Some neighborhood power trips end quietly, and some end in a courtroom with $23,000 in damages.

When a young homeowner moved into his first house and was immediately targeted by an HOA President who drove around with a yellow police light and fined him for sitting in his own car, he eventually started digging into the HOA’s legal standing.

It turned out the HOA wasn’t registered, the fines weren’t enforceable, and the President had been collecting money from the neighborhood for years with zero legal authority to do so.

He knew he had to put a stop to this nonsense.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

Taking on the Homeowners Association President

This happened when my wife and I first got married.

My grandfather had passed just a couple months before and left me a very sizeable inheritance with a note to make sure I used it smartly to start a good life for my wife and I.

Luckily, the couple had a great opportunity come their way.

My father-in-law owns a real estate company that buys foreclosed houses and rehabs them, and he knew of a great starter home for my wife and I and agreed to pay to have it rehabbed.

The understanding was that we would pay him back when we were better established, or after two years when we sold the house.

So we bought the house, and it took about 90 days to rehab it before we moved in.

This is an important fact later on.

It didn’t take long to realize the HOA was going to be a massive problem.

So we finally moved into our house, and had been there about two weeks when someone came and knocked on our door stating that they were the Homeowners Association (HOA) President and asked for my landlord’s contact information.

I explained that we didn’t rent the home and that we were the owners.

They then followed that up by asking to speak with my parents.

I reiterated again that I was the homeowner and asked them what they wanted.

The HOA soon got on the couple’s back about signing on for their rules, which, of course, would cost them.

They explained that there was an HOA for the neighborhood and that I needed to sign the HOA rules, and that I owed $90 pro-rated for my dues. They said they would give me 30 days to pay as a courtesy, however, they needed me to sign the rules right then.

I told them I wanted to read and review them first before I agreed to sign anything, and they were extremely pushy about signing them right then.

I refused, and they told me that I had 7 days to sign them and explained that they have legal power to fine me if I do not turn in a signed copy in that time.

I called my in-laws because I didn’t know anything about HOAs and asked them for their advice.

This wasn’t ideal by any means, but eventually the couple capitulated.

My father-in-law got upset saying that it should have been disclosed prior to the sale, but sometimes with HUD houses that gets missed.

We agreed that the $30/month fee wasn’t horrible, especially because they did provide a really nice playground for the neighborhood.

So I agreed and signed the rules.

It seemed all well and good at first, but then the cracks began to show.

There were a couple that seemed a little over the top to me, but I agreed anyway because from my understanding at the time, I really didn’t have any choice.

It seemed fine enough until about a month passed and we had a small housewarming party with a couple of friends. Literally, there were less than 8 people there including my wife and I.

The house was small but it had a nice deck, so we were out back having a small fire using a fire pit one of our friends had just given us, when I heard someone knocking at the door.

No — pounding, like a cop.

The homeowner wasn’t too pleased with who was on the other side.

I just went around the house and there was the HOA President with his car in front of my house, with a yellow police light on top. Yes, I’m serious.

I asked him how I could help him, and he very sternly told me that I was in violation of the HOA rules by throwing a party outside of approved hours (10pm curfew) and that I needed to send my friends home or quietly take it inside.

I checked my watch and it was 10:05pm. I was amazed, but we took it inside regardless.

The HOA didn’t just stop here.

The very next day, I had a letter from the HOA stating that it was my official warning for violation of the HOA rules by throwing a — and I quote — “wild bonfire” that was a safety hazard while drinking. I literally hadn’t drank at all.

Whatever. I brushed it off and figured it was no big deal.

But that wasn’t the end of it.

Flash forward 6-9 months. We were hosting a teen group devotional for our church one afternoon and we were playing a game of football in the street.

We lived on a connecting street that got virtually no traffic, and only had two houses on it — ours and the family across from us, whose kids were also playing in the game.

All of a sudden I heard a police siren and saw the yellow light flashing.

You can guess who it was.

The HOA President got out and told us that we had to break it up immediately as it was a safety hazard because one of the kids could get run over.

I was fed up with him and told him that they were fine, that we had been watching for cars, and that he was literally the first car we’d seen — and we had been playing for over an hour at that point.

The HOA wasn’t buying this.

He insisted and asked what would happen if an ambulance or police officer needed to come down that street to save someone’s life.

This was ridiculous because literally both streets we were connected to have entrances from the main road.

I gave in and we went inside.

Then came yet another letter, but this time, the homeowner wasn’t keen on playing along.

The next day I got a letter explaining that I was being fined $60 (the maximum fine allowed for a first offense) and that if I wanted to protest it, I could attend the next HOA meeting.

I decided that I wanted to protest the fine, but noticed that the fine was due in 30 days and the next HOA meeting wasn’t for 35 days.

I opted not to pay until after the hearing and wrote a letter back to the HOA President stating as such.

So during the next meeting, this homeowner decided they would stand up for themselves.

I went to the meeting and it was literally myself, the HOA President, the HOA Secretary (President’s wife), Vice President (President’s neighbor), and Treasurer (Vice President’s wife).

My protest was immediately overruled, and I was also charged a $30 late fee for not paying on time, despite having notified him.

Defeated, the homeowner was forced to hang up their hat — at least for now.

I was fed up. I couldn’t take it any longer, but realized I really didn’t have any recourse.

About 4-5 months later, we had our first child, and about a month after that I was driving home one night (I was working a second job in retail at the time) when my buddy in the military called me.

He had been deployed when my daughter was born and was calling to congratulate me.

When I got home, I didn’t want to risk waking up my sleeping newborn daughter, so I just sat in my car with the engine running as it was a little chilly outside.

Then the unbelievable happened.

I sat there for about half an hour when I heard the police siren and saw the yellow lights.

Now keep in mind, police sirens aren’t quiet, and this was right in front of my house. His stupid yellow light was flashing everywhere, including into my daughter’s bedroom.

I got out of the car and rather firmly told him to turn off the light so as not to wake my daughter.

The President, of course, had some petty excuse.

He explained that I “looked suspicious” sitting in my car with it running outside of my house.

I explained the situation and he told me I had to go inside and that my “history of being a trouble maker” wouldn’t grant me any leniency.

I basically told him where I thought he could go and proceeded to sit on the hood of my car.

Then the President took things one step further.

He sat there for another 15 minutes telling me I needed to go in, and at one point touched my shoulder.

I explained to him that if he touched me again I would take it as a sign of aggression and defend myself, which he responded to by getting in his car and leaving.

He circled the block about four times over the next thirty minutes, which was when I got too cold to stay out and finally went inside.

You can guess what happened next.

The next day, I got a hand-delivered letter from him and the Vice President, and he also asked me to step outside to “talk about last night’s incident.”

He explained that he was “being nice” by not calling the police on me after I “threatened” him, at which point I cut him off and told him that he needed to get off my property before I called the police on him for trespassing.

Finally, the homeowner had had enough.

I read the letter and saw that he was giving me two different fines of $180 each, which were the maximum amounts. One for violating curfew, and one for “disobeying the night watchman.”

I was done. I had reached my breaking point.

This is where the revenge comes in.

The homeowner decided he needed to understand the rules better than this awful HOA, and soon enough, he found some leverage.

I started looking into HOA laws and regulations regarding fines and how to protest them, because I felt like this was clearly abuse.

I found that the law states that you must be notified of an HOA 10 days prior to closing on a house and must be served with the HOA rules within 45 days of purchase, or you are not subject to being forced to participate in the HOA.

I remembered that we weren’t served until after we moved in, which was close to 90 days after we closed.

So the homeowner started making some calls.

So I called my real estate agent, who is a very close family friend (my in-laws have bought literally thousands of houses from her over the past 35 years), and asked if she had the paperwork still.

She said she could get me a copy.

I looked and it was over 90 days after purchase that we were notified, and there was no disclosure statement at closing.

The realtor then started doing some research of her own.

The realtor said she must have misplaced it because it’s required by law to be provided prior to the sale, and basically that she wouldn’t miss something like that because it comes to her when they do a title inspection on the house whether or not there is a registered HOA.

She did a little digging and called me back two days later and said that my neighborhood doesn’t have an HOA registered with the city or county, which is required.

I ended up calling the county office in charge of registering and gave them the neighborhood name.

Finally, the homeowner started getting some answers.

The woman I spoke with said that our neighborhood is registered in the other city and not in our city, and that if we wanted to start an HOA we would have to follow certain steps — and that without those, the HOA wouldn’t be allowed to collect any money or have any authority.

Apparently what had happened was that our neighborhood was originally all in one city, but when the city lines changed, the neighborhood was split in half.

The other neighborhood kept the HOA that was registered, and our “HOA President” was supposed to register with the state but didn’t feel like jumping through all of the hoops that it required.

He decided he needed to be strategic about bringing this information to the HOA President.

I was ready to walk down to the President’s house and let him have it, but decided to be smart for a minute.

I talked to my neighbor across the street, who also hated the HOA, and told him what I found out.

He was furious about it as well.

Soon, they had banded together about a dozen other disgruntled residents.

We talked to a few more neighbors and got a group of about 10 of us together who agreed we needed to show up at the next HOA meeting.

Word had apparently spread because there ended up being more people than the library meeting room could host.

I had specifically asked to be the speaker for the group, which they were nice enough to let me do.

The HOA President tried to wrestle back control once again, but this time, the homeowner wasn’t backing down.

The President tried to prevent me from speaking due to my being overdue on my fines.

At this point, I was about three weeks late on my last set of fines with a $30/week penalty on each fine, so my current bill was set to about $540.

But I spoke anyway.

He shared exactly what he learned and backs up his findings with the facts.

I explained to them that I had contacted my in-laws’ attorney (also a family friend), who had drafted a lawsuit regarding the fact that they were impersonating a registered HOA in order to collect money from us, which was fraud.

The President dismissed me and said I had no idea what I was talking about and that he had “had enough of my antics.”

The staff members all left immediately while the rest of us stayed and talked.

That’s when the neighborhood took collective action against the HOA President.

A month later we served them formally — myself and 20 other homeowners — suing them for all fines and HOA dues we had paid, to the tune of approximately $50,000, as some of these families had been there over 10 years.

The President and Vice President got their own attorney who attempted to legitimize the HOA, but it required the signature of like 90% of the homeowners.

They got three signatures, including the two of themselves. Some other bitter neighbor signed as well.

The HOA tried other options too, but the residents shut it down.

After that failed, they tried to settle by agreeing to abolish the HOA and showed that they hadn’t financially gained from it and that all funds had been used for the park upkeep, snow removal, and other neighborhood events.

We took a vote and this was turned down in overwhelming fashion.

I was surprised — I actually voted to accept this.

Eventually came another lawsuit.

Then about a week later one of the other families called and mentioned something about the park maintenance and snow removal.

Apparently he had given a quote to do the landscaping for the park (cutting the grass, mulching, etc.) and his quote had been a couple hundred bucks cheaper than what they were paying. It had always bothered him because the person that did those jobs was the Vice President’s son, and what they were paying him was pretty outrageous in terms of what’s standard.

Eventually it went to court, where the judge looked at everything and mandated that they pay $21,000 ($1,000 per homeowner), plus attorney and court fees which were like another $2,000, for a total of $23,000 in damages.

Even more fines piled up.

Additionally, they were fined by the city’s governing body after it was reported. I don’t know how much that fine was though.

We ended up selling the house that following summer, but I talked to a couple of friends that still lived there about a year after it.

They said that the President and Vice President both sold their houses and moved away because they were pretty much hated by everyone in the neighborhood, and that they had an informal HOA that people donated to for upkeep of the park.

What a saga.

Reddit is sure to get a kick out of this one.

This commenter thought the story was heading in a different direction.

If this commenter were in that situation, they would have acted a lot more boldly.

There’s power in numbers!

It takes a special kind of person to stand up to a corrupt HOA.

Turns out, you can’t be a tyrant forever when the law finally catches up to you.

If you liked that post, check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.