My principle observation about zoning is that everyone wants to be able to do whatever they want and have their neighbors follow the rules. People want to buy into an area with restrictive rules and then do what we feel like. HOA's vary from benign ones saying you can't have cars on blocks in the yard or paint your house bright pink to outright Nazi like rules and regulations. However the theme continues.
The hypocrisy of some of these individual positions baffles me. Usually somebody says "I should be able to build/ sell stuff/ whatever small business out of MY home". Fine and dandy that position makes some sense. However when I take it a step further and ask if they would mind the neighbor opening junk yard on the front lawn or their other neighbor opening a disco in their back yard that closes at 2AM they all of a sudden have a real problem. It is THEIR neighborhood and they want it to be nice and quiet. Some folks will then say that neighborhoods should have the right to agree on what they want to be there. Oh wait a second they ALREADY DID and they said you can't run that used junk shop in your living room.What is good for the goose is good for the gander.
The biggest thing I see about zoning and HOA's is to be fully informed. Take some time and dig into the books to see what is and isn't allowed in a certain place. A home is a huge purchase and it is well worth a boring afternoon of reading to make sure you are comfortable with them. Learn what the rules are and then figure if they will work for you. Error strongly on the side of caution. If you might want to some day have goats and it says no farm animals then best move on. Sorry but it is unlikely that you will find a place where you can grow and sell eggs and milk in the back yard in a decent sized city. In a lot of ways it is convenient to live in a city but they have rules.
I often hear "every place here has an HOA" and that may be true. However I would say after you research them all if you can't find one you can comfortable live under there are two options; first you can decide to just deal and second you can decide to live elsewhere. Generally if you get out of town or the suburbs HOA's go away.
Lastly remember that either everyone is going to live by the rules they agreed to (at least implicitly when they bought there) or it is going to be a free for all. The neighbor might dislike your used junk store or micro farm just as much as you would dislike their junk yard or disco.
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2 comments:
You are correct in doing your homework.
My bro is a HOA attorney and actually the top guy in our state in regards to it... We differ frequently, but his advice is sound.
Read the entire thing and assume the one interpreting the rules is a little person with a clipboard (that is our family code for a NAZI).
Also, neighborhoods that were built in stages may appear to have one HOA filled with the same rules, but each stage may have a certain set of rules different in certain aspects from the other stages all under one HOA and the HOA may act as if its all the same. They do this so they dont have to go through the trouble of having all the stages vote on adopting the same rules, which is a nightmare.
That said, if you are Nazi yourself and are willing to put forth the effort, you can demand that the house you purchase go by the rules of the stage it was built under and there really may not be much your HOA can do about it.
Thats assuming the above is true of your neighborhood. And its more common than you might think.
Another take is thinking you are going to move to a rural community and do what you want. You can, but so can your neighbor. Meaning, you can do whatever, but they can decide they want a pig farm... Buy enough land to insulate you in case your neighbor is an idiot or sells to one ;)
Most areas still have decent older neighborhoods without an HOA. You just have to find a neighborhood where it looks like most of the people 'behave'.
I would never buy into an HOA. I believe a handful of people get off to enforcing mostly BS rules. I doubt someone leaving their garbage dumpster by the street over the weekend while out of town really constitutes devaluing my property.
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