From: t@toddh.net (Todd H.)
Newsgroups: misc.consumers.house alt.real-estate-agents
Subject: Re: HOAs - your opinions?
Date: 22 Dec 2005 22:37:02 -0600

dim@soda.csua.berkeley.edu (D. Gerasimatos) writes:

> In article <84r7847t6a.fsf@ripco.com>, Todd H.  wrote:
> >dim@soda.csua.berkeley.edu (D. Gerasimatos) writes:
> >> In article <1135259013.425435.48950@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
> >>   wrote:
> >> >
> >> >Interesting position.  So, a municipality can set limits on parking
> >> >RV's, trucks, lawn ornaments, house color, or whatever else they
> >> >choose, then it's OK?  But if a HOA is set up for a neighborhood with
> >> >the same intention, then it's not?
> >> 
> >> HOAs charge you for the privilege.
> >
> >Don't kid yourself -- so does your municipality.  Unless you've found
> >a way around paying property tax.
> 
> In an area with HOAs you get to pay the HOA fees *plus* the property
> tax.

That's right.  

But...consider the possibility that when the subdivision was built and
several "mini-parks" if you will ("common areas" in HOA parlance), and
the snow removal for the area is taken care of by the HOA.  This is
the case in one subdivision around here (probably several actually).
Yearly fees are pretty modest, like $90. 

That's money the municipality doesn't have to spend providing these
services.  And hence, the less budgetary pressure on the municipality
in providing those services.  Which means less pressure to increase
taxes and need to extract money from that subdivision to cover that.
And depending on how taxing is legislated and line items broken out in
your county... consider that the fees one pays in that taxing
district's HOA is offset by a tax savings vs. if the HOA weren't
providing those services.

Again, like every facet discussed within this thread, whether any of
these generalizations are actually true is strongly dependent on the
individual HOA and municipality's intersection of services, laws, and
circumstances.   It's hard to know of course, cus taxing and
districting's granularity on this varies all over the place. 

There is a place of HOA's.  They're not all evil and completely useless. 
There is a place for non-HOA neighborhoods too because HOA's do have
their drawbacks, and there are plenty of worthless ones out there. 

--
Todd H.  
http://www.toddh.net/