Homeowner Association News 

Typical Problems of HOAs

Do you receive timely notice of meetings? Are you given financial statements which explain how the assessments you pay are being spent? Perhaps repairs are neglected or the maintenance is AWOL. Or a nuisance created by your neighbor is allowed to continue. Maybe one owner is allowed to build a "work of art" and another is refused permission to do the same thing.

Often ther homeowners who become involved in the weekly operations of an HOA have a certain personality. They tend to like to control groups of people. Once on the board, the realize how apathetic most homeowners are and they feel that they are doing something special by running the HOA. They'll often bond closely with the management company representative. So much so, they usually listen more to the management company then other homeowners. This is usually the start of trouble.

The management companies are just that companies. They are in business to make money. So, they take a nice hefty sum for just helping out. But they usually talk the HOA board in to assessing fines, and get the board to agree to give them half of the fines for finding and following up on the violations. This creates a conflict of interest, but the management companies are adept at concealing that. The management company will then proceed to find homeowners that willingly pay fines, and then they make sure to routinely find problems with the state of their dwelling. Some homeowners complain, but you have to remember the board decides and the management company basically sits on the board. So who are they going to believe, the homeowner or the management company representative?

Friends - The Complete Seventh Season

I never had much time in the evenings to watch Friends, so now it's kind of cool to own it on DVD. I'm actually getting to see it for the first time. I thought about renting it, but then I'd have to sit there and watch episode after epsiode in a a day or so, and they make you rent one DVD of the set at a time. It would cost about the same. It's not expensive to buy compared to other box sets and it's very entertaining.

Return to Castle Wolfenstein Platinum

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is what brought me back to FPS games. The engine they used is based on the Quake engine, so the game play is solid even online. I strongly recommend this game for those who like fast-pased action games with short game times. I like to get in and play for a 15 minute game and then get out. No EverCrack to suck you in for hours and hours on end. I never played the single player option much, though it was pretty cool. I like the online interaction with other players. This game has a large following, and you can always find games near you with low pings.

Refreshing HOA News Out Sacramento

Two bills are being proposed in California to give homeowners' association members greater protections against losing their homes because of their failure to pay dues on time.

The Assembly Judiciary Committee approved a bill by Assemblyman Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento that would require a homeowners' association to get a court order to foreclose on a residence whose owner had fallen behind in paying association assessments.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill by Senator Denise Ducheny of San Diego that would bar a homeowners' association from foreclosing without a court order in cases involving less than $2,500 in late payments.

Those restrictions in Ducheny's bill wouldn't apply to homeowners' associations with fewer than 25 homes.

It's about time the states start cracking down on these home thieves. Even the banks can't foreclose as easily as HOAs seem to be able to. I wish they'd pass some federal legislation to limit what HOAs can do in this regard.

People Magazine Doing HOA Problem Stories

It seems that People Magazine is writing a story on trouble within HOAs. Specifically about arbitrary HOA rules and bylaws. The ARHC is running an article about how to get involved, but you need to act quickly. Or, contact Oliver Jones with People Magazine, since he is the one writing the story.

Free Web Site

BlogEasy offers a free web site for posting articles. It's a cheap way to get information out about homeowner activities.

Neighborhood Websites

It seems like a great many homeowners do not want to attend HOA meetings for whatever reason, however I'm sure those asme people like to stay informed. The current methods of mailing information out are expensive. So, homeowners have turned to the web. The problem is that maintaining a website is far too time consuming if most of the work isn't done for you. A website that pretty does everything for you, and even provides things like a management interface can be found at http://www.bluecrown.org/. Check it out. Print out one of the brochures and bring it to your next HOA meeting.