Everyone knows that HOA’s can be quite annoying.

What would you do if you found out that the HOA you have been paying into for years doesn’t actually exist.

That is what happened in this story, check it out.

How I got a (not really an) HOA disbanded….

I should clarify that this story happened between the Spring of 2010 and Summer of 2012…

After years of hearing stories of problems with HOA’s (and having no tolerance for busybodies ourselves) my wife and I were both solidly in agreement that we would never purchase a home in an HOA.

When we finally did find a house and purchased it, we knew for a fact that we were NOT in an HOA.

However, just behind us, we learned there was a (not really) HOA.

About a week after we moved in, there was a knock on the door.

She seems pleasant.

One of the neighbors behind us, announcing that she was President of the HOA, and welcoming us to the neighborhood.

Seems civil enough, but we asked, “what HOA”.

“Oh, we’re behind you, the home behind yours is where the HOA starts.”

“Ok, that’s nice, nice to meet you…” Just general pleasantries.

We were hopeful. We were shocked, even. Someone associated with the management of an HOA that wasn’t a complete busybody psychopath!

How wrong we were.

The way our lot was, there was a sliver of green space between our property line and the sidewalk, in a somewhat triangular shape (the street ran west southwest, our property line ran due east-west).

So there was a wedge of land there.

We’d always been told that this belonged to the HOA, yadda yadda – no big deal, just meant we didn’t have to deal with the upkeep of this land.

Now that this set up is all in place, it’s time to start the story of how we got the (not really an) HOA dissolved.

We had a couple of trees in our yard.

Literally on the property line, so we took responsibility for taking care of these things.

They’re *MASSIVE*.

They’re also a pain in the butt, incredibly dense/heavy, and because of the way the limbs grow, they’re prone to splitting and dropping limbs.

There was a huge limb that extended way out into the street adjacent to the green space owned by the HOA.

This thing was a major risk of dropping and severely injuring/killing someone.

We didn’t want that on our conscience (or our insurance!) and so we decided to take that limb down entirely, as well as clean out a lot of the deadwood in the two trees.

We hired an arborist, they came out, did their thing.

Ouch, that’s expensive.

$1400 later, we were left with some decent sized rounds that we were going to move over the next weekend (I was out of town the first weekend after we removed the limb).

I should note that the wood was neatly stacked in the green space on the barkdust, out of everyone’s way, and in no way a hazard or eyesore.

Enter the shrieking harpy…er.. .President of the “HOA”.

My wife had stepped out the door the day I had left on my trip and she pulls up into our driveway, rolls down the window, and starts yelling at my wife:

Wow, not as nice as she seemed I guess.

“YOU NEED TO MOVE THAT WOOD NOW!!!!! THAT’S PRIVATE PROPERTY OF THE HOA!!! MOVE IT NOW!!!!”

My wife is *not* a confrontational type.

She’s also somewhat petite, and tried to explain to the harpy that I was out of town and that we would be moving it as soon as I got back in town the next weekend.

Nope, not good enough.

She shrieks at my wife some more, and my wife ends up grabbing the wheelbarrow and somehow moves this stack of rounds (some of them weighed close to 100 lbs) around the fence, up our driveway, and into the backyard.

She was really angry. So was I.

We knew where the harpy lived, so when I got back I went over to talk to her, and explain that I was rather displeased in how she treated my wife.

Didn’t pound on the door, wasn’t aggressive or anything.

They wouldn’t answer the door.

Cowards (we knew they were home).

This left us with a bit of a displeased taste in our mouth. The next spring, the hedge that is planted outside of our fenceline, well, it wasn’t maintained very well, and pushed over two sections of our wooden fence.

So I emailed the harpy and explained that their hedge had damaged our fence.

“It’s not our hedge!”

“um… it’s growing in your green space”

“That’s not our green space!”

Ummm, that’s not what they said before.

Waitwut?

“Then why the [censored] did you decide to screech at my wife last summer when we had the wood stacked there

Silence.

Well, at that point I fixed the fence so our dog wouldn’t escape, after pruning the laurel back sufficiently that it wouldn’t damage the fence again.

And I started making some phone calls. I contacted the county, and ended up speaking to about seven different departments in order to figure out who actually owned that strip of land.

After probably two weeks of trying to find the right people to talk to, I got to the roads division.

The green space was marked as part of the right of way for the road, and therefore no one actually “owned” that space.

“So I can chop down that ugly overgrown hedge that’s encroaching on the sidewalk and knocking down my fence?”

“Yep,” says the kind gentleman from the roads division.

“As an aside,” he asked, “you mentioned something about there being an HOA associated with the plots to the east of your property?”

“Yeah?”

What the heck?

“Well, part of what took me so long to get an answer for you is that it turns out there is no HOA registered with the county there, so we were looking in the wrong place entirely……”

“Wait, there’s no HOA there?”

“No, hasn’t ever been one since that subdivision was built…”

“Huh…. Interesting….”

And a plot was hatched.

We had befriended a couple of people within the neighborhood behind us, and they were rather fed up with Ms. “President of the HOA” and her antics.

She was the typical busybody, bullying anyone she didn’t like, and apparently for the last 10 years or so had been collecting HOA “dues” from everyone in the neighborhood to the tune of $300/year.

There were 36 homes in the “HOA”.

Right around $100,000 in dues. For a non-existent HOA.

With no real maintenance.

Oh, they hosted an annual block party – potluck style…. They pulled weeds from the green space – on a volunteer basis.

So I did what any red-blooded American would do.

Wall played sir.

I got 36 envelopes. 36 stamps. And printed off 36 copies of a letter with my findings from the county that there was not now, nor ever had been for the recorded history of the subdivision, any HOA, neighborhood association, or any similar organization.

And that they, collectively, had paid in excess of $100,000 in dues over that time to a non-existent entity, plus any fines the non-existent HOA had decided to levy.

The neighbors, in turn, did exactly what any red-blooded American would do.

They sued the heck out of her for every penny they’d paid over the last 10 years.

Won, too.

And there’s no longer an “HOA” behind us.

Great work. One less HOA (even if it was fake) for people to have to deal with.

Let’s see what the commenters have to say.

It really was a great story.

Yup, her professional future is at risk.

This commenter wants to escalate things further.

The IRS doesn’t take kindly to many things.

He’ll go down in the history books.

Put an end to the HOAs.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.