Imagine living in an HOA that’s actually cool. They throw block parties and don’t pester the neighbors about the rules unless someone complains.

That may sound like finding a unicorn, but in this story, one person shares a tale about an HOA just like this. The problem is that there’s a neighborhood bully, and if they complain, the HOA has to investigate.

Keep reading for all the details.

Another HOA story

This was about 10 years ago, 2010ish. My family lived in a very nice gated community with an HOA.

It was during the summer, and most weekends we would bring our boat to the house on Friday nights to take out on Saturdays, and then move it back to where we stored it Saturday night.

HOA had a rule where you aren’t allowed to keep boats within view of the street.

Our drive way ran up beside the house and we’d intentionally position it to be as invisible as possible, for the ONE night it would be there. Basically all that was visible was a small T top over my dad’s truck.

This sounds like a pretty great HOA.

Our HOA was actually pretty awesome, super laid back and really only did anything when there was a complaint.

It was a relatively small neighborhood less than 50 houses, and the HOA was really good at throwing monthly parties where we’d shut down a cul-de-sac and everyone would bring food and music and we’d all have fun.

This was kind of what an HOA is supposed to be in theory, a good thing.

The HOA received a complaint about their boat.

Well this bully had made a complaint to the board about our boat and had provided time stamped photos of multiple violations (mind you 1 night a week, but she’d claimed it was consistent).

The president came by to tell us and it wasn’t there when he was.

We told him our side of the story, basically it was only there for about 12 hours on the weekend.

And he said he nor anyone on the board had ever noticed it, but since they had a complaint, they had to request we remove it. (I completely doubt they’d actually fine or do anything past asking, but rules are rules.)

OP’s father came up with a clever solution.

Queue my fathers mastery of the art of malicious compliance.

Well an important bit of information about this piece of property, when the neighborhood was built, my dad bought the house, as well as a property bordering the back of ours that was not a part of the HOA, or in the neighborhood and originally had a small chain link fence between it and the house. It was accessible through a small street with a few homes on it bordering our neighborhood.

Well, My dad’s beautiful brain started thinking about, and for the cost and inconvenience of storing it at a storage place, he could probably just build a pad for it behind the house.

He had a gravel pad put in the corner of the property with a shed over it, intentionally as close to the edge of the property so it would preserve the view out the back (or be very visible from the front of the house either one).

She was still upset.

There wasn’t any real backlash about it.

Apparently the bully brought it up again and the board politely informed her that they had no control over that property, and I think she admitted defeat.

The board actually found it pretty funny, and never had any other issues with them. The bully moved about a year later, and my parents moved about 2 years ago.

Loved the neighborhood though, genuinely a positive HOA experience, just an annoying bully to make life inconvenient.

I can’t believe I just read a story about an HOA that was actually the good guy in the situation! It was really lucky that the dad happened to own adjacent land that wasn’t part of the HOA. I wonder what would’ve happened otherwise.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

It is ironic.

Rare, indeed!

I think the malicious part is that the boat is now parked in the neighborhood every single day instead of once a week.

This was a really refreshing HOA story!

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.