When run properly, homeowner’s associations can help to keep a neighborhood nice for everyone living in the area.

Unfortunately, many HOA boards abuse their power and never do the things that they are legitimately supposed to take care of.

When the resident in this story got sick of his HOA, he plotted to kick the board out and take it over himself, and once he won, he was able to fix many longstanding problems.

Revolution against our HoA

My wife & I moved into a 64 townhome community that was 10 years old at the time.

This HoA board has had power for too long.

The HoA board was comprised of 5 members that were original homeowners when the community started and had been the sole board members since the community started.

Their sense of entitlement was crazy.

They thrived on their quarterly walkthrough of the neighborhood as they would write-up every single home for some kind of violation regardless of how minor the offenses were.

This would get old quick.

EVERYONE gets a violation letter.

Our first letter, the first month living there was that our garage door paint was starting to peel (it was a 2cm scrape where the panels met), it needed to be repainted, the siding needed to be power washed (there was a patch of green moss behind a bush) and the sliding door on the deck was dirty (there was dirt on the bottom of the door from recent rain) and it needed to be washed.

$25 per day would add up fast.

We had 30 days to fix the issues or beginning accruing a fee of $25 a day until they are resolved.

I asked around and everyone gets these ridiculously petty letters every quarter. No matter what you did to maintain your townhome, you were going to get a letter about something.

Why weren’t they fixing real issues? Surely they had the money in the budget.

As this was going on, none of the major items the neighborhood needed fixed were addressed. After a decade since the construction, the ground had settled unevenly and many homes had standing water issues where it wouldn’t drain after a storm.

The rain water would sit for 5-7 days in peoples lawns. And more importantly, there had been a legal fight with the town since the community was started about our road being “Dedicated” meaning the town was responsible for snow removal.

How can a legal case like this last for 10+ years?

Our HoA dues included paying for our own snow removal (which we shouldn’t have to) and we were paying an attorney for ten years to fight this with no resolution in sight.

Fast forward a two years and a few of us had enough and decided to band together to replace the board at the next annual meeting.

This should not even be legal.

The existing board got wind of this and hit us all with pages worth of issues with our properties since if you have outstanding issues, you are not in good standing with the community thus can not run for a board position or even vote for those running.

This petty move brought the community even closer and we all spent the weekend before the meeting helping each other clean out their HoA honey-do lists.

We took pictures, documented everything then we had the US Mail certify delivery of each packet with the completed list and photos to the HoA board who lived 75 ft away.

Well, that is a waste of an update. But I’m betting he billed them for the hours.

Come board night, oddly enough, the lawyer was there to give an update that no progress has been made with the township on dedicated our road.

He stuck around as we moved to the elections for the next board. We brought our signed petitions to add our names to the ballot.

But they fixed those issues!

The board says were not eligible as we all have outstanding issues with our property. We call them out for this, with our receipts from the post office that they received our completed lists with documentation.

They reply that they haven’t reviewed them yet. We tell them that’s not our problem and we are in good standing.

That is nice that the lawyer is sticking up for them.

They lawyer overhearing this states we are eligible to be on the ballot if we can confirm the issues with our homes were resolved prior to the meeting. The HoA president glares at the lawyer but the lawyer just shrugs saying, “the rules are the rules.”

With the exception of the 5 existing board members voting for themselves/each other, we are voted in nearly unanimously to replace them.

Somebody has to take the lead.

I lead the revolution because I was tired of the petty stuff when there were real problems in the neighborhood.

Sadly, the rest of the elected board members vote me as President. I have no idea what I’m doing.

I bet they were seen as heroes!

But we spent the next few sessions removing all the dumb violations from most of the neighbors. We went through the by-laws to really focus on what’s important.

What happens next?

I had a feeling that something like this was going on.

Ends up that lawyer was a friend of the previous President and was in no hurry to resolve anything as he was enjoying our excessive bill.

I notify him if its not resolved in the next 6 months were finding new representation. He was actually good at his job when pressed to do it. He won the case, the town appealed and tried to drag it out.

Finally, this legal issue is over!

He fast tracked the appeal as it had been going on for ten years and we won the appeal too.

The town dedicated our road, then the lawyer pressed that it should have been done years ago, it wasn’t him slowing things down but the town.

This would have been a lot of money I bet.

He ends up getting us a settlement from the judge for back pay on us paying for snow removal that the town was responsible for.

We ended up using that settlement to have French drains installed across much of the community to clear the standing water issues. With the money left over, we fixed a lot of the neighborhood issues that the HoA should have been doing the whole time.

The neighborhood would look real nice after this.

Fences & sidewalks in disrepair, replaced dead trees & shrubs etc. It was great getting all that done without having to hit our capital reserve fund.

I remained President until we moved a few years ago. Our family began to outgrow the townhome. Now we live in a new larger development with a new HoA.

Oh boy, not again.

I was asked to run for a position on it. I replied, “not a chance… but I will lead a coup d’tat if I need to”

Fighting back against a homeowner’s association can take a lot of work, but it is worth it if you win in the end.

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

Absolutely look into them, they are shady.

Yes! Get rid of the HOA.

HOAs really don’t make sense most of the time.

This does seem illegal.

A good HOA can be very helpful.

Evict the HOA Today!

All of them.

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