New Residents Were Told Beach Access Required An Extra Association Fee, So They Handed Back The Gate Key Instead Of Paying
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Optional neighborhood amenities become far less appealing when new homeowners inherit someone else’s unpaid fees.
One family was told to cover three years of beach-access charges left behind by their home’s previous owner.
Instead of accepting the inherited bill, they surrendered their gate key and found perfectly legal alternatives nearby.
The association kept asking anyway.
Lake Access Fees
IN 2008 my family and I moved into a house that was a block away from a Lake.
Access to the lake was managed by a sort of “Beach Gate” authority that maintained the gate and the section of the beach nearest the gate. A yearly fee was paid for access to the gate to help pay for maintenance of the gate and the beach. I can’t remember what it was.
When we moved in we enjoyed the lake for about a month until the beach association informed us that the previous owner of the house hadn’t paid their fee in three years, and since the fee was tied to the address we’d have to pay three years worth of fees or we’d have to give up our gate access.
My mom and Stepdad said “Screw this” and handed the key over.
They never did pay the fees.
We lived in that house for a couple of years and they kept trying to get the access fees from us but we refused.
The rules of the beach allowed residents to bring guests to the beach so we would often go to the beach as “guests” of our neighbors or get in the car and go a half mile down the road to the public part of the beach. It wasn’t as clean but it was free.
I feel sorry for the next people to live in that house after we moved. I’m sure being presented with the demands for FIVE YEARS of back pay on Beach access would have been an insulting shock.
Good for them! Who needs access to the gate when there are workaround that are so easy?
Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.
This person shares a somewhat similar story.
Maybe they should’ve done some research.
I don’t think back payment makes sense either.
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This is funny!
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who is told their fence doesn’t meet community guidelines, but then they find a way around those guidelines in their own handbook.
They should’ve talked to a lawyer.
This family refused to pay years of fees they hadn’t incurred and simply gave up their private lake access.
They continued visiting as their neighbors’ guests or drove slightly farther to the free public beach, leaving the association empty-handed.
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