re New Homeowners Generally Uninformed

Here's the truth: If that is the way you want to live, then a covenant controlled community is not for you. Go live another non-HOA neighborhood; you deserve to live with others who, like you, don't want to live by covenants. However, just a heads up: when you're in your new, non-HOA neighborhood
- glewis, "New Homeowners Generally Uninformed". January 10 2024

glewis makes the common error of conflating an H.O.A. -- which is a corporation, a legal entity -- with restrictive covenants -- which are the "neighborhood rules".

It is possible -- and preferable -- to have restrictive covenants without an H.O.A. corporation.

I do understand your point about keeping up the deed restrictions, but careful, because you may be falling into a common error. Restrictive covenants are one thing, and HOAs are another. In order to enforce a neighborhood's restrictive covenants, it is NOT necessary to have an HOA. It is true that having a HOA can make it easier to enforce the covenants, in several ways. For one thing, you don't need to find a homeowner to be a plaintiff, although any homeowner will do and it shouldn't be that hard to find one if anyone's really interested. For another, if you have an HOA, you can bill all the neighbors and force them to help pay for the lawsuit. For another, you can enforce the collection of this bill with a lien against everyone's house. Finally, if the HOA wins the dispute with the homeowner whose grass is too high, or whatever (and the HOA always wins, because the rules and vague and discretionary and totally in its favor), the HOA has a lien against the homeowner for the penalties and legal expenses. As in, $700 for the pain and suffering caused by the too-high grass, and $15,000 for the lawyers.

The question is whether all this is a good trade-off. Without the HOA, the neighbors have deed restrictions and any one of them (or group of them) can sue if someone violates the restrictions. The concerned neighbors will have to pass the hat to pay for the lawsuit, so they probably won't sue if it's not pretty important. They can always coordinate all this through a civic club, which probably will be funded by voluntary contributions, which are a pain to collect – but all these factors make it likely the lawsuits won't get out of control and people won't be losing their homes to foreclosure over silly disputes. Oil stains on the driveway, flagpole too tall, mailbox in non-approved location, shrubbery not up to snuff, miniblinds in front windows not approved shade of ecru – and I'm NOT making those up, they are from real court cases.

My 50-year-old non-HOA neighborhood in Harris County had mild deed restrictions. The place didn't look like a manicured showplace with totally coordinated everything, but we kept the major problems under control. No management company, no law firm, no out-of-control Inspectors General on the board, no foreclosures, and no bitter divisions among neighbors. Every few years someone tried to convert the neighborhood to an HOA, but they always got voted down after a public campaign. It takes healthy local grassroots political involvement, which has the added advantage of strengthening the community for other purposes.

- texan99. August 04 2010. Emphasis added. This was a comment on The Atlantic web site in response to "No Such Thing As A Simple Mortgage" (August 03 2010) by Megan McArdle.