Homeownership often comes with rules that sound reasonable — until they’re enforced by people who don’t respect basic boundaries.

So when one homeowner complied with an HOA demand to remove a dead tree, they discovered a neighbor had trespassed onto their property to document the violation.

The whole thing turned into a lesson about just how far HOA busybodies will go.

Keep reading for the full story!

Got Into With My HOA About Trespassing

So we had this gorgeous, big pine tree in the middle of our backyard that sadly got sick and died recently.

We got an HOA violation saying it was a hazard and needed to come down before it fell down.

Immediately, the homeowner suspects an overstep, but they decide to comply anyway.

Now anyone who knows pine trees knows those things can stay up for a decade dead, so I merely rolled my eyes but decided to take care of it because it needed to be taken care of.

In the middle of waiting for the removal people to come out, it was marked resolved, but whatever. It’s an HOA. We all know how incompetent they are.

Anyway, it got dealt with.

But one day, they realized some serious boundaries had been crossed.

This weekend, I decided to go into the portal for a different reason, and to my surprise I saw that whoever had decided to report my tree as an HOA violation had gone into my property to take a picture of that dang tree.

Mind you, there is no one behind my house, so if you wanted to, you could have taken the photo from behind it.

The HOA gave a lame excuse that this homeowner just wasn’t buying.

So, of course, I emailed the HOA manager asking why someone was trespassing onto my property over this.

Their response was to tell me that they personally did not trespass. A neighbor took it from their backyard. Like heck they did.

There is no possible way they could have taken it, when you can clearly see the back of my wall behind the tree.

So after pressing them, the homeowner finally got the HOA to crack.

After a bit of back and forth of me insisting they are more than welcome to schedule a time to visit me, I ended up asking them why Vince and Bernadette (my neighbors) would be standing on my patio to take that picture.

I guess it was not Vince and Bernadette who complained, because next thing I know I am being informed that they will let the person know trespassing is illegal.

Lol.

The homeowner complied, and the rule-breaker exposed themselves in the process.

What did Reddit think?

Maybe it’s for the best this tree came down.

This commenter demands a full-scale investigation.

HOAs love to cover themselves in bogus fine print.

HOAs don’t have nearly as much authority as they like to think they do.

Nothing shuts down an HOA power trip faster than facts and a paper trail.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.