There are many things that can impact the value of your home, including what your neighbor’s houses look like.

What would you do if your neighbor wasn’t happy with the color of your house, so he became the president of the HOA and forced him to paint it?

That is what happened to the rich homeowner in this story, so he painted the house a very ugly color and then never moved in.

HOA, a mansion and the view

I lived in this town surrounded by magnificent vistas.

This seems like a pretty standard setup for developments.

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

I bet this cost him a pretty penny.

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 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.

This property sounds very nice.

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.

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’ll make lots of money off of this I bet.

He decided to take advantage of the skyrocketing land prices in the neighborhood and sell, except no one wanted his little 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.

This is not the type of person you want running an HOA.

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.

It is so dumb that the HOA can make these types of rules.

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.

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.

I’m sure he had the money for great lawyers.

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.”

Wow, that sounds ugly.

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.

He is really going above and beyond.

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.

He played stupid games and won stupid prizes.

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

HOA rules often backfire and end up causing property values to drop rather than go up.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

You would think he would have known.

He really didn’t think this through.

Yeah, HOAs can be terrible.

Maybe a Google Street View?

I want to see it too.

You want to get petty? I’ll get petty.

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