HOAs

[niccig]

No HOA but a nosy neighbor that drives around the neighborhood with a notebook to report people to the city.

Our decorative split rail fence partially fell down and was a covered by bushes so it couldn’t be seen. Our yard is heavily landscaped like a cottage garden. He was really rude to me about it. The neighbors that live opposite didn’t care about it, they told me “it’s not like you have ugly flamingoes”. It was nearly Christmas and and I saw Santa/reindeer flamingoes on stakes, so we put them right by the fence. Neighbors loved it, so they added some flamingoes too. We now have flock of 8 flamingoes - some are solar and light up, others the wings move with the wind. Turns out the little kids in the neighborhood love the birds and stop by when out walking. A couple parents told us they turn the corner and the kids will call out “the pink birdies!!!”

The fence stayed up for 6 months after the rude conversation from the nosy neighbor. The flamingoes are going on 2 years now


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[SnuggleBuggles]

No HOA but a nosy neighbor that drives around the neighborhood with a notebook to report people to the city.

Our decorative split rail fence partially fell down and was a covered by bushes so it couldn’t be seen. Our yard is heavily landscaped like a cottage garden. He was really rude to me about it. The neighbors that live opposite didn’t care about it, they told me “it’s not like you have ugly flamingoes”. It was nearly Christmas and and I saw Santa/reindeer flamingoes on stakes, so we put them right by the fence. Neighbors loved it, so they added some flamingoes too. We now have flock of 8 flamingoes - some are solar and light up, others the wings move with the wind. Turns out the little kids in the neighborhood love the birds and stop by when out walking. A couple parents told us they turn the corner and the kids will call out “the pink birdies!!!”

The fence stayed up for 6 months after the rude conversation from the nosy neighbor. The flamingoes are going on 2 years now


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Sorry about the nosy neighbor and fence issue but **love** the flamingos! How fun!

[doberbrat]

.... I saw Santa/reindeer flamingoes on stakes, so we put them right by the fence. Neighbors loved it, so they added some flamingoes too. We now have flock of 8 flamingoes - some are solar and light up, others the wings move with the wind. Turns out the little kids in the neighborhood love the birds and stop by when out walking. A couple parents told us they turn the corner and the kids will call out “the pink birdies!!!”

The fence stayed up for 6 months after the rude conversation from the nosy neighbor. The flamingoes are going on 2 years now
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I would LOVE to see a pic of the reindeer flamingos!

[Dayzy]

I live in a TH/condo community and I'm so happy to be moving next week. For the most part the board is pretty relaxed as long as nobody does any serious damage. But rules are rules and if someone complains... Well, on neighbor had a small sign outside their door that says "Hate has no home here." and the neighborhood busybody went to the board to complain that it violates the decorations clause by being a political sign. We also have a rule of "no organized sports in the common areas" so she complains whenever the kids are outside playing catch or kicking a ball back and forth. She claims that if they make a plan to play ball, then it is organized.

[niccig]

I would LOVE to see a pic of the reindeer flamingos!

Here they are on Amazon Pink Inc. SR2 SantaMingo ReinMingo Pair https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00480MZRY...7EM0SXSFX4ATNN

I also got 2 extra reindeer. We take off the Santa outfit after Christmas, but the flamingoes stay up year round

We also have a light up flamingo and blow up flamingo for Christmas decorations.

The neighbors who are in on the original joke love it. They put out similar decorations for Christmas



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[niccig]

Sorry about the nosy neighbor and fence issue but **love** the flamingos! How fun!

We had planned to take down the fence but DH refused after the neighbor was so rude about it. The railings were on ground but not visible from road (lots of plants between road and the fence) so you could only see if walked on to our property and uncovered the jasmine growing there.

The flamingoes have become part of the neighborhood walk - we had no idea until Covid hit and we were home more. Several families stop by most days for their toddlers to visit the pink birdies.
We can’t remove them now

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[AngB]

We have an HOA with mixed results. I think the problems are really from certain people and not the HOA overall. We have a subdivision pool and they have tried to have a bs rule when certain childless people get on the board that families over 4 people have to pay an extra $10 / per person for extra pool passes to get into the pool. I have done some google searches and think it's probably illegal since we all pay HOA dues for the pool but they think no one is going to sue them over $10. (They think because I'm fed up with it and if they try it again this year I'll probably talk to my cousin's husband who is a real estate attorney and probably pay him to write a letter at least.) They have tried illegal things in the past (ie. "adult swim day" where no kids were allowed at the pool for an entire day a week, through the whole summer, when the pool was otherwise open. There was enough of an uproar over that one that they talked to a lawyer and backed down quickly.) And our pool is a kid pool with max depth of 5 ft, a big play climber in the center of it, and no lap area. And then they waste our dues to pay someone to sit and babysit the pool the entire day (ie. play on their phones/read a book/hog the shaded overhang area) because they can't figure out how to pay someone to just open and close the pool without sitting there all day. They recently were sued and lost over trying to not allow someone to rent out their house.
There aren't penalties for breaking the rules in most cases so they don't bother to enforce much unless it's pretty bad. There is a small section of 'carefree villas' in our subdivision that are mostly older couples without kids so that tends to cause a lot of issues (they are the ones who want to pay less HOA fees because they don't have kids, have an adult swim day, etc.)

[carolinacool]

We are still in our first house, which we bought over 13 years ago. I think our HOA is fine. It was definitely more picky the first three or four years we were here. I can remember a guy walking around making sure everyone’s mailbox post was the approved color. And you can only have one style of mailbox that you can either buy through the HOA or apparently get at Lowe’s, I recently learned.

I found them to be really helpful the first four or five years we were here. Shortly after we moved in, the really nice folks behind us who have been renting the house moved out. But the owner didn’t resume lawn care. After the grass got almost 8 or 9 inches tall, DH call the HOA and within a few days it was cut. And when the woman who owned the house across street from us moved out, she brought her trash and recycling bins to the curb, along with just a lot of other junk. Our trash collectors are really specific in what they will and will not pick up. So they dumped the trashcan, but the other stuff just blew around in her yard for almost 3 weeks. I couldn’t believe she never came back even just to move the cans back up to the garage. I called the HOA, and they sent some folks to throw some of the extra stuff in the trashcan. When the city came back the next trash day, they dumped that can again but left some stuff on the curb. The HOA finally just came and picked up everything that was left and moved the cans back.

If anything, there are some complaints that the HOA isn’t doing enough. We live in a huge subdivision (1,500 homes) that’s roughly 20 to 25 years old. We’re pretty middle class except for a few upscale neighborhoods. Certain neighborhoods (not mine) tend to have a fair number of renters, and I guess there have been issues with renter behavior and/or owners failing to keep up the properties. Outside of the two incidents I described above, we fortunately haven’t had any of that sort of behavior in the streets around us.

The only other things that come to mind is that we aren’t allowed to have trampolines and I don’t think we can have above the ground pools.

[DualvansMommy]

We used to live in a condo when I got engaged and lived with him for 4 years. The HOA was just run of the mil standard rules like no trash to the curb but to the communal trash bins instead, have to shovel snow from your car within 24 hours of snow and your sidewalk.

We moved cuz we outgrew our space and the market was right time to get into a house. But I remember the HOA fees were outrageous though! It was almost 300 a month 13 years ago, which is a lot of money. We also kept thinking we couldn’t afford 10K property taxes then until we did the math between paying our condo taxes and HOA monthly fees. We were only couple of hundreds away from 10K a year! That just convinced us to move!


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[JBaxter]

I have zombie flamingos for Halloween lol if you want to keep the trend going

Here they are on Amazon Pink Inc. SR2 SantaMingo ReinMingo Pair https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00480MZRY...7EM0SXSFX4ATNN

I also got 2 extra reindeer. We take off the Santa outfit after Christmas, but the flamingoes stay up year round

We also have a light up flamingo and blow up flamingo for Christmas decorations.

The neighbors who are in on the original joke love it. They put out similar decorations for Christmas



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