As someone who has only ever dealt with landlords, I count my lucky stars that I’ve never had to answer to an HOA.

I’ve never had to measure the amount of hedge that hangs over the sidewalk, or make sure the trimmings on my windows are one of three approved colors.

But not all HOA’s can be as bad as the ones you hear about online right? There have to be some good ones, ones that actually help the neighborhood keep running.

But then I read stories like this one, and I am renewed in my commitment to never live in an HOA as long as I live.

Because when this user was hounded for years by the petty grievances of his HOA board, he and his neighbors decided to oust them all and become the new HOA!

Check it out!

Revolution against our HoA

My wife & I moved into a 64 townhome community that was 10 years old at the time.

The HoA board was comprised of 5 members that were original homeowners when the community started and had been the sole board members since the community started.

Their sense of entitlement was absolutely crazy.

They thrived on their quarterly walkthrough of the neighborhood as they would write-up every single home for some kind of violation regardless of how minor the offenses were.

EVERYONE got a violation letter.

And OP was no exception to this rule!

Our first month living there was that our garage door paint was starting to peel (it was a 2cm scrape where the panels met), it needed to be repainted.

The siding needed to be power washed (there was a patch of green moss behind a bush).

On top of that, the sliding door on the deck was dirty (there was dirt on the bottom of the door from recent rain) and it needed to be washed.

We had 30 days to fix the issues or beginning accruing a fee of $25 a day until they are resolved.

And OP realized that everyone in the neighborhood was getting the same unfair treatment as him.

I asked around and everyone gets these ridiculously petty letters every quarter. No matter what you did to maintain your townhome, you were going to get a letter about something.

As this was going on, none of the major items the neighborhood needed fixed were addressed.

After a decade since construction, the ground had settled unevenly and many homes had standing water issues where it wouldn’t drain after a storm.

The rain water would sit for 5-7 days in peoples lawns.

But that wasn’t the only issue being neglected so that the HOA could continue their reign of petty terror.

More importantly, there had been a legal fight with the town since the community was started about our road being “Dedicated” meaning the town was responsible for snow removal.

Our HoA dues included paying for our own snow removal (which we shouldn’t have to).

We were also paying an attorney for ten years to fight this with no resolution in sight.

So OP and his neighbors planned an HOA coup d’etat to take place at their next HOA meeting…

Fast forward a two years and a few of us had enough and decided to band together to replace the board at the next annual meeting.

The existing board got wind of this and hit us all with pages worth of issues with our properties.

If you have outstanding issues, you are not in good standing with the community thus can not run for a board position or even vote for those running.

This petty move brought the community even closer and we all spent the weekend before the meeting helping each other clean out their HoA honey-do lists.

We took pictures, documented everything then we had the US Mail certify delivery of each packet with the completed list and photos to the HoA board who lived 75 ft away.

And with the petty grievances settled, OP and his neighbor got ready to make their move!

Come board night, oddly enough, the lawyer was there to give an update that no progress has been made with the township on dedicated our road.

He stuck around as we moved to the elections for the next board. We brought our signed petitions to add our names to the ballot.

The board says we’re not eligible as we all have outstanding issues with our property.

We call nonsense with our receipts from the post office that they received our completed lists with documentation. They reply that they haven’t reviewed them yet.

To that, OP said that whether they had reviewed them or not wasn’t OP’s issue!

We tell them that’s not our problem and we are in good standing.

The lawyer overhearing this states we are eligible to be on the ballot if we can confirm the issues with our homes were resolved prior to the meeting.

The HoA president glares at the lawyer but the lawyer just shrugs saying, “the rules are the rules.”

And with the surprising support from the lawyer, they counted up the votes, and the results said change was coming!

With the exception of the 5 existing board members voting for themselves/each other, we are voted in nearly unanimously to replace them.

I lead the revolution because I was tired of the petty nonsense when there were real problems in the neighborhood.

Sadly, the rest of the elected board members vote me as President. I have no idea what I’m doing.

But we spent the next few sessions removing all the dumb violations from most of the neighbors. We went through the by-laws to really focus on what’s important.

But even after he supported them the lawyer wasn’t off the hook for wasting their time and money!

Ends up that lawyer was a friend of the previous President and was in no hurry to resolve anything as he was enjoying our excessive bill.

I notify him if its not resolved in the next 6 months were finding new representation. He was actually good at his job when pressed to do it.

He won the case, the town appealed and tried to drag it out. He fast tracked the appeal as it had been going on for ten years and we won the appeal too.

The town dedicated our road, then the lawyer pressed that it should have been done years ago, it wasn’t him slowing things down but the town.

Now forced to do fight for his clients, the sleazeball actually got them a pretty nice settlement.

He ends up getting us a settlement from the judge for back pay on us paying for snow removal that the town was responsible for.

We ended up using that settlement to have French drains installed across much of the community to clear the standing water issues.

With the money left over, we fixed a lot of the neighborhood issues that the HoA should have been doing the whole time.

Fences & sidewalks in disrepair, replaced dead trees & shrubs etc. It was great getting all that done without having to hit our capital reserve fund.

But all good things must come to an end, and just like our man George Washington, OP had to step down.

I remained President until we moved a few years ago. Our family began to outgrow the townhome.

Now we live in a new larger development… with a new HoA… I was asked to run for a position on it.

I replied, “not a chance… but I will lead a coup d’tat if I need to.”

Out of all of the ridiculous HOA stories I’ve heard, this one takes the cake. It’s the perfect example of how all they want is power over their neighbors, but don’t actually want to do their job!

Reddit loved seeing a power hungry HOA get what they deserve, and suggested the new board give the same scrutiny to the old members!

This user even had trouble explaining what an HOA actually did to her foreign husband.

But this user stuck up for HOAs, saying not all of them were as terrible as the one in this story.

But for most many people, including this user, this story was just another reason why they would never move into a neighborhood with an HOA!

Viva la HOA revolución!

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.