Imagine living in an HOA neighborhood. There would be lots of crazy rules you would have to follow.

What would you do if the board members were crazy picky about these rules and gave out violations about ridiculous things?

In this story, a bunch of homeowners are in this situation, and they band together to overthrow the HOA. It’s a great example of neighbors working together to defeat evil, or the HOA. Is there much difference, really?

Keep reading for all the details.

Revolution against our HoA

My wife & I moved into a 64 townhome community that was 10 years old at the time.

The HoA board was comprised of 5 members that were original homeowners when the community started and had been the sole board members since the community started.

Their sense of entitlement was crazy.

They thrived on their quarterly walkthrough of the neighborhood as they would write-up every single home for some kind of violation regardless of how minor the offenses were. EVERYONE gets a violation letter.

The violations really do sound ridiculous.

Our first letter, the first month living there was that our garage door paint was starting to peel (it was a 2cm scrape where the panels met), it needed to be repainted, the siding needed to be powerwashed (there was a patch of green moss behind a bush) and the sliding door on the deck was dirty (there was dirt on the bottom of the door from recent rain) and it needed to be washed.

We had 30 days to fix the issues or beginning accruing a fee of $25 a day until they are resolved.

I asked around and everyone gets these ridiculously petty letters every quarter. No matter what you did to maintain your townhome, you were going to get a letter about something.

But there were big problems that actually needed to be fixed.

As this was going on, none of the major items the neighborhood needed fixed were addressed.

After a decade since the construction, the ground had settled unevenly and many homes had standing water issues where it wouldn’t drain after a storm. The rain water would sit for 5-7 days in peoples lawns.

And more importantly, there had been a legal fight with the town since the community was started about our road being “Dedicated” meaning the town was responsible for snow removal.

Our HoA dues included paying for our own snow removal (which we shouldn’t have to) and we were paying an attorney for ten years to fight this with no resolution in sight.

The HOA board got really petty.

Fast forward a two years and a few of us had enough and decided to band together to replace the board at the next annual meeting.

The existing board got wind of this and hit us all with pages worth of issues with our properties since if you have outstanding issues, you are not in good standing with the community thus can not run for a board position or even vote for those running.

This petty move brought the community even closer and we all spent the weekend before the meeting helping eachother clean out their HoA honey-do lists.

We took pictures, documented everything then we had the US Mail certify delivery of each packet with the completed list and photos to the HoA board who lived 75 ft away.

Let’s see what happens at the board meeting.

Come board night, oddly enough, the lawyer was there to give an update that no progress has been made with the township on dedicated our road.

He stuck around as we moved to the elections for the next board. We brought our signed petitions to add our names to the ballot.

The board says were not eligible as we all have outstanding issues with our property.

We call nonsense with our receipts from the post office that they received our completed lists with documentation.

It’s a good thing the lawyer was there.

They reply that they haven’t reviewed them yet.

We tell them that’s not our problem and we are in good standing.

They lawyer overhearing this states we are eligible to be on the ballot if we can confirm the issues with our homes were resolved prior to the meeting.

The HoA president glares at the lawyer but the lawyer just shrugs saying, “the rules are the rules”

It was a revolution!

With the exception of the 5 existing board members voting for themselves/eachother, we are voted in nearly unanimously to replace them.

I lead the revolution because I was tired of the petty BS when there were real problems in the neighborhood.

Sadly, the rest of the elected board members vote me as President. I have no idea what I’m doing.

But we spent the next few sessions removing all the dumb violations from most of the neighbors. We went through the by-laws to really focus on what’s important.

Now, about the lawyer…

What happens next?

Ends up that lawyer was a friend of the previous President and was in no hurry to resolve anything as he was enjoying our excessive bill.

I notify him if its not resolved in the next 6 months were finding new representation.

He was actually good at his job when pressed to do it.

The lawyer really did help them out.

He won the case, the town appealed and tried to drag it out.

He fast tracked the appeal as it had been going on for ten years and we won the appeal too.

The town dedicated our road, then the lawyer pressed that it should have been done years ago, it wasn’t him slowing things down but the town.

He ends up getting us a settlement from the judge for back pay on us paying for snow removal that the town was responsible for.

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The money came in handy.

We ended up using that settlement to have French drains installed across much of the community to clear the standing water issues.

With the money left over, we fixed a lot of the neighborhood issues that the HoA should have been doing the whole time. Fences & sidewalks in disrepair, replaced dead trees & shrubs etc.

It was great getting all that done without having to hit our capital reserve fund.

They eventually moved on.

I remained President until we moved a few years ago. Our family began to outgrow the townhome.

Now we live in a new larger development… with a new HoA…

I was asked to run for a position on it.

I replied, “not a chance… but I will lead a coup d’tat if I need to”

Overthrowing the board was the right thing to do. I’m glad the lawyer helped them out in the end.

Let’s see how Reddit responded.

I hope the new board did this too.

Seriously, if you don’t want to be HOA president you might actually be a good HOA president.

This person shares the best next steps.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a community who realizes their mistake after restricting parking to residents only gets guests and delivery drivers towed.

Another person is curious about a different way of resolving the issue.

I’m glad the lawyer was in the room when the homeowners tried to vote themselves in as the new board members. Otherwise, it may not have happened. The lawyer was kind of a hero in the end. It was the board members who were awful.

Good board members can change an HOA.