HOA’s are often awful with picky rules and board members who are power hungry. In this story, the HOA board is exactly like this, but one young homeowner is not going to stand for it.

A young couple moves into an HOA community, and the first time they get a letter that they’ve violated a rule, the husband does some research and doesn’t like what he discovers. That’s when he comes up with a plan, a plan the HOA board never saw coming.

It’s pretty brilliant how he and his wife work together to overthrow the HOA board. Keep reading for all the details.

Saw a post about HOA Revenge and had to post this story; pointers included for those in similar situations!

I bought my home in 2001 in a 42 home community – we bought right after 9/11, and we picked the community because the HOA fees were very low at just $51.

It wasn’t long after we bought the last home in the community (we got a sweet deal because of this and business had really slowed right after 9/11) before those dues started going up. I was 22 at the time.

OP did some research about the HOA board, and didn’t like what he discovered.

Looking into the financial reports and into the meetings, it became clear why the dues were going up – the board was a little fiefdom setup by the developers of the homes.

Our management company was a subsidiary corporation of the home builder, and the board members were a combination of one of the home developers and two of the very first home purchasers in the community; a 3 person board.

The first action the board took with that increase in funds was to remove trees that were not even on the HOA’s property; they were trees that sat in an area the HOA had access to for “weed abatement”.

These tree’s real crime was not that they were “weeds”, it was that they blocked the nice view of the board’s president and vice president.

OP got a violation letter and did some digging.

At the same time, the nonsense “violation” letters started going out to about half the homes; you aren’t mowing enough. You aren’t watering enough. Every petty thing you can think of, they were issuing warning letters and starting to fine homeowners.

Cue revenge time after getting one of those letters myself about “weed abatement”.

Ironically, it was researching the community’s CC&Rs about weed abatement that led me to realize the trees that were cut were not on HOA property, and it was researching the annual budget that led to me finding out the huge “weed abatement” expense that was actually the community’s funds being spent to remove trees solely for the two board member homeowner’s views.

It didn’t sound too hard to recall the board.

I then found out that in California, all anyone needs to initiate a recall of the entire board (and install a new one, if successful) was the signatures of 5% of homeowners, delivered to the current board.

That’s a total of THREE houses in a 42 home community lol.

The Board was issued a recall notice not 48 hours after I had found out about the law, delivered to the management company in person. (Ironically, the home builder’s corporate office was in the exact same building as the management company – you’d think they would have wanted to not make their association so obvious but hey, it was 2002 lol).

The board did not want the recall to happen.

This is also when I found out that the management company basically had the entire board in its pocket, because they dragged their feet with the recall vote; they set it as far out as they could by law, in the middle of the day.

Instead of holding it in the community like all board meetings, they set the place at a local park a couple miles away.

They thought they were so brilliant doing this…

These changes actually worked in OP’s favor.

So, me and my wife put together a proxy voting form for the election, and we went to every door in our community. We told them what was happening with their money, their plans to create an “architecture committee” that would require all homeowners to get approvals for any additions or changes, everything.

It took us three rounds around the neighborhood, plus a couple extra visits to homes that had not answered initially. In the end, me and my wife had TWENTY SIX revocable proxies for the election.

For those unfamiliar with proxies, it basically gave me and my wife the power to cast that homeowner’s vote for them, if and only if they didn’t show up to the election.

The thoughtless board and management company actually made it easier for us to collect the proxies, because a lot of homeowners flat out could not make the time and place of the meeting.

The board thought they had won.

The recall day finally arrives. The current board members are all there, the management company representative is there, and 8 other homeowners showed up to the meeting (6 of whom we had proxies for, and which were revoked by their attendance).

They opened the meeting, and started saying something about “oh, looks like a waste of money there isn’t a quorum, blah blah”.

I then said, “I’m sorry, but we do have a quorum”.

They’re like, “um, no, you need 22 homeowners here and there’s only 12” (the three board members, me and wifey, and the 8 others that showed up).

Not so fast!

And that’s when I pulled out the trump card; I dropped all twenty six proxies on the bench table everyone was sitting at and said I’m sorry but there are more than thirty homeowners present, and pointed out the math; after subtracting the six homeowners that had showed up, we had twenty additional proxy votes that counted for both quorum and voting purposes.

They ALL got wide eyed, most especially the management company representative. He came over and looked at the forms very closely and compared it against a list of the homeowners.

Even the people that were there and on our side did not realize how much work we had done to ensure the nonsense ended there and now.

The meeting sounds like a huge success!

The recall meeting was opened, the board members voted not to recall plus their 3 friends that were on their side, the other homeowners present voted to recall and the votes stood at 6 to 6, tied.

I then stood, and declared that we were voting our twenty valid proxy votes to recall the entire board.

Recall passed, 26 votes to 6.

Next vote: who replaces the board members? It ended up becoming me and wifey and another homeowner that had voted for recall and was willing to take the seat. We elected ourselves to the board seats by a vote of 26 to 6.

OP was prepared for everything!

It was at this point that the management company then stated that Cannon Management was immediately resigning as the management company for the community.

I then pulled out the HOA’s management contract, which clearly stated that either side needed to give 3 months notice to effect resignation, and stated that we, the new board, accepted their resignation and set an end date for their services 3 months later lol.

The management guy was nuclear ticked off; I (a 22 year old kid at the time) had beaten them at their game AND I had prepared for their possible “quitting” shenanigan.

It gets even better!

We replaced the management company after a couple months, having had proper time to find and vet an independent company (at about half the cost, no less). Did the same with the gardening services, which was also a home builder affiliated company, also at about half the cost.

The old President of the HOA put his home up for sale about a month later, after we rescinded all the old violations and issued a notice to the old board members that we intended to vote on whether they had committed fraud against the association over their “weed abatement” tree removal action.

I still vividly remember walking over to Dale’s house (the old President) the day he was moving and giving him a big wave goodbye as he was getting into the car to follow his moving truck.

He gave me the finger as he drove out; definitely one of my proudest moments in life.

That was brilliant all the way through. I love how he was able to overthrow the board and hire more cost effective vendors, but the former HOA president moving out may have been the best part.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a family who is resisting pressure from the HOA to remove their tree and lights.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

I know I couldn’t afford to buy a house at 22!

Someone from Australia weighs in.

This is a good question.

Another person makes a very good point.

With some hard work and determination, you too can overthrow an HOA board! That’s the takeaway of this story.

While many people simply stay away from HOAs altogether, this story really is a good reminder that if you end up owning a house in an HOA with an awful HOA board, there is something you can do about it. Look at the rules, conspire with your neighbors, and vote them out!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tenant who decided to stop returning his neighbor’s misplaced laundry after two years.