When you live in a home that is part of a homeowner’s association, you have to follow the rules.

What would you do if your HOA was being unreasonable about limiting where you could put up security cameras?

That is what happened to the family in this story, and they were not going to take down the cameras without a fight.

Let’s see how wins this battle…

HOA tried to punish us – Told us to “Stop them if we can” – Malicious compliance cost them 16% of the annual HOA income – And the cameras are still installed today

We installed cameras in front of our home that were looking at our vehicles. Part of the camera angles did overlook parts of two neighbor’s properties (one back yard and one side yard).

The cameras were battery operated and had a function where you could “gray out” areas that you didn’t want to film. When motion occurred in the grayed out areas, the cameras would not be activated to film.

It sounds like they are going above and beyond to be good neighbors.

The neighbors’ entire properties and several bushes on our property were grayed out – we did this when installing them.

One of the neighbors was a friend – and had no issues with this whatsoever (we showed her the camera angle – and she said she didn’t care whether or not we grayed out that area – we still left it grayed out over battery life concerns).

Nobody gets along with their HOA.

The other neighbor’s name was Karen (not really, but we all know why I chose that name). Karen was on the HOA board and, as you can imagine, we didn’t get along with Karen or the HOA Board.

We told Karen about the camera and showed her the grayed-out areas at the same time that we told our friendly neighbor about it. It was simply an FYI conversation (we are not on friendly terms) – not an “asking permission” conversation.

Wow. She sounds pleasant…

She told us to take the cameras down immediately or we would regret it.

About a week after we hung the camera up, we got a notice from our HOA that we were violating the bylaws. The bylaw in question? A “nuisance to your neighbors” bylaw. There wasn’t a specific bylaw preventing placement of cameras, so this is all they could find to try to punish us.

We responded with a letter detailing how we were not violating any bylaws or laws in general – and asked them to cease and desist.

We all know how these stories go though. They did not cease. And they did not desist.

Their first response?

They think they can get away with anything.

“The HOA has the right to enforce these bylaws. Try to stop us, if you think you can.” (These types of responses were, unfortunately, quite common from this board.)

We entered this battle with one goal in mind: to cost them as much money and time as possible.

The HOA hired a lawyer specifically to fight us. To my knowledge, this has not happened to any other residents. In the following 4 months we ended up costing the HOA over $4,000 in lawyers fees fighting this battle. For reference, the entire HOA income was ~$25,000/year.

And this is what the HOA wants to spend its money on?

When it came time for our official HOA hearing over the matter, we had successfully postponed it (thanks to an attorney friend) 3 separate times.

There were over 100 back and forth emails with the HOA attorney and ourselves. Each one of those emails was a 15 minute expense for the HOA. And I was happy to follow up a follow up question with another follow up question if it meant the HOA attorney was going to keep billing them (Did I say “follow up” enough times?).

We didn’t actually want to take this battle to court, so we ended up removing the cameras the day of the hearing (to prevent being fined – even if the fine wouldn’t hold up in court).

The HOA decided in the hearing that we were guilty (surprise, surprise) of violating the bylaw. They couldn’t fine us – as the bylaws don’t allow a fine until after a hearing has been held – and the cameras were already removed.

So a little less than a slap on the wrist.

In the end, the punishment was a sternly written piece of paper on the attorney’s letterhead (delivered via certified mail) that stated that we were “…not allowed to place a camera on our home that had the potential to invade a neighbor’s privacy.”

Keep in mind, the letter specifically stated the camera could not be placed “on our home.”

We left the cameras off of the home for about 4 months – until the annual HOA meeting.

You should have seen the look on the HOA Board’s faces when I asked them to explain the $4,000 line item for attorney’s fees that simply stated “Title searches – Attorney fees.”

Is it legal to be deceptive like that?

The Board actually tried to hide the fact that they spent $4k trying to fight us over a couple of cameras by putting the fees in as “Title searches.”

Needless to say, that meeting did not go well for them. About half of them lost their positions on the Board. The other half (including Karen, unfortunately) remained on the Board.

Following the letter of the law.

About a week after the annual meeting, we installed new cameras – facing the same direction as the prior cameras – only this time, we installed a post in the ground and mounted the cameras to that post.

The admonishment we received after the hearing specifically stated that we were not allowed to install cameras “on our home” – and said nothing about putting them on a post.

Well done!

They did send a letter to try to tell us to remove the cameras, but a sternly worded response indicating that we were prepared to fight them actually worked this time around.

I guess they didn’t want to spend another $4k fighting us.

We didn’t receive any follow up responses. And the cameras on the post are still installed to this day (over 2 years and running strong).

It isn’t often that you hear of people getting one over on an HOA, so this is very satisfying.

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about it.

Good point.

Is this really harassment?

Yup, Karens think they are above the rules.

This commenter says he wouldn’t want his yard monitored either.

This person does make a good point.

Why can’t neighbors just mind their own business?

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.