They Decorated Their Home For Christmas And Drew Complaints From The HOA, Yet The Association Has No Authority Over Their Property
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Holiday decorations become a lot less festive when somebody else tries to regulate your house.
A homeowner outside the neighborhood HOA puts up Christmas lights early, only to get another visit from the board anyway.
Instead of accepting rules he never agreed to, he reminds them that their policies simply do not apply to his property.
Check out how it all went down.
AITA for putting up my Christmas lights early even though the HOA that I’m not a part of says it violates the rules and upsets the people in the HOA
I’ve had a previous experience with this group as I live in a neighborhood that has an HOA but I was there before the rest of the houses were built and before they formed this group. I’m not a member in anyway and that has been verified by a real estate attorney.
So anyway apparently they have a rule over how many lights you can put up and what the earliest date you can put them up.
The woman who I deal with the most when I upset them came by on 11/30 and told me my lights were against the policy and that I was not allowed to have as many lights up as I do.
Let’s see how she responds…
I told her that we been over this before that I am in no way beholden to their policies and don’t care.
I told her out of respect to the people in the neighborhood I did like that I wasn’t going to go full Clark Griswold on my house but that my nieces and nephews loved lights so I would be putting up a fair amount.
I also told her that I didn’t care about their rules that the lights could only be on during certain hours and that once done putting them up on the 30th I would likely turn them on and leave them on till Christmas.
The HOA lady didn’t back down.
She told me that me breaking the rules upset other members and that I should respect their rules even if I don’t follow them because I technically live in the neighborhood.
She offered me a flyer which apparently had their rules for lights.
I tossed it in the trash and told her to just get off my property.
I probably could’ve entertained some of what she asked but I’ve just had enough of them.
She’s not part of the HOA, so who cares what the HOA thinks?
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
This person suggests going Griswold!
Another person would leave them up as long as possible.
This person would report this woman to the HOA management company.
Another person had a good laugh after reading this post.
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It wouldn’t hurt to be courteous of the neighbors.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a man who stops helping his neighbors out with his snowplow after they complain about his farm.
Time to buy more lights!
He refused to follow the HOA’s Christmas-light limits because he had already confirmed legally that he was never part of the association.
The board member still argued that his decorations upset HOA residents and asked him to respect their rules anyway.
Nothing says holiday cheer like delivering unenforceable decorating rules door to door.
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