The real estate business can be a lot like the Hunger Games. You’re simply not there to make friends.

This was clear when a small house owner who was also the HOA president took a mansion owner to court because his house was blocking the view of his property while he was trying to sell it.

Well, the small house owner won, and the mansion owner was not a graceful loser.

Read the story and see what happened.

HOA, a mansion and the view

I lived in this town surrounded by magnificent vistas.

There was a small development on the outskirts for upscale homes and mansions.

Below the development were a few older homes.

Many celebrities and business owners had vacation properties in the area, multi-million dollar houses they used maybe one month out of the year.

Real estate had always been at a premium.

The area was dominated by super wealthy people, but not entirely, yet.

There was one older home amongst all these giant view lots.

A new buyer was a guy who owned a slew of RV dealerships and had obscene amounts of money so he bought the most prominent lot on the top of the hill as you entered the development of maybe 20 lots.

His home caught a lot of attention.

His project was a massive stucco structure with a multi-car garage and a much bigger RV storage space with a huge roll up garage door.

Think of the biggest RVs you’ve seen and he had a garage built for it with an automatic door.

The house was a nondescript sand color with a red tiled roof and the entire lot was tastefully landscaped with different kinds of rocks, small mounds here and there and a few shrubs to be low maintenance.

It sort of blocked the view of a more modest property that was still there.

The back of the property was fenced in with an 8-foot(?) or higher block wall. The fence itself probably cost $100k.

His neighbor was a schoolteacher who had lived there before the development started and had a modest house.

He decided to take advantage of the skyrocketing land prices in the neighborhood and sell, except no one wanted his ****** house when there were much larger empty lots available.

He decided the real issue was that the new behemoth blocked his view and that’s why no one wanted to buy his three-bedroom ranch house at mansion prices.

It was really that his home didn’t appeal to the market.

But he got to work.

So he became the president of the HOA which included the older homes and the new development. And then the harassment started.

The HOA had formed after the RV mansion construction had begun, but the home was so big, it took almost a year to finish.

The HOA had passed a “design theme” rule that all houses must be painted in a specific color palette, with the predominant color being a taupe that was darker than this man’s standard beige stucco color house.

He wanted to make the house stand out a bit less.

The palette included the taupe and a selection of trim colors in pink, teal, or tan.

It was intended to give the community a Santa Fe look and feel which just happened to be the colors of the president’s house.

The RV owner took the HOA to court and the trial dragged on for a year.

The guy never used the property, claiming it was still under construction during this time.

He lost in court and had to repaint his property “using only the design theme approved colors.”

He decided it was time to do some protest art.

So the guy brought out his contractor and had him repaint the entire property the Pepto Bismol pink trim color.

Everything was painted this color — the house, the fence, the trim, and the rocks in the yard.

Then he had the massive driveway to the garage done in the same pink stamped concrete. Even the garage doors were pink.

He locked up the house and never stayed there. The HOA was in an uproar because this house could be seen at the top of the hill for miles.

None of the other lot owners broke ground. The president’s home didn’t sell for two years.

His mansion basically became the Barbie Dreamhouse. I don’t see the problem.

Let’s see what Reddit has to say about this.

This reader has a question.

This person liked the story.

This commenter shares their opinion.

Another reader chimes in.

Yup.

A good observation.

The teacher could have handled his concerns without trying to impose strict rules, and the RV mansion owner could have been a better loser.

The whole situation could have been handled better by everyone.

If you liked that post, check out this one about an employee that got revenge on HR when they refused to reimburse his travel.