believe that.
On the other hand, black people tend to have a culture that... well, doesn't foster a good impression...
If my daughter wanted to date a black man, that would be fine, if he comes across like Colin Powell. P. Diddy on the other hand, is a punk and I wouldn't want that at all, no matter how much money he has.
Rest assured, I could find plenty of white trash I wouldn't want around her either, so it isn't color, rather it is class that bothers me.
Grow up, speak English properly, earn a respectable living, treat people right, respect the rules of society, and we'll get along just fine, regardless of your color.
Slashdot Mirror
Nonsense, the terms of the HOA are plain language that a 10 year old could read. Or at least mine are...
All 37 pages of them... but it isn't a hard read... and for a purchase running into the six figures, take the two hours and read them, it won't kill you...
Shoot, for a vehicle purchase I take my time and read everything I'm signing, front and back. It takes about 2 hours, but I'm spending $50K+ dollars, 2 hours is worth making sure I know what I'm signing. I found an $8K mistake once. :)
F&I guys are human... or scum, take your pick, it was a mistake in their favor. :)
I would suggest that something is wrong with your HOA, but I'm not a lawyer and I don't know what state you're in or the rules there.
In my HOA, they don't get to "make up rules", the rules are written in black and white, I got a complete copy at the closing of my house, those are the rules, period.
To change even a single rule requires a vote of all the homeowners in my HOA (245 of them), and 75% must vote FOR the change.
Period.
One of those changes can be to dissolve the HOA, also taking 75% of the homeowners, but that can be done as well.
BTW, I'm not allowed to have an above ground pool either, but that is clearly written into the deed restrictions, as is the rules on what color you can paint your front door, etc.
BTW, would you REALLY want your neighbor to paint his/her house pink? Without a HOA, there is little to stop them.
In response, they decided to stop accepting my H.O.A. dues payments so they could turn around and sue me for not paying them.
No, you're causing the problem, you aren't sending the money where they are asking you to send it.
The two issues aren't related, you don't get to decide to send the money somewhere else because of a separate dispute.
You're going to lose that battle.
I'm not a lawyer, but I've been sued and I've sued other people, always with the use of legal council and what you THINK should happen and what DOES happen don't always match.
When I bought my place I had to sign that I had received a copy of the HOA rules as part of two foot high stack of paperwork to sign. I remember seeing in there that I am legally required to present the rules to any person I later sold the unit to. So what happens this fails to happen? I suspect that this varies greatly from state to state.
The Title Company shouldn't allow it to close without making sure it is there. They are providing an insurance policy on the title, so they will research it and will find those restrictions.
It shouldn't close without the disclosure, it probably would fall back on the title company at that point, but I'm not a lawyer.
Frankly, in any real estate transaction involving a property worth enough to be in a HOA, there should be professionals involved who won't let this happen. That is what they are paid for.
I had no deed restrictions. So the house was never in the HOA, from what people are telling me, and that the HOA must have only existed for those houses that joined the airstrip, though I get HOA notices from the HOA that I'm not a member of.
Laws DO vary state to state, some use titles rather than deeds for example...
In Texas, it all comes down to the deed, if there is no deed restriction, the HOA likely has zero power.
Of course it comes down to whom wants to sue whom, and then the courts figure it out, which usually means the lawyers get all the money. :)
You're on constructive notice concerning deed restrictions. If you fail to research the bylaws and regulations springing out those restrictions, it's on you -- the HOA will likely win the suit that they bring against you.
Well first off, if you have a half-way decent Realtor, you know there is a HOA before you even put in an offer on the house.
Second, you get notice before closing that there is a HOA.
Finally, you have to sign a document at closing saying that you agree to the HOA rules.
It is rather hard to miss, you have to be really, really asleep at the wheel to miss it.
HOAs are evil, in that they are perfectly constructed to set neighbor against neighbor. We would be better off without them.
Nonsense... They are there to promote the neighborhood and protect property values...
They prevent the neighbors from painting their front door pink, installing window air-conditioners, etc.
In my case, last year there was a renter on my street who parked a boat on the street (on a trailer). It was oversized and really caused a problem trying to drive on the street. This was NOT a friendly neighbor, we tried knocking on the door, only to get rude looks and a "we can park it where we want" reply.
So, the HOA got involved, who were also ignored... until they got the police dept to come out and knock on the door... that got it it moved... :)
They moved out about 2 months later, thankfully...
While I don't like having to get approvals to do things like replace the roof, I do like that everyone else has to so they can't just put up "whatever".
Since the average home value on my street is about $400k, I'd prefer not to have ignorant people think that pink is a good color for a house. Without a HOA, there is just about nothing to stop them from doing just that.
Heck, in the USA you can fix your own furnace, no licence required...
As far as handymen, you can find plenty of those who will do it as well, some of whom know what they are doing, others do not... Buyer beware... :)
Now you're just being obtuse... :)
The Soviet Union fell peacefully and dissolved into new, mostly stable and democratic governments. Well, stableish, democraticish. About the best the world could hope for, really.
No, it was horrible and should never have happened...
But no one wants to hear it...
What SHOULD have happened was at the end of WWII we should have rearmed and reequipped the Germans and turned on Russia and removed Stalin, who was just as bad, if not worse than Hitler.
Look at Germany today? Imagine if Russia today was just like Germany?
Now THAT would be better... and we had the chance to do it, we had the nuclear bomb, Russia did not, and we blew it.
We could have skipped the entire cold war, and a lot of nasty stuff that happened since, so before you say "oh but more people would have died", my reply is that those deaths would have prevented many others along with a lot of suffering in the past 70 years.
The world would be a very different place. Consider that if we had gone into Russia, China's civil war might have ended differently, with the communists losing...
Patton was right. He was maybe a little crazy, not very diplomatic, but he was right...
It isn't free in that the money could have been used to lower my taxes.
Thus it isn't free at all.
The sunlight shining on all of us is free. The air around us is free. The dirt we're standing on is free.
Your thoughts are free, your love for your family is free.
Fiber optic cables are anything but free.
---
Note: I'm not even suggesting this is a BAD way to spend money, perhaps it is a good thing. I'm simply pointing out that it did cost money and it wasn't free, the school just didn't write a check for it, but someone did, and that money came out of the economy from somewhere.
The easy answer is to never kill in cold blood. A firing squad is cold-blooded homicide and no honorable man should participate in one.
And putting someone in a 8x8 concrete cell for 40 years is more humane?
Of course there is another example... If I find you harming my wife or child, do you honestly expect me to do anything other than kill you?
Killing someone who harms his wife is about the most honorable thing there is, where I come from.
everything I know about Reagan is shit my dad said.
Perhaps your dad knows what he is talking about?
You might close the mouth and open the ears, you might learn something...
Reagan wasn't perfect, he was human like anyone else, but he did stare down the USSR with one hand and held out an olive branch with the other, giving Gorbachev something to take hold of.
The USSR was going bankrupt, Reagan unveiled program after program, from Star Wars (not real) to the Stealth Bomber (very real) and it made the Russians take note that they could not keep up and win a military solution, so perhaps peace was worth a try.
Yes, Reagan ran up a large debt doing it, but what would war have cost? It was cheap by comparison, and the really bad debts didn't come until Bush Jr and Obama anyway, we were fine up until Clinton's term ended.
---
It would also be worth a read of WWI and WWII history, as well as what really lead to those wars, which requires a study of history going back a few hundred years... and it is a shame that I find most people have no idea whatsoever about the history of humanity, then are surprised when we keep doing the same stuff.
Sure, until the general budget gets changed... :)
Texas did the same thing over a decade ago, if you compare the pre and post edu budgets, you'll see the same thing happened...
Besides, no one says it has to be spent on fiber for the schools, it could be spent on teachers to reduce the student teacher ratio...
So the fiber still isn't free. :)
Ahh, but it wasn't... unless they went out and did the work themselves.
Those tickets made money, and someone decided to spend that money on this fiber.
Which is fine, but money is fungible, it can be used for almost anything, so that money also could have been used to build roads, or reduce taxes.
So the fiber wasn't free.
Sorry, I thought it was free because they owned the fiber in the ground.
Maybe I'm wrong.
And was the fiber put there by magic fairies?
Is it maintained by magic fairies?
So you DO believe in grand larceny from legally disarmed victims.
So I suppose that means you don't want a fire dept either?
There are some basic services that the government can do better than we can do on our own.
Building roads, providing for the national defense, staffing a fire dept, etc.
Health care I believe now falls into that category, and I say that as a conservative...
That being said, the way we have done it with ACA is about the worst possible way we could have gone about it, it was just an insurance company handout by the government, nothing more or less.
Why don't you move to Saudi Arabia or Iran? You'll love it there.
Why don't you come back and say that after these pukes have done this to you...
You need to work on your math... It is way, way off...
The problem is, who decides who leaves the human race and who stays?
You're looking for an easy answer to a problem that doesn't have one.
That being said, there are indeed people who need to leave the human race, I think most of us could agree on that.
Rapists, murderers, etc...
As you say, who makes that call? Complex problem that everyone wants a 15 second headline answer for, and such an answer doesn't exist.
My reason for being willing to kill Osama Bin Laden is simply that no one, not France, not Russia, not China, no one actually said we were wrong in blaming him. There were no protests over our killing of him either, not any that matter anyway.
It is sort of like the moon landings. I know we went to the moon for the simple reason that Russia didn't call us on it, and it wasn't fake-able in a way that would have tricked them, we can't get around the speed of radio or their ability to see where the transmissions are coming from.
I suppose you could claim they were in on it with us, but then that requires a different world view and that is another conversation.
If someone commits a premeditated crime, then they don't do so on the supposition that they will be caught and punished, they do so on the assumption that they will not be caught and will get away with it.
*watches the point fly over most of the poster's heads here*
Sigh... the entire point of executing them on TV is to make sure that people know that the chances of getting caught just went up.
When is the last time these criminals were caught and put in jail? I honestly have no idea because we never hear about it. Thus I think a lot of people, the criminals included, figure the chances of being caught are slim.
If you go out and start catching them, even just a few, and make it very, very public, many of them may make different choices.
So, the only reason you pay your taxes is because you wouldn't be convicted as a criminal if you didn't?
You're kidding me right?
No, not at all... The US Government spends $4 Trillion dollars on many things, a large number of which I don't agree with, such as wars that cannot be won.
It also spends a lot of money on wasteful things like the war on drugs and the war on poverty, neither of which have accomplished anything other than to make some people very rich and put a lot of people in prison.
I suppose you're happy to take advantage of the benefits of state society when it suits you but when it comes to actually paying for those benefits you'd rather not?
I have no problem with paying some taxes, such as my property taxes that pay for my local roads, city services, police, etc. I see the value there.
Ugh, typical freeloader.
That is the typical response of someone who doesn't actually understand how much of their tax money is wasted and how much better off we'd all be if taxes were cut in half tomorrow.
It always fascinates me that people can deal out death like its nothing. Do you ever stop and think that it could be your head on the chopping block someday?
Text on the Internet doesn't always convey views and emotions properly.
Rest assured I take it very seriously, but that doesn't mean there aren't people who shouldn't leave the human race. Would you have a problem killing Usama Bin Laden?
And you're right, I run the risk of having those tables turned... we aren't perfect...
I'll say that it is not because you worry that you will be executed but that you will lose your possessions / job / freedom. Once you've bought into the system then the system has ways to keep you invested.
You make a fair point... If I didn't use money as we know it, have a bank account, a house, etc... I might care less...
Yeah. Although I see it as whether they have the option to join the system again. If they're paying a mortgage and putting their kids through school then they have an interest in following the rules.
This is a problem with the current system. Once you're a felon, you're always one and it affects everything for the rest of your life.
Serving a year or two in prison, doesn't end it.
Personally, I think that once you've paid your debt to society, you should get a fresh start. After all, why are we letting you out of jail if you aren't safe now? Either you're ready to rejoin society or you're not.
It affects credit, the ability to get a job, etc... and we wonder why so many people out of prison end up back there, the world cuts off so many options.
The problem with that approach is that the system is run by people. And those people are flawed.
True, which is why I think the system needs reform.
If we are going to put someone in prison for 20 years, or even 2 years, then we need more than "beyond a reasonable doubt", we need, "beyond any doubt".
There is no greater crime than the government putting innocent people into prison, that would be horrible.
And it is even worse if you are a minority.
I wouldn't know, since I'm not one, but I believe you.
I will say that part of the problem is the system goes after blacks more than whites, I do believe that.
On the other hand, black people tend to have a culture that... well, doesn't foster a good impression...
If my daughter wanted to date a black man, that would be fine, if he comes across like Colin Powell. P. Diddy on the other hand, is a punk and I wouldn't want that at all, no matter how much money he has.
Rest assured, I could find plenty of white trash I wouldn't want around her either, so it isn't color, rather it is class that bothers me.
Grow up, speak English properly, earn a respectable living, treat people right, respect the rules of society, and we'll get along just fine, regardless of your color.
In US, one person on 100 is in jail.
That is sad, isn't it?
And it is largely due to our stupid drug laws, and if you look at the percentages in prison, they are not evenly distributed among our races...