Imagine living in a great neighborhood. There’s an HOA, but it’s no big deal because it’s not crazy.

Then everything changes when the HOA leadership changes and your neighborhood goes from feeling like a community to a dictatorship.

Would you run for HOA board to try to change things, mind your own business and lay low, or list your house for sale?

In this story, one homeowner is in this exact situation, and she chose the last option. However, it’s proven harder than she expected to sell her home. Now, she’s facing another dilemma.

Keep reading to hear all the awful changes this HOA made and what the homeowner is considering doing as a result.

HOA started with shed rules and somehow ended with charging us for guests

Our neighborhood HOA changed leadership recently and ever since then living here has turned into an absolute circus.

I swear every other week there’s some new rule, warning, or fine taped to people’s doors.

At first it was stuff that was annoying but at least somewhat understandable like no ugly sheds visible from the street, keep front yards clean, things like that.

Fine, whatever, I get wanting the neighborhood to look nice.

Then they did something much worse.

But then they decided some of the older trees were ruining the aesthetic and had a bunch of them removed.

Now the whole street feels like a frying pan half the year because there’s barely any shade left.

Spring, summer, even early fall… we’re living like on a frying pan

But it got even worse!

Then things really started getting even worse.

Now your cat can’t wander outside, dogs can’t bark, kids aren’t supposed to play in front yards, and neighbors have literally gotten warning letters over chalk drawings on the sidewalk.

I wish I was exaggerating…

The latest rule is ridiculous!

One of the latest and newest rules is the one that finally broke me.

The thing is that if your guests park in front of your house, even on the parking lot, for more than an hour, there’s a $20 fee.

An actual fee. For having visitors.

At this point it feels less like a neighborhood and more like some weird suburban dictatorship run by people with too much free time and no life

She wants to leave.

I’m done with it, it’s enough and I don’t wanna live here anymore.

So, I listed this place for sale and we have a lot of viewers

But the second buyers hear strict HOA, you can practically see them mentally checking out.

Doesn’t help that the HOA people are constantly outside making scenes with residents over random violations, so it’s impossible to hide the vibe

Here’s her dilemma.

But should we just cut our losses and sell the place for cash through Bright Home Offer and move somewhere people still act like human beings

Has anyone else dealt with an HOA that completely lost the plot like this?

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an apartment tenant who is being called petty for blocking her parking space with trash cans.

That sounds so frustrating! Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

This is a good suggestion.

Here’s another good idea.

Sometimes an HOA isn’t really an HOA.

Someone from the UK weighs in.

A lot of us who live in the United States don’t understand why HOAs exist either. I personally wouldn’t want to live in one.

Talking to the other neighbors might be a good idea. If they could work together to overthrow the current HOA board and appoint homeowners who actually care about the neighborhood, it could be completely different. And it is possible. Who knows, maybe they’d even be lucky enough to find out that the HOA isn’t really even an HOA like in one of the comments above.

Moving isn’t the only option when you hate the HOA.