Fighting an HOA often feels like arguing with a brick wall, except the brick wall demands all your money and sanity.

After years of clashing with a board over shady roof repairs and selective rule enforcement, one homeowner finally had the leverage they needed to bring the corrupt HOA to its knees.

Keep reading for the full story!

You want me to pay for repairs to the “HOA” roof? You can’t can’t handle the “HOA” roof.

Well over a decade ago, I lived under the nasty, petty, vindictive thumb of an HOA.

I had clashed with the board for years over illegal special assessments and their failure to ever enforce rules against board members’ friends.

And this homeowner had made some serious progress.

My crowning achievement was forcing them to either grant every homeowner full, unfettered access to all roof patios, or limit roof repair expenses only to those units who wrongfully claimed the roof areas were part of their units.

Despite the fact that their deeds did not grant them private rights to roof areas, each homeowner on the top floor had fenced off “their roof space,” and in one instance, built an unpermitted sunroom.

Additionally, I reported the sunroom to the city, and it had to be removed because there was no permit, it was too heavy for the roof, and it was causing damage to the roof.

This was the same damage that the board wanted everyone to pay for.

But eventually, the constant arguing drained this homeowner.

It was a LOT of time and energy just to fight people trying to mess with us.

Eventually, I was ready to sell my condo.

Because I was selling for sale by owner, I did my own marketing. As part of that marketing, I bought the domain of my unit number plus street name and built a website for the unit sale.

This gave the homeowner some serious leverage.

While doing so, I noticed the .com, .net, and .org domains for the building’s street address were available for purchase.

So I snagged those too, as well as “StreetNumberStreetNameHOA.com,” “.org,” and “.net.”

Then I sold the place and moved out.

Turns out, the HOA wasn’t a fan of this.

About six months later, I received an email from the HOA board president asking if I owned those domains.

I replied that I did.

She told me they belonged to the property and that now that I didn’t live there, I had to turn them over.

The homeowner was happy to oblige… for a price.

I told her she needed to replace the HOA’s lawyers if they told her that, and that the board was welcome to purchase the domains from me for the tidy sum of $5,000.

Why $5,000?

Because that’s the amount they wanted each homeowner to pay in special assessments for the roof repairs needed from the illegal sunroom and fencing.

HOAs do best when the homeowners don’t bother to fight back, but this one definitely did.

What did Reddit have to say?

These domains could serve a much better purpose.

This really isn’t the most efficient way for the HOA to run their online presence.

Once you’re forced to deal with a toxic HOA, it changes your outlook for good.

Turns out you can’t nickel-and-dime homeowners forever without someone eventually returning the favor.

The ending to this story was just plain poetic.

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.