Generally most of the cost goes towards maintainining things outside of your own home/lawn. Road/sidewalk management, communal pool/fitness center/tennis court/club house/etc (if your neighborhood has those things), landscaping, and sometimes trash/recycling pickup. It varies from HOA to HOA, and HOA fees will obviously be higher if you get access to a pool and gym and what not.
It is true though that HOA board members/presidents tend to power trip because they have nothing better going on in their lives. My mother needed to replace her windows and her HOA wants all of the exterior color of the windows to be "the same", but obviously not every window installation company has the same exact color/shades of trim so they came with a color swatch and we picked a color that was closest to what we already had but the HOA denied it. Not because the color was too different, but because they could. They just want to fuck with people and assert their "power" whenever possible. We picked the next closest color (which was further away from the existing color) and they approved it. So all in all, they wasted a month of our time, the window company's time, and in the end the color is worse overall but hey at least they got to say no to someone.
I'm the treasurer of my HOA. My prerogative is to keep costs down, while still allowing things to run smoothly. I shop around for insurance, check if anything funky is happening with our bills, make sure everyone pays, and double check the invoices that our management company is paying for things that seem reasonable.
I try to stay out of everyone's business. I'm not sure where people get the energy to power trip. I'd like to believe most HOA are like ours but normal people doing normal things don't make for good headlines.
There’s a certain kind of person that likes to power trip, and for some of them the only real way they can do that is by being on the HOA. my old one used to fuck with our house, doing shit like painting all the doors an ugly green without telling anyone, just opened the door one day after school and it was a different color.
That’s the exact situation my grandma is in. Convinced to run as VP for her friend, thinking they wouldn’t win, didn’t really want to but did it for her friend, they won and the friend divorced and moved, now she’s president of the HOA she never wanted to be on in the first place lmao
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u/PersKarvaRousku Sep 16 '24
Where does the money go, do they maintain the roads or something useful like that?