We get mail, emails, messages and other forms of communication. Always happy to hear from you. I find it interesting that so many of you have the same name, “Anonymous”, often there is no name or return address for snail mail or email addresses so this show is dedicated to responding to a couple of recent messages.
First of all, I got a letter proving beyond the shadow of a doubt that all is not well in HOAland. The letter starts off by saying “my HOA board is provoking me to commit suicide.” I can fully understand the sheer frustration of having to deal with a bunch of bullies but PLEASE don’t commit suicide. No HOA is worth your life. I have yet to find any truthful and honest benefit of an HOA for the owners. Sadly many frustrated, harassed and abused HOA owners have committed suicide over the years. And the HOA lives on to abuse more homeowners. The best advice I have for you is to GET OUT and, with other HOA survivors help get the message out. Talk to legislators IN PUBLIC, preferably with cameras on so they can’t just sweep your comments and concern under the rug as they have a tendency to do. It is time they understand what they have done and FIX IT.
Bill Davis joins us On The Commons. Bill, a Texas attorney represents HOA homeowners and has more insight from a real life point. I get the most comments about Bill. People want me to clone him, another Anonymous writer complains about Bills audio quality but then says, “once you get Bill’s audio problems fixed; more episodes with Bill and John Cowherd together.” Bill and I talk about some of the issues raised by the writer and explain the problem with his audio. You will be happy to know that we had no problems with the audio on this show. Tune in to find out what Bill did to “fix” it.
For those of you who are not regular listeners who came here from somewhere else, if you want to get straight to the topical content of this program, skip the first 5 minutes.
00:00 – 01:15 | program introduction
01:15 – 05:00 | “housekeeping” banter, you can skip this part
05:00 – 49:20 | “All is not well in HOAs …”
49:20 – 50:00 | closing / “One Way Ticket To Hell”
re the “HOAs preserve property values” argument:
There are over 300,000 HOAs in the USA, and the 5-year-old Farran case you keep citing is a single data point. It does not prove anything.
Fortunately, somebody has recently done a statistical analysis of the claim:
“The data in this study do not support the widespread assumption that homeowners associations protect property values more than neighbourhoods without such organizations. Indeed, the opposite is true. Increase or decrease in property values are mainly a function of changing economic conditions but financial returns on properties in homeowners associations are significantly lower than those outside such associations, particularly if purchased in years during the economic recovery after recessions. State and local laws that sanction homeowners associations and allow their coercive practices based on the premise of property value preservation are ill founded.”
Leon Robertson. “Correlation of Homeowners Associations and Inferior Property Value Appreciation”. Critical Housing Analysis. 02/17/2019
at http://www.housing-critical.com/viewfile.asp?file=2571
“Curious as to whether HOAs actually affect home prices, I looked up studies by housing economists to see if any had researched the issue. I found a few conflicting studies on the relation of house sales prices to HOAs but none that properly accounted for the change in prices from previous sales correcting for other factors that could affect changes in prices.”
“So I examined the recent sales of a sample of 900 homes where data were available and calculated the change in prices from previous sales in urban counties of three states, including Pima County. When I calculated the average percent return on investment (APR) and corrected for inflation and home characteristics (acreage, square footage, etc.), I found that the median APR was significantly lower in HOA neighborhoods than in others in most years, particularly if the house was bought in the 1990s or after the Great Recession.”
“The data show that HOAs are not protecting home price appreciation and they may be reducing it.”
Leon Robertson. “Are HOAs Worth It? A Look at the Numbers Show They Might Not Help Home Values”. Green Valley News. 06/12/2019.
at https://www.gvnews.com/article_990de320-8cb5-11e9-aed2-e381c4c65364.html
h/t to Deborah Goonan for bringing this to my attention
Bill, As always your interviews are inspiring. It’s so nice to have an honest attorney who tells the truth about the industry. I especially loved the part of HOAs being a nonprofit that preys on its own members and that is why they have to be mandatory memberships. We will be using that perspective in our next research paper. Thank you–and Shu, you too!
Is this still an active site? I don’t see anything posted past January. I have a condo owner, maintenance, question.