If you live in an HOA, you’ll most likely have to follow a lot of annoying rules, and some HOA boards take these rules way too seriously.

If you were in that situation, would you comply, or would you look for a way to make the HOA board feel just as frustrated by the rules as you feel?

Let’s see how the homeowner in this story handles this situation.

HOA lady has to follow rules eventually

I bought my first house in 1999, and I wanted DirecTV. I put up a satellite dish, which happened to be behind a privacy fence.

I also knew the FCC ruling that HOA’s couldn’t prevent you from putting up a dish due to some malfeasance with home builders who would make shady deals with cable companies to force homeowners to go with a specific company (I think that’s right).

I figured I wouldn’t have any issues since it was behind a fence anyway.

But this homeowner was wrong.

I got a knock at my door the next day, and it was my neighbor from across the cul-de-sac, telling me she’s on the board of the HOA.

“Your dish is in violation, and must be removed.”

This was my first encounter with her, I politely explained the law as I knew it, and told her to have a nice day.

We didn’t speak again, and she ended up moving out soon.

Well, it turns out she didn’t move out and was just renting to some other lady I never spoke to, and the HOA lady moved back in a year later.

This sounds like a lot of work.

There was an easement behind my house which was properly mowed when I moved in.

I would hit golf balls down there with my wedge, and my neighbor was into archery and used it as his range.

By the second summer I lived there, it was overgrown and an eyesore.

I couldn’t even see the creek just behind my house anymore.

One weekend, I borrowed my dad’s utility trailer, and I spent 3 days clearing out our little section behind the houses, hauling all of the debris away (probably 2 trips a day).

My arms were covered in cuts from briars, and apparently I was also dealing with sumac, poison ivy, or some other stuff because by Monday, I was having an allergic reaction so badly that I went to the doc to get a steroid shot.

The neighbor had another complaint.

Laid up in the house all day, and I get a knock at the door.

It’s the neighbor woman again.

Apparently there’s a rule that you cannot store a trailer in the driveway for more than 3 days, and this was day 4.

I needed to remove it by the end of the day or face a $500 fine.

She handed me a paper listing the rule, and I considered just paying the fine, but instead I angrily drove an hour each way to return my dad’s trailer after spending half the day already waiting in a hospital lobby.

I got home after dark.

He noticed something odd.

What struck me as odd was there was a list of things you couldn’t store in your driveway: personal watercraft, boats, trailers, etc.

The odd part was that motorcycle was listed on there.

I don’t ride one myself, but I thought it was a totally reasonable thing to keep in a driveway.

After I finished all of this work, this woman would routinely walk through my yard without asking, but since she was taking her grandkid to play in the creek, I never said anything even though it bothered me she never asked.

He decided to turn the tables on the neighbor.

A year or so later, I wanted to sell the house and move into something bigger. I had talked to a realtor already, and I was getting things tidied up to have the house shown.

As I was cleaning out a drawer, I noticed that paper the HOA lady had given me, and I remembered the part about motorcycles being listed.

You see, the HOA lady had started dating an older gentleman, and he had moved in with her.

Turns out he rode a Harley which was always parked in her driveway.

She was home, so I walked over there and politely informed her about the violation.

There was another problem.

The next day, the motorcycle was parked on her back porch, the one she bragged about to everyone who would listen so she could tell them how much it cost.

I laughed to myself, but then I remembered the part about it needing to be behind a fence.

Another knock at the door, and within a few days, a fence company was building a 6 foot privacy fence which completely hid her fancy new deck.

Timing is everything!

My realtor had been on my case for at least a week about needing to put up a “for sale” sign, so as soon as the fence was finished, I told her it was OK.

I sold the house quickly and moved out at the end of the month.

Oh and by the way, the fence was completely hideous and looked out of place because of the way her lot was shaped.

It had to be a good feeling calling out the HOA lady for breaking the rules.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

Here’s praise for everything about this story.

Another person doesn’t think anything about this was malicious.

This person vents about HOAs.

This is pretty much the moral of the story.

Being on the HOA board doesn’t make you exempt from following the rules.

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