HOAs are notorious for having very picky rules, that’s why it’s important to read through them before buying a house. Otherwise, you might accidentally violate the rules and have to pay a lot of fees and pay to have things changed to fit the guidelines.

In this story, one HOA community has a rule that all the mailboxes have to be black. One homeowner didn’t know that was a rule, and her teenage son replaced their mailbox with a white mailbox.

Don’t think this didn’t go unnoticed by the HOA! There’s actually a guy that drives around the neighborhood just to look for HOA violations!

Keep reading to find out what happened when the HOA member saw the white mailbox. It’s pretty dramatic!

WIBTAH for reporting a HOA member to the board for yelling at my friend about a Mailbox color violation on my property?

I (19m) and mom live in a hoa community that dictates the color of mailboxes (they must be black).

While I recently had to put a new one in after the door broke off our old one.

While I did not know about the rule and put in a white mailbox.

This neighbor sounds annoying.

Fast forward to this afternoon, a retired man who lives in the neighborhood recently volunteered to help the board enforce violations.

He does a drive every few weeks to check up on houses.

Well today he went down my street as my friend(19m) pulled in the drive to work with me in my basement. he texts me he is here.

This neighbor needs to back off!

Before he made it up to my door the friend told me the HOA dude walks up to him and starts to ask him questions, says he is in direct violation of a hoa code.

My friend tells him he does not live their and hoa dude does not buy it.

Its been a few minutes now, so I assume I forgot to unlock the door and hes stuck outside.

When I open the door I hear HOA dude pulling the “do you know who I am card.” Hes raising his voice, when I but in, also not knowing much about him.

It’s not like it’s a hard problem to solve.

He goes off about the mailbox to me and how its making the neighborhood look bad.

I told him im unaware of it and will talk to my mom about painting it when she gets off work.

His tone shifted their.

He legitimately thought 2 19 year old kids owned a 300k+ house, had no idea my mom owned it.

At least the neighbor realized he must have sounded crazy.

Things than go full bonkers mode.

Dude started to cover his tracks to me saying that my friend was the one with the attitude and sarcastically answering questions and was “full of nonsense”.

In reality my friend was confused on why some dude approached him talking about a mailbox.

He calls us “violators” and leaves.

We both just laughed.

OP is thinking about reporting the neighbor.

I asked my mom on what to do and she said its up to me since im adult now.

Im leaning towards reporting the guy due to his condescending tone, unprofessional behavior and raising his voice at my friend who was genuinely just very confused about whats going on. I dont think he even knows what a HOA is.

My friend and I joked about it once he left but still I dont want another person in our neighborhood to get yelled at like that.

I wish one of us had taken a video to show as evidence of behavior, most of the board is actually quite reasonable so I could see him getting kicked out if I do report him. so WIBTAH for reporting his behavior.

Without evidence, I’m not sure reporting him will do any good.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who got creative with his parking after his neighbors started using his extra spot without asking.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests.

This person thinks reporting him would be pointless.

But this person thinks it would be a good idea to report him.

Yet another person thinks there’s no point in reporting him.

But this person suggests reporting him.

The comments were definitely split. While nobody thinks it would be a bad thing to report him, about half of the commenters don’t think there would be any point in reporting him.

I would probably suggest reporting him. It may not help anything, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. Maybe there are other reports about the same neighbor, and if enough people report him when he does something crazy, maybe there will eventually be consequences.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a homeowner who responded to an HOA violation letter by investigating the bylaws and having the whole board removed.