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HOA towed my wife's car


TheLongshot

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To me, an HOA is like a union....great idea on paper but sucks once it's put into practice. Thank God I live in the boonies of Southern Maryland and don't have to deal with it. I also have enough land to not have to see my neighbors houses and don't have to care if they take care of their houses or not.

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I hate HOAs. Why do people put up with them? Just another tax and another group of power hungry people who want to act like they are god.

HOAs can be a pain in the ass. But they do serve a valuable purpose. When you buy a house, its an investment. And you don't want a bunch of losers moving in next door that don't mow their lawn. Never trim their bushes. Paint their house pink. etc...HOAs prevent stuff like that from happening. And that protects your propery value (your investment). Its better to have one. Trust me on this.

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HOAs can be a pain in the ass. But they do serve a valuable purpose. When you buy a house, its an investment. And you don't want a bunch of losers moving in next door that don't mow their lawn. Never trim their bushes. Paint their house pink. etc...HOAs prevent stuff like that from happening. And that protects your propery value (your investment). Its better to have one. Trust me on this.

why should I care about any of those things? they could have a car on cinder-blocks for all I care.

edit: as a matter of fact, my current next door neighbor practically DOES have cars on cinder-blocks. He's had a non-working firebird and aerostar in his driveway since I can remember. He used to have a couple boats alongside his house as well before they were taken for not being registered or something. I didn't mind. He's a good neighbor (and he's taken me to a couple redskins games)

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why should I care about any of those things? they could have a car on cinder-blocks for all I care.

Because when those cinder blocks cost YOU thousands of dollars off the asking price of the sale of your home because buyers are put off because the neighborhood looks like crap...you start to care. Other houses having wildly unkempt properties, unrepaired damage to the outside, junk or litter in the yards, etc. can drastically affect the property value of your home not matter how well you keep it. If you don't care about your property value or resale potential..then yeah..you wouldn't care, really.

I personally can't stand HOAs and won't live in a neighborhood that has them if it is at all avoidable. But I understand their purpose.

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I personally can't stand HOAs and won't live in a neighborhood that has them if it is at all avoidable. But I understand their purpose.

Oh, I understand the purpose, but I don't like it. Prospective buyers could lose interest in a house from a neighbor with a truck on cinder-blocks, or in our case, the very presence of an HOA. I mean, I guess people have a right to live in their little communities with their own petty little rules, but count me out. I'm not interested in some insiders club and I certainly don't trust these random people with the legal right to tell me what I can and can't do with my own property.

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Man, that sucks. I can fully understand eowing the vehicle if the registration was a month or so expired, but two weeks? For those lecturing the OP about responsibility? Please save it. He forgot to renew his registration that was a measly two weeks expired. I'm sure it was an honest mistake and an overlooked one at that. We've all made these mistakes.

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I know when my tags expired because my state mails me a notice. Yours does too.

Weak sauce. You got a notice in the mail and didn't handle your responsibility.

Don't blame others for not addressing your responsibility.

I hear what you are saying, but to claim no knowledge of your issue is silly.

No...the use of weak sauce is silly:silly:

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Chalk it up as a learning experience and let it go, after writing a letter to everyone on the HOA explaining (calmly) why you didn't like their approach.

There will be a time when you need the HOA for something. Say you want to make a change to the front of your house that requires HOA approval. How motivated will they be to give you some leeway and process your request quickly if you do something like this:

You need to find ONE person at the HOA that has any semblance of decision making power and harrass the **** out of that one person. Email's every morning and afternoon. Snail mail. Phone calls. Don't skip weekends. Always be courteous and polite, but you can be nice and still be a huge pain in the ass.

But that's me. I usually view these things as a competition that I HAVE to win. Me versus that one person who wasn't anticipating my OCD being focused on him/her for weeks on end.

I made myself heard when I thought they were being too slow in processing a request to add a portico to my house, and they were. Engaging them by email once a week got it done pretty quickly and painlessly, and I haven't made enemies with people who can make my life more difficult if they want to.

What's done is done. You effed up and got tagged for it, maybe harder than you should have been. No point making a bad situation worse.

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I know when my tags expired because my state mails me a notice. Yours does too.

Weak sauce. You got a notice in the mail and didn't handle your responsibility.

Don't blame others for not addressing your responsibility.

I hear what you are saying, but to claim no knowledge of your issue is silly.

All of which is beside the point. This is about how the HOA handled things, not about my personal responsibilities. As I said, I already took responsibility for not getting it done. That doesn't make what the HOA did right.

Oh, I understand the purpose, but I don't like it. Prospective buyers could lose interest in a house from a neighbor with a truck on cinder-blocks, or in our case, the very presence of an HOA. I mean, I guess people have a right to live in their little communities with their own petty little rules, but count me out. I'm not interested in some insiders club and I certainly don't trust these random people with the legal right to tell me what I can and can't do with my own property.

There is also the fact that there are limited amount of parking spaces in a community like mine. If they are taking up by problem vehicles, there are less available for someone else to use. I understand why the rule is there, but there needs to be a more sane way to handle this for those who simply made a mistake. Give a warning for the first month then if they don't get it taken care of, then talk about towing. Had they just given me a warning (even with a fine attached), things would be fine with me.

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The HOA went wayyyyyyyyyyyyy overboard here.

My HOA will put a sticker on your car....explaining that they will tow you if you dont get so and so done.....or move it.

To just tow it out of nowhere for expired tags/registration............I would be livid......

For those telling him to "handle his responsibilty"

This is not a standard procedure for an HOA to Tow out of nowhere without atleast a notice, or past violations.

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god HOA's are a pain in the ass. I'm so glad the neighborhood where i bought my house doesn't have one.

Like with anything else, an out-of-control board (which usually only serves for 1 year) can be a problem. But most of the time they're relatively easy-going people trying to maintain the status quo, above all else, and the HOA is mutually beneficial to residents.

We have in our neighborhood a pool, playground, and a few common areas. The HOA does a great job of maintaining all of them. If anything, they're overly-lenient about weeds and things. We've certainly had our share of weeds in flowerbeds, and have only gotten a letter about it once, when it was particularly bad. When I was talking before about delays in getting my approval, even that was really more attributable to catching one board on its way out than anything else. Once the new board got up and running, they approved our request with a quickness

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You need to find ONE person at the HOA that has any semblance of decision making power and harrass the **** out of that one person. Email's every morning and afternoon. Snail mail. Phone calls. Don't skip weekends. Always be courteous and polite, but you can be nice and still be a huge pain in the ass.

But that's me. I usually view these things as a competition that I HAVE to win. Me versus that one person who wasn't anticipating my OCD being focused on him/her for weeks on end.

I like the way you think! I'm more of a "Dog Poop under Car Door handles" kind of guy........

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My HOA will put a sticker on your car....explaining that they will tow you if you dont get so and so done.....or move it.

To just tow it out of nowhere for expired tags/registration............I would be livid......

That is the best, low-cost solution for an HOA to take.

That's much better than pissing off a resident with such a Draconian tactic.

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no options to fight this if it is in the bylaws man ... when you buy into an association you are 100% binded to the rules and regs.

i was a prop manager.

it can be a crappy deal, but living in association has its benefits also.

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Your wife's car was missing and you figured it was towed and not stolen?

Sounds like you knew you were in violation...

I didn't. I knew towing was probably more likely than a car getting stolen in my neighborhood. I had no clue as to WHY it would have been towed, unless maybe my wife accidentally parked in someone's reserved spot, but I knew that was a possibility.

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Half the people here are going to be the kind with a car on blocks and the other half are gonna be the one who don't want to see it.

I personally want a happy medium, but good luck to me!

Best thing to do is get elected to your HOA, that'll show'em.

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